I think it’s kind of like asking whether Godzilla or Mothra will win – either way, Tokyo pays the price.
While I applaud free software, and Open Source (even while I’m quite happy offering closed source software myself), it doesn’t change the fact that money makes the world go round, and as Google’s actions in China show, neither it nor Microsoft are altruistic when it comes to money.
So the real question is, who will give us more? Right now, MS is where the business is – like IBM of twenty years ago, a company doesn’t suffer by buying Microsoft. But any ‘cool’ factor is long gone – and it’s cool that fuels the next generation of tech users (who, but the way, will be the business policy makers and buyers in a decade or two). Witness the reinvention of the Mac.
And like the Mac, you get a huge benefit from going Open Source, as Google will see (although somewhat ironically, while the Operating system Macintoshes use is based on FreeBSD, which is Open Source, the license allows changes – Mac-specific changes in this case – to remain proprietary). Thousands, maybe millions of coders have delivered a finished Operating System to use, for free. It’s hard to compete with that, especially given the need for an OS like Windows to support legacy like XP and even 9x.
Of course, Google is targeting netbooks right now, low power computers that need a lighter Operating System to run best, so in theory the two need never really compete. Of course, that’s for now – once the kinks are ironed out, a full-fledged OS is the next obvious step.
So the answer I suppose is “what’s in it for me?”. The company that makes sure the user is kept happy has the best chance. But in either case, competition means one thing – lower pricing and more attention to the user. And if that means the MS monopoly finally unravels, then I’m all for it.
