Not so many years ago, there was a king. One company so huge they had total office management domination. Their server and desktop software powered almost every computer in the workplace in the world. I am talking of course about Microsoft and their ecosystem of Windows, Office, Exchange, and more. Now, there were still holdouts, running Apple’s products, and of course the all-important Linux userbase, but the world was mainly powered by Microsoft.

Then came a small company with a large search engine, and a revolutionary new email concept that would be so outrageous everyone would think it was a joke on launch day. Of course that could have something to do with the fact that they launched it on April Fool's day…

Now, nearly 2 decades later, Google has launched its own ecosystem of deeply connected software and hardware following a playbook largely defined by Microsoft 20 years ago. Google Chrome is obviously the most popular browser in the world, but did you know that Google ChromeOS is now the second most popular operating system in the world, surpassing even the mighty macOS?

Google has been pushing hard for the enterprise market, and Microsoft is scared.

In Microsoft’s most recent Worldwide Partner Conference, they announced to their entire network of 600,000 partners worldwide, that they had 6 months to get onboard and set up to sell cloud services. According to Computerworld, of the 600,000 partners Microsoft has, only 53,000 of them are selling Microsoft’s cloud services.

This means, that less than 10% of Microsoft’s partner network is currently selling cloud-based products such as Office365, Azure, and DynamicsCRM, and instead are still selling Microsoft's on-premise-based software such as Exchange, Office, and Windows Server.

Additionally, Microsoft told their partners they will be releasing Windows devices in the sub $200 range as well as the sub $100 range, and said "We'll participate in the low-end" part of the computing device market, and challenge Google's Chromebooks.

Microsoft COO Kevin Turner stated “we need to have a challenger mindset” and that the next major version of Windows, when it comes out will have “game-changing functionality for enterprises”.

You could say that Microsoft is just trying to pad their bottom line, since cloud products have higher margins thus giving them a spectacular 2 quarters and beyond while signing up all these companies in the next 6 months with recurring revenue. On the other hand, with their comments about the challenger mindset, as well as challenging Chromebooks, and focusing on bringing on-prem folks to the cloud, I think Microsoft is scared.

Google has hired quite a number of Microsoft veterans in recent years, and some of the Microsoft mentality is starting to show in the new pricing Google has announced, as well as some of the decisions made lately such as:

• marooning the entire G Suite Legacy userbase (at least they let us keep it for now)

• Google Cloud head Thomas Kurian stating all sales and support interactions should go through a partner (Yes he’s from Oracle but you get my drift)

Google Workspace was sadly stagnant for a few years there while Google put their Google Cloud Platform into overdrive to properly compete with Amazon's AWS and Microsoft’s Azure, but thanks to the pandemic, Google Workspace is finally front and center. When Zoom came out as the household name for video conferencing, executives at both Google and Microsoft likely had a collective aneurysm realizing they had squandered a 10 and 20 year lead respectively in owning the de facto video conferencing system that everyone turned to when it was needed most. On the heels of that realization, both companies kicked their office and collaboration products into high gear leaning on their strengths and focusing on teams working remotely, as well as in the office.

Google has the lead here with the deep level integration between their products, and the Apple style mentality of when you open it, it just works. I have been on way more Microsoft Teams calls than I would like, and everyone I talk to as a guest on teams agrees, that the experience is a headache at a minimum and complete platform abandonment in favor of Zoom or Meet at worst.

Thanks to Google's work integrating their Docs/Sheets/Slides aka their Editors, with Gmail, Chat, and Meet, aka the communication side of the platform, and their total obsession with making things simply work and work simply, the platform is easy to use, and a pleasure to do so on a day to day. This experience goes a step further when you are on a Chromebook which I am writing this article on, in that I picked it up, logged in, and all my preferences, data, bookmarks, settings, and more synced up in a matter of seconds. I had never used this device before, and I was working in literal seconds after I logged in with all my data saved to the cloud securely in my account. Even if something happened to my Chromebook at this exact second, I would be totally fine and would be able to continue working on another Chromebook or pretty much any other computer in the world thanks to Google’s ecosystem.

This in my opinion is a very good reason for Microsoft to be scared. The synergy that threads Google’s suite of products together into Google Workspace and Google Cloud Platform, combined with the ease of use, affordable hardware, and software, not to mention the fact that basically, every educational institution in the world uses Google Workspace, is one hell of a compelling argument that the future of work lives on Google’s platform and not Microsofts.

A few years ago, as I was introduced to a new crop of summer interns, I asked them as I do every year, who has heard of and used Gmail? Everyone raised their hands. Then I asked, who here has heard of and used Outlook? One woman fresh out of high school looked at me funny and said who?

I won’t say the end is nigh for Microsoft, but I will say that change has been underway for some time, and with the pandemic jumping us ahead about a decade in digital adoption, I would say there is about to be a new king crowned, and Microsoft has every reason to be afraid.