If Google is the new Microsoft, Microsoft is the new Xerox

A couple of days ago, as Steve Jobs passed away, I watched again Pirates of Sillicon Valley, the movie that tells the story of the first years at Apple and Microsoft.
It was good to remember that, at that time, Xerox and its PARC had enough budget to invest in R&D and let its engineers create crazy things like the mouse and the Graphical User Interface. They actually had so much money that they didn’t care about having them, as they were sure that the current status-quo was to last forever: computers were just a thing of the distant future, photocopiers are forever.
And so along comes Apple, “borrows” the idea of the GUI and applies it to its Macintosh computer. And the Microsoft “borrows” that idea from Apple and Windows is born.

What if you change a couple of names and re-read that same story over ? In version 2.0
– Microsoft is the new Xerox
– Google is the new Microsoft
– Mobile is the new Personal Computer (Mobile as in smartphones and tablets)
– Apple is the new … Apple!

Microsoft has grown so out of proportions and so sure that PC and Windows kingdom were to last forever, that they had the luxury to ignore all of the money the invested in R&D to develop new products like the Tablet PC and Windows Mobile.
And so came along Apple, “borrows” those ideas and applies them to its iOS platform (iPhone, iPad). And then Google “borrows” that idea from Apple and Android is born.

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