Like any sort of corporate 'war', the only true casualties are the corporations themselves; the consumer, on the other hand, stands to benefit a great deal whilst the fighting goes on.

During its rise in popularity, Google has undertaken a great many projects, many of them still in the Beta stage: from Gmail to Picasa to Google Earth, the Google corporation has been extremely prolific in its commitment to create a plethora of applications designed to enhance one's experience on the internet. In many ways, Google has 'set the bar' for internet quality, both as a search engine and as a multifaceted internet enhancement company. However, like in any industry, setting the bar can act as a catalyst for competition when other large corporations see a market that is - for all intents and purposes - monopolized; much of the global market today thrives on the fact that almost every product can be improved upon.

The war between Microsoft and Google has led to this drive for improvement. Since Google has been offering dozens of widgets, websites and applications for free, Microsoft has been coerced into doing the same; this began with the introduction of a Microsoft search engine, and has continued to grow in depth and breadth. When Gmail was introduced with gigabytes of e-mail storage space, Microsoft's Hotmail quickly followed suit, expanding its free-account inbox size to 2GB. With Google's AdSense program gaining massive popularity with website owners and operators, Microsoft's response (AdCenter: still in beta) is aiming to produce an even better product. Microsoft has additionally begun to introduce services that Google has not, including its Office Live program; this program is designed to offer free web hosting and a free domain name - something unheard of before its advent - to customers living in qualifying countries.

This is merely a drop in the bucket; the list of services that Google provides and the list of Microsoft response products is both exhaustive and growing. The point is that the war between these two companies has done little but improve the average users experience on the internet, as is the case with most competitions of this nature. It will truly be a good time to be an internet user as long as this 'war' continues.

Learn more about this author, Daniel Booy.
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