First Impression: Meeting Google´s Craig Silverstein

Lately there has been some discussion on if and how Google might be a threat to Microsoft. Bill Gates even said "[they] kicked our butts". Right now I´m not interested in the details of where exactly Microsoft feels hurt and if Google can do substantial damage to Microsoft´s position. Rather, what now surprises me is the surprise everybody felt when Google came out with desktop search functionality and Google maps etc. I´m surprised about this, because I just met with Craig Silverstein, Google´s director of technology and first employee of Google - or Google´s man behind the curtain (as some call him).

Craig (foreground) with his two employers, the Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

I found Craig to be very straightforward, modest, credible, and honest. And thus, I fully believe him, when he chants his mantra "don´t be evil" and explains Google´s mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." He is equally open and serious about everything that I can´t believe, nobody had thought of Google entering the realms of Microsoft sooner or later: the desktop and organizing information.

Although Google currently is not into actually producing information or helping to produce it like Microsoft is with Office, its development tools and data servers (e.g. SQL Server, Exchange, Sharepoint). But once the information has been produced, Google´s very, very, very serious about making it available to all interested parties. So of course Google enters the Enterprise and sells "Google for the Intranet". And of course Google´s interested in what´s stored on your desktop. And of course Google´s interested in letting you search for a local pizza place and not only provide a link to its website (if existing at all), but show you its location on a map.

Microsoft started on the desktop, is trying to get into the enterprise market, and extends to the Internet.

Google started on the Internet, is selling a very focused familiy of products to the enterprise market - and now is slowly extending to the desktop.

So the location where Microsoft and Google inevitably meet is the (enterprise) desktop. But, as I now think after meeting Craig, this should have been clear since long.

And I´d even say, Google´s mission is very clearly defined and they are very focused on it, so it´s somewhat predictable, where we´ll see products coming out from them in the future. But on the other hand, Microsoft has less of a focused mission. They started out with Basic and MS-DOS, now they are selling not only development tools and an operating system, but Office, SQL Server, BizTalk, Games, and even the Xbox. So if those two worlds of Microsoft and Google should collide in the future and anybody claims surprise, I´d say it can only be because Microsoft has extended again into another area.

PS: Even though I´m a firm believer in the benefits of electronic communication, the meeting today for me was a proof to how important personal meetings are. It´s one thing to read about a person. It´s a completely different thing to actually meet the person. Seeing Craig speak conveyed so much more information; but I mean not about Google´s technologies and goals, but about what´s driving them. Because in the end, companies are still the sum of the people working and living for them.