Google: The New Microsoft?

This idea has been a long lingering one but if we're going to be discussing Google, it deserves a mention and a look. I think it's been more or less established and agreed upon that when Microsoft achieved total market domination, the quality of their operating systems (and products in general) took a hit. Rather than not resting on their laurels and continuing to push the products that made the company what it was then, Microsoft sat back and lost most of its steam. Windows XP ended up a decent product, but it took many service packs to get there. Vista was an unmitigated disaster, nearly destroying the Windows name in the process. Now, with Windows 7, which I haven't used (a converted-Mac user) but have heard very good things about, Microsoft may have started to feel the heat again and push out a quality product during its initial release, not 2 years down the road.

Where's the heat coming from? As far as I can tell, two places: the fine folks at Apple and our study for the week, Google. First, Apple is as innovative a company that exists today (yes, even more so than Google). In roughly the past decade, Apple has completed the following:

1) The creation of the iMac in 1998, which almost single-handedly helped the company survive.
2) Threw total game-changer #1 into the mix with the iPod in 2001, the same year they opened their first retail store.
3) Threw total game-changer #2 into the mix with the iPhone in 2007, which has revolutionized the cell phone industry and even made people question what is possible for a hand-held computer.
4) Launched the iTunes Music Store, legitimizing digital downloads in the process and creating what-is-now the largest music retailer in the United States and potentially putting traditional record stores out of business.
5)Has continually improved and perfected upon their own OS, Mac OS X, now in it's 7th iteration, Snow Leopard.

Google, on the other hand, has seemingly revolutionized everything we think about the internet. With their search engine, Google Maps, Gmail, Google News, etc, internet computing has been Google's bread and butter. In terms of software, very few companies can hold a candle to what Google has done since it's creation in late 1998. However, their story is eerily similar to Microsoft's. Apple is relatively safe from this as most of their innovation this decade has come from the creation of game-changing hardware and their acceptance of being a specialty producer, in which their users pay a premium for the product. Microsoft and Google on the other hand exist much more strongly on the software side of the equation, which leaves the question. Can Google continue to innovate for the mass-market when there is no one else really innovating alongside them? Microsoft launched Bing this year and while it has enjoyed a good dose of popularity, I believe that there are very few that believe it will unseat Google as the de-facto search engine of choice.

Is there anyone else out there producing a quality, innovative product that will appeal to the mass market and cut into Google's dominance? I'm not sure. While there are many highly qualified companies producing exciting and innovative work, few, if any, are achieving mainstream popularity and success. While that may seem like a good thing for Google now, it may seem like a bad thing for the users in another couple of years, when Google launches Google Vista, to the world's horror.