Epic Battle?

or bar-room brawl?

You be the judge.

In one corner, you have Microsoft and in the other you have the nimble yet large, fluid yet rock solid Google.

Sure, it sounds a little biased, but consider that Microsoft gave me one of my greatest loves, Excel, and my heart is quite equally torn.

The announcement by Google is intriguing. To enter into the Operating System space is a compelling idea to me. I think of the amazing and innovative things that Google does already and I find that I am interested to see what they could concoct.

That being said, Microsoft Windows clearly has a hold on the market place. Most consumer and corporate PCs come standard with Windows OS of some variety. And while the Mac vs. PC commercials do a nice job of making Windows PCs uncool, they haven't destroyed Windows' image totally. People are lining up to get Windows 7. Surprised?

And then there is the issue of Bing, Microsoft's new "decision" engine. This is actually the shot that started this whole one-upman-ship situation. Google's biggest cash cow is their search engine marketing. As long as they have the greatest share of searches online, they will continue to bring in enormous amounts of revenue with very little effort. While Bing is gaining search share, the engine is really stealing primarily from Yahoo. Short term: Google is just fine. But long term? Speculation is that the dent that Bing is putting into Yahoo will help with any possible acqusition strategies that Microsoft may employ to take over Yahoo. Yahoo + Microsoft Bing = good chunk of the market (not majority by any stretch since comScore still has Google at 65% share of searches.

And since Bing's efforts at getting a larger share of the search pie is a direct threat to Google's cash cow - Google decided that now is as good of a time as any to launch a brand new operating system.

Niiiice.

The question is: Do you think that Google's new Operating System is simply for the sake of distracting Microsoft from their search efforts and attacking Microsoft's core competency?

Or

Do you think that Google really believes that an Operating System is a viable next frontier?

Or is it a little bit from column A and a little bit from column B?