Google’s Voice Gives Critics Pause Like It’s 1999

by: George Bounacos Monday, July 13th, 2009

Image representing IBM as depicted in CrunchBase

This symbol was once synonymous with most ersonal computers. Image via CrunchBase

Many people share a desire to root for underdogs.

The New York Giants, a team hard pressed to find a fan base outside of a populous Northeast corridor, became a fan favorite by stopping the New England Patriots from enjoying an undefeated season. Musicians who sell millions of units of their work are routinely branded as sellouts. Bill Murray exhorted his costars in 1981′s Stripes by screaming, “We’ve been kicking ass for 200 years! We’re 10 and 1!”

And as we recently presented to a group of students, the top technology dog isn’t likely to be to be there for long. Consider:

2009 : Google critics worry that the company’s new operating system will be anti-competitive with Microsoft in one of the most ironic twists of consumer sentiment in years. Meanwhile, the company’s Google Voice and handset is looking to make unified communications, the Holy Grail of telephony, a reality. One number to call them all is fast becoming reality. SMS, voice, messaging, rules-based answering are all part of Google’s latest offering.

1999: The U.S. government began investigating Microsoft’s business practices way back in 1991. The Justice Department gathered together half of the state Attorneys General and unleashed a massive suit against the company in 1998. A year later, the sides were still slugging at each other. For those who understood business law, the case was juicier than O.J.’s. The rest of us simply wondered how much the next version of Office would set us back and whether we needed to install the ubiquitous bloatware on every computer.

1989: The fourth generation of x86 Intel chips, the 486, powered a device that Americans still referred to as an IBM PC. Squandering the biggest branding lead in business history, Big Blue managed to go in less than a decade from its company name being a synonym for the product to people asking if the company still made the product. It’s as if the guys from those two documentaries, Bruno and Borat, formed a delivery company and knocked Federal Express into 11th place in a 10 place field. That’s not to say IBM is doing poorly, merely that they are not the global dominating force they would have been had the phrase “IBM clone” been more than code for consumers to say, “Wow, those IBM computers are wicked expensive, aren’t they?”

So as we rip apart Google’s latest offering while the race begins for dominance in 2019, the question is not if you’re going to use Google Voice, but why someone else didn’t beat the company out there? Meanwhile, a couple of folks in a grad school quad or two mid-career execs in a coffee room or some kind a Czech Republic basement is creating the business bogeyman we’ll run from a decade from now.

Me? I’m a geek. I beta tested Google Voice when it was called Grand Central. Even my tech friends thought it was too geeky then. But man, that search engine they built…