Why is a search engine company creating so much commotion in the
marketplace? Is Google doing something that important? Google's mission
statement reveals why it is perceived to be a big threat to Microsoft.
Its mission statement reads "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful
." It doesn't get more elementary than that. This could be the stated
goal for any packaged software company. Google is beginning to roll out
applications as services. Currently, it has exposed APIs to Google
Earth and AdWords. Soon they could begin to provide enterprise
applications to manage information within healthcare, financial
services or legal sectors. By creating development toolkits and
standards, Google has begun to attract developers to write to the
Google platform. On top of this, they have established themselves on
the privacy and personalization front. This makes them a very credible
threat! .