Microsoft once ruled as the computer leviathan that everyone loved to hate, yet utterly depended on. But now in the high-tech world the computing power of individual computers has become secondary to online computing. Now the leviathan is Google, which not only invented the search engine everyone relies on but found a way to make money off the web with omnipresent advertising.
Now Microsoft is trying to buy the one rival search engine and portal website Yahoo. (See
this.) The company’s goal is to compete with Google. Some fear that Microsoft could build into its operating systems elements that could work only with Yahoo.
Is there a good guy vs. bad guy theme in this fight? What technological developments might suddenly make both of these companies obsolete?