Is Google the new Microsoft?

Lately we watch Google getting more and more aggressive, buying new companies and promising technologies every day. Their latest acquirement is Zingku, a mobile social network company. Almost every day we hear a story like this... Google bought this, Google acquired that...

Recently a rumor started about Microsoft employing a lobbying firm to help them rally opposition to the Google's acquisition of DoubleClick. The merge would create a monopoly in web advertisement. Something like what they previously did with Youtube... It was the bigger competitor of Google Video, so they just bought it.

What all these movements remind you?

For many people, what made Microsoft so big was buying every promising or competitor company they could get, and merge their technologies. That's exactly what Google does now. They invest in new technologies, even if they are never going to use them (take dodgeball as example, they bought it but they never did something with it).

The freshness that Google services are offering is also similar to what Microsoft was offering some years ago. All people liked MS products and Microsoft. And actually it wasn't the first company to show us graphical interfaces and fancy (for the time) stuff like windows, neither was the best, but they found their way to the people. Now all people like Google. But also Google is not the first to offer services like webmail, videos or social networking. For many people it's not even the best (don't forget that Yahoo is offering unlimited email storage). But... they found their way to the people. The funny thing is that everyone knows that MS Office offers much more than Google Docs, but Microsoft started campaigns against it...

Of course when Microsoft reached it's monopoly, people started react... but it was too late. Because even if you don't like windows... you have to use it, because everybody else does! And that started to happen with Google. For example, I know many web designers that prefer to use smaller search engines, but they have to use Google because all their visitors use Google...

Google flirts with Open Source developers, as Microsoft in the past tried to get close to hobbyists, but as with MS, the Open Source community worries about Google's tactic. Don't forget that Google doesn't actually open it's source to the community.

I wonder what will happen if Google releases it's Operating System. Will it be full of Google Gadgets? Will it include all Google applications like Picasa, Gtalk, Google Desktop etc? Because that's what Microsoft did in the past. They got sued many times, they paid a lot of money, but they actually killed programs like Netscape, Eudora and ICQ.

History repeats itself and I am afraid that as Google grows it's getting more and more similar to Microsoft. The big difference here is that Microsoft had just software that you could install to your personal computer, run it etc, but you had control over it! It was in your computer, you could delete it any time you wanted and not being afraid what will happen with your data. Google offers mainly on-line services. So what they store all your personal data in their computers. And right now Google knows all your friends, your mails, has your photos, has your address in a map and tries to control your phone... Will you be able to leave Google as easily as you can do with Microsoft? Is Google gonna keep it's promise, to not be evil?