Linda posted on June 08, 2009 18:38
The last two weeks have seen a number of major announcements from Google and Microsoft and there are blog posts and articles everywhere about what it all means.
Now for those of you who aren't watching technology closely, let me briefly recap. First, Microsoft announced that it would unveil its new search engine - bing - on June 3rd. That announcement was followed closely by Google's announcement of their next product, Google Wave, which claims to be a completely redesigned communication system. Speculation was that Google pushed their announcement out to take attention away from Microsoft's earlier announcement.
That was followed by Microsoft's confirmation of the Windows 7 release date - set for October 22, 2009.
My team has been working with Windows 7 for the past month, and they have been very pleased with it. The details of that is for a future post!
We also spent a bit of time exploring bing on Friday. The mapping is pretty amazing, but my team's initial evaluation of the search capabilities is not as enthusiastic.
They also watched the video from Google on Wave, but since this isn't a product that we can test drive yet, it is too soon to offer any reaction other than it looks like it could be pretty neat. (More from me after I watch the video.)
Sometimes things happen so quickly, with new products replacing the old, that one may wonder why. You may be perfectly happy with Windows XP, your favorite search engine and your current ways of communicating.
It seems to me that the most important aspect of this scenario isn't that our old search engines are lacking in any way we were aware of, or that we aren't able to communicate, but just that competition drives innovation. If there was not competition between Microsoft and Google, or between the PC and the Mac, we probably wouldn't have many of the tools that we have today.
And remember that just because there is a new search engine or a new way to communicate, there is no obligation on your part to start using them. Chances are that some of the new ideas show up in other tools or that your favorite search engine will innovate in some different way to keep up. In the long run, we all benefit from this competition and innovation, even if at times it just seems disruptive or too much to absorb!