I’m not sure exactly what you meant by “coming from MS”—I don’t and haven’t worked at Microsoft. Did you mean “coming from the MS (Marriott School)”?

You do make a relevant point about a very clever tactic that Microsoft can use against Google. It’s the same tactic that MS used against most of its other rivals—rely on its stranglehold on the operating system market. This will work only so long as operating systems are relevant.

When would an operating system become irrelevant!?!?

As soon as applications are pulled off your PC. It doesn’t matter where you store your data, it matters where you use your data. When you use your cell phone or other devices to manipulate or access data, when you are working using applications hosted online (even if your data is stored locally), when your devices take care of things behind the scenes (think smart appliances, cars, etc.), the operating system becomes irrelevant and the argument shifts back to who provides the best services and who has their search box embedded in the most places. That’s why Google is partnering, often for free, with anyone who will allow them to place a search box on their site or in their app.

As you can see, there are ways around the OS chokehold, even if the browser gets bypassed. I wonder if the shift away from OS dependence is going to happen soon enough for Google. I wonder if it’s already too late for Microsoft. It is certainly a battle that is interesting to watch and ultimately good for consumers (we get to choose the best of the different solutions).

People make such a big deal about Google Office taking aim at Microsoft’s major source of income, while never acknowledging just how vulnerable Google’s single source of income is.The concept of storing my sensitive excel data in the web scares me. The google docs which they have given so much hype is not better than an average HTML Editor.