Google vs (fill in the blank)

This isn’t Google VS (fill in the blank) blog but it seems lately Google is intent on waging an all out war with multi-front battles. How does Google do it?

Well they hire the best, even if that means stealing from Microsoft. Vic Gundotra, a now former Microsoft employee has left his 15 year career to join other former Microsoft employees (Mark Lucovsky, Kai-Fu Lee) at Google (reference). Don’t think for a moment that this doesn’t get under Microsoft’s skin, it’s rumored that Mr. Ballmer throws a chair for every employee that leaves (followed up by lawsuit)!

Google Checkout is another webwar that’s about to rage. I’ve heard many references to Ebay’s Paypal, but I’d like to know how Visa, Master Card and Discover card feel about Google’s newest endeavor. What are you thoughts on this front?

Next empire for Google to preemptively strike seems to be sites that revolve around video such as YouTube.com. In May Google Video drew roughly 7 million visitors while Youtube.com drew 20 million. People chose youtube over Google video for such reasons like, video ratings by users, easy video sharing, and tagging video’s with words or phrases for easy future access for other users (reference). Google hasn’t let their competitors hold this advantage over their head for long. Google has now released the same features for their own video service. It seems to me that for Google to be the dominant player they will need to be more innovative rather than adoptive.