Microsoft, every mention

Google Part II: Alphabet (Audio) · Acquired Aug 26, 2025 · 100 mentions

• ▶ 28:48 David Rosenthal Two, we are building our strategic moat against Microsoft.
• ▶ 28:53 David Rosenthal The faster that we get the internet using public to fall in love with and use web applications, the less and less leverage Microsoft has over us.
• ▶ 39:17 David Rosenthal So, back to Google's overall strategy here, and adoption of web apps, and sort of building this moat and defense against Microsoft.
• ▶ 42:30 David Rosenthal Docs and spreadsheets hit Microsoft right where it hurts.
• ▶ 42:36 David Rosenthal Office.
• ▶ 42:37 David Rosenthal So, people have tried both before Google and after Google to compete with Microsoft in productivity forever.
• ▶ 42:52 David Rosenthal We talked all about that on our Microsoft episode.
• ▶ 43:08 Ben Gilbert If you were starting on the foot of competing with Microsoft, or trying to build a word processor, or trying to build a spreadsheet, you would be doomed for failure.
• ▶ 45:28 Ben Gilbert Their whole thing at first was, we're not gonna make a better spreadsheet than Excel, so if we put it in the web, it has to be about sharing collaboration.
• ▶ 45:36 David Rosenthal And so to your earlier point, nobody can compete with Microsoft in productivity software.
• ▶ 45:54 Ben Gilbert You built your big model in Excel.
• ▶ 46:13 David Rosenthal This is Microsoft's whole entire
• ▶ 46:24 David Rosenthal Yep, and IT departments will buy it, and especially for productivity software, really all the money is in B to B and work applications, and so if IT departments are buying the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, they're getting everything good…
• ▶ 47:48 David Rosenthal Microsoft has all the dollars completely on lockdown because of the enterprise agreement.
• ▶ 48:05 David Rosenthal Microsoft can keep all the dollars.
• ▶ 48:11 David Rosenthal And in this instance, particularly with Office and productivity, really this is about putting the screws to Microsoft a little bit.
• ▶ 48:11 David Rosenthal And in this instance, particularly with Office and productivity, really this is about putting the screws to Microsoft a little bit.
• ▶ 48:26 David Rosenthal If this gets Microsoft all spun up, Microsoft is now all of a sudden getting asked all the time, what's your web strategy for office?
• ▶ 48:26 David Rosenthal If this gets Microsoft all spun up, Microsoft is now all of a sudden getting asked all the time, what's your web strategy for office?
• ▶ 48:32 David Rosenthal When are you going to add collaboration to Word and Excel, et cetera, et cetera.
• ▶ 48:32 David Rosenthal When are you going to add collaboration to Word and Excel, et cetera, et cetera.
• ▶ 48:38 Ben Gilbert My internship was at Microsoft and I worked on adding headers and footers to the Microsoft Word web app.
• ▶ 48:38 Ben Gilbert My internship was at Microsoft and I worked on adding headers and footers to the Microsoft Word web app.
• ▶ 48:47 Ben Gilbert The Windows code to have perfect document fidelity to the web, so when you looked on the web and then printed from the web, the document would be laid out pixel for pixel, character for character, exactly how it would look on the printed…
• ▶ 49:19 David Rosenthal Microsoft is now forced to bring their crown jewels to the web, which they don't want to do.
• ▶ 49:43 Ben Gilbert If you have permission to view it, you view it with Microsoft.
• ▶ 49:47 Ben Gilbert It was like, but what if I haven't bought word?
• ▶ 49:50 Ben Gilbert Can I just use word for free in the web then?
• ▶ 49:53 Ben Gilbert Is Microsoft okay with that?
• ▶ 49:58 Ben Gilbert It forces the company to think about pricing and packaging.
• ▶ 50:03 David Rosenthal So fast forward to today, it's hard to get real actual apples to apples data on Google Workspace versus Microsoft Office users, but basically the way to think about the market is that Google has the vast majority of users and usage of…
• ▶ 50:03 David Rosenthal So fast forward to today, it's hard to get real actual apples to apples data on Google Workspace versus Microsoft Office users, but basically the way to think about the market is that Google has the vast majority of users and usage of…
• ▶ 50:29 Ben Gilbert Is that true that there's more active users of Google Workspace than there is of Office?
• ▶ 50:45 David Rosenthal Office, I think, has a couple hundred million users worldwide.
• ▶ 50:57 David Rosenthal But, to my point about the dollars, so Microsoft's
• ▶ 51:01 David Rosenthal Productivity and business process segment, which is mostly office.
• ▶ 51:33 David Rosenthal So Microsoft's productivity segment, 120.
• ▶ 51:36 David Rosenthal Office is the big piece.
• ▶ 51:44 David Rosenthal So yeah, Microsoft's still got all the money.
• ▶ 51:53 David Rosenthal And ultimately today Microsoft is fine with this arrangement too.
• ▶ 52:10 David Rosenthal He is now the deputy CTO of Microsoft.
• ▶ 1:41:42 David Rosenthal And that would be if Microsoft is going to buy the company.
• ▶ 1:41:54 David Rosenthal Well, one was Microsoft to kneecap them by making changes to Internet Explorer or Windows or whatnot.
• ▶ 1:41:54 David Rosenthal Well, one was Microsoft to kneecap them by making changes to Internet Explorer or Windows or whatnot.
• ▶ 1:42:06 David Rosenthal Now the threat is, oh, Microsoft is finally going to wake up and do what they should have done 10 years ago.
• ▶ 1:42:34 Ben Gilbert Microsoft is realizing that for some set of users,
• ▶ 1:42:38 Ben Gilbert Google's actually making more money on any given PC user than Microsoft is, and they're not happy with this and say, fine, we at least just need to be in that game too.
• ▶ 1:42:49 Ben Gilbert So, the negotiations are kind of happening with Microsoft and DoubleClick.
• ▶ 1:43:16 Ben Gilbert He steps out, he runs down the hall, and he sees a conference room full of all the Microsoft people and their accountants and their lawyers, and he's like,
• ▶ 1:43:24 Ben Gilbert oh my god, oh my god, you guys, you're, you're about to decide this deal with Microsoft.
• ▶ 1:43:41 Ben Gilbert There's a whole presentation series that happens where Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and Google are basically all getting the pitch and DoubleClick is now showing.
• ▶ 1:44:40 Ben Gilbert There was an incoming message from Microsoft's corporate development team.
• ▶ 1:44:51 Ben Gilbert Ballmer wrote that if the offer match was not acceptable, DoubleClick should simply mark up the paper to meet its needs and then sign it, and Microsoft would review and rapidly countersign to close the deal with minimal negotiation…
• ▶ 1:46:20 Ben Gilbert Which Microsoft then bought for twice as much.
• ▶ 1:46:29 David Rosenthal Microsoft turned around and bought a quantitative for six billion dollars.
• ▶ 1:46:33 David Rosenthal So twice the price, but Microsoft getting the number two player versus the number one player slowed them down.
• ▶ 1:46:39 David Rosenthal We're heading right into Microsoft search efforts with Yahoo and then ultimately Bing and getting into the advertising business.
• ▶ 1:46:39 David Rosenthal We're heading right into Microsoft search efforts with Yahoo and then ultimately Bing and getting into the advertising business.
• ▶ 1:46:48 David Rosenthal Worth every penny to Google, even for the sole reason of keeping the premier number one player in the display ad space out of Microsoft's hands.
• ▶ 1:49:31 David Rosenthal Microsoft finally said like, okay, enough.
• ▶ 1:49:33 David Rosenthal We gotta enter this business ourselves.
• ▶ 1:53:01 Ben Gilbert They sort of took the mantle from Microsoft and had not yet relinquished it to Facebook or later to the Stripe or OpenAI or Anthropic or any of the sort of companies we would talk about in the future as this, like, dense concentration of…
• ▶ 1:55:51 David Rosenthal The shoe that Google had been fearing would drop for many, many years finally does drop, which is Microsoft is officially going to enter the search business.
• ▶ 1:56:03 David Rosenthal They make a bid, Microsoft does, to buy Yahoo for forty-four billion dollars.
• ▶ 1:56:25 David Rosenthal Bing, after Microsoft would launch Bing the next year in June of 2009, Bing would take over powering Yahoo search for a deal that paid Yahoo one billion dollars.
• ▶ 1:56:25 David Rosenthal Bing, after Microsoft would launch Bing the next year in June of 2009, Bing would take over powering Yahoo search for a deal that paid Yahoo one billion dollars.
• ▶ 1:56:37 David Rosenthal Versus the 44 that two years earlier Microsoft was willing to pay for the whole company.
• ▶ 2:01:54 David Rosenthal They're just ready to activate as soon as the Microsoft threat becomes real.
• ▶ 2:02:35 David Rosenthal However, having your own browser when Microsoft does launch Bing
• ▶ 2:02:35 David Rosenthal However, having your own browser when Microsoft does launch Bing
• ▶ 2:02:51 David Rosenthal And all of a sudden Microsoft launches Bing.
• ▶ 2:02:51 David Rosenthal And all of a sudden Microsoft launches Bing.
• ▶ 2:02:54 Ben Gilbert There's no amount of money suddenly that you could pay Microsoft where they would keep you as the default search engine because they just want all the traffic to go to Bing because they now have a great way to monetize.
• ▶ 2:02:54 Ben Gilbert There's no amount of money suddenly that you could pay Microsoft where they would keep you as the default search engine because they just want all the traffic to go to Bing because they now have a great way to monetize.
• ▶ 2:03:04 David Rosenthal Bing.
• ▶ 2:03:07 Ben Gilbert And the thing that of course Microsoft would fail to realize with Bing is you can't be second place in search.
• ▶ 2:03:07 Ben Gilbert And the thing that of course Microsoft would fail to realize with Bing is you can't be second place in search.
• ▶ 2:07:05 Ben Gilbert That was sort of nice, because you type in the URL bar and that's your organic typing, and then the other one is your, uh, I'm willing to give a kickback to Google, probably, but it could also be Bing, could be Yahoo, could be whoever.
• ▶ 2:11:15 David Rosenthal I mean, it totally liberates Google from Internet Explorer and Microsoft.
• ▶ 2:12:48 David Rosenthal You know, I think Microsoft, I don't know, has a couple single digit percentage points.
• ▶ 2:13:08 Ben Gilbert In a lot of years, it was actually faster than Chrome, and they would go back and forth, and it really spurred Apple, who was already a steward of WebKit, and they sort of had their own competitive response to Microsoft after Steve Jobs…
• ▶ 2:13:26 David Rosenthal Because that was part of the Microsoft Apple deal right when Microsoft saved Apple.
• ▶ 2:14:12 Ben Gilbert I mean, Microsoft certainly didn't have an incentive to do it in the business model they were in at the time, and Apple doesn't.
• ▶ 2:14:17 David Rosenthal They had every incentive not to.
• ▶ 2:14:24 David Rosenthal Microsoft.
• ▶ 2:16:33 Ben Gilbert But in practice, as long as it's not Microsoft, and as long as it's more fragmented, that's probably a trade they're perfectly happy with.
• ▶ 2:16:51 Ben Gilbert Google's delayed it because they, it's not Microsoft.
• ▶ 2:18:36 Ben Gilbert I've been reflecting a little bit on, like, why, basically from 1998 onward, Google's biggest threat was Microsoft, and not because of Bing, not because of building advertising, because of this kind of destabilizing thing.
• ▶ 2:18:36 Ben Gilbert I've been reflecting a little bit on, like, why, basically from 1998 onward, Google's biggest threat was Microsoft, and not because of Bing, not because of building advertising, because of this kind of destabilizing thing.
• ▶ 2:18:47 Ben Gilbert There's sort of a fine point on it, which is that spiritually, Microsoft was the platform of the PC era, and with this platform shift, it would be, like, very convenient to just be like, oh, Google's the platform of the web era, but
• ▶ 2:19:14 David Rosenthal They still existed at Microsoft's pleasure.
• ▶ 2:19:20 Ben Gilbert So there's this kind of funky thing where, like, Microsoft built and owned Windows and then dominated the PC era because of that.
• ▶ 2:19:20 Ben Gilbert So there's this kind of funky thing where, like, Microsoft built and owned Windows and then dominated the PC era because of that.
• ▶ 2:20:00 Ben Gilbert But it's not their platform in the way that it was Microsoft's platform in that era.
• ▶ 2:20:33 Ben Gilbert Let's say Bing launches in 2009 and there is no Chrome and Microsoft still has 70% share and will for a while.
• ▶ 2:20:33 Ben Gilbert Let's say Bing launches in 2009 and there is no Chrome and Microsoft still has 70% share and will for a while.
• ▶ 2:20:40 Ben Gilbert And they make Bing the default.
• ▶ 2:20:40 Ben Gilbert And they make Bing the default.
• ▶ 2:20:48 Ben Gilbert So they basically would have like four years of 70% of people using browsers on any devices being defaulted to Bing.
• ▶ 2:20:48 Ben Gilbert So they basically would have like four years of 70% of people using browsers on any devices being defaulted to Bing.