I am not a Steve Jobs hater. Having worked my entire career in the big company world – believe me I get just how incredibly difficult it is to do anything new. People use process and what has been done previously as shields for not having to skate out onto the ice of invention. As well many sincerely worry that they won’t be able to deliver something on a projected timetable when they are really doing something new. They play it safe instead. I get how tough it is to innovate in big company world.

I have respect for Jobs for having done it not once but twice! He has mad skills as they say. Having just finished the book on Google “In the Plex,” I am struck that Jobs now faces the virtually the same dilemma he faced when he battled and lost to Microsoft. Google, having just purchased Motorola, is now going to compete with Apple on smartphones head up.

What is ironic for me is not the competition however. It is the fact that in both cases Jobs was blindsided as to who the “real” competitors were. Jobs thought he was battling IBM in the personal computers wars when he awoke to the realization that the primary threat was Microsoft and not Big Blue. That realization was almost to late for Apple.

Jobs had allowed Gates and Microsoft personnel into Apple’s development plans when he realized that Microsoft was using that information to compete against his company. He even took the famous trip to Xerox PARC’s development labs with Gates. Xerox PARC invented many of the core inventions which drove the PC era in computing. As those turn of events cost him control of Apple as well as a near death experience for Apple as a company, I would have thought that he would have never ever allowed any company to get close to Apple development plans again - EVER.

Instead Jobs thought Google was a Search company focused on advertisement revenue only and therefore had their CEO sit on his board. The board reviewed all the major strategic initiatives – Google was able to watch as Apple laid out the roadmap for the future in smartphones! When he realized a year or so ago that Google would launch a real smartphone – he freaked out – again!

What is even more interesting as a parallel here is that Google presents the exact same type of competition which Microsoft presented back in the 1990s. Apple is the bling to the competitive Spartan products. Microsoft went to market as the high volume cheaper competitor just as Google is working in the marketplace leveraging machine automation to radically reduce pricing. It is the same high volume and inexpensive competition dynamic repeating itself.

Today smartphones are expensive but as they become the standard computer which will displace 95% of all other computing devices - the volumes shipped will rock the pricing. In other words – smartphones will create the same dynamic over again. If something almost kills me – I tend to sift through the debris to make sure that doesn’t happen again. Clearly with Jobs this is not the case. Rather remarkable.

I don’t believe this will play out the same way as before however. This time Apple has a 2^nd major stream of revenue from iPods and iTunes which will prevent anything like the previous near death experience. Microsoft not only funded Apple to stay alive back then but due to the competitive vacuum Microsoft completely lost their way and developed products with increasing bloatware.

Microsoft had no culture in leadership of function or bling. Microsoft has descended from a market leader into the Avis of cutting edge technology companies. They have given up on innovating – they don’t even try to paint their products as new anymore. They just extend their dying Windows platform into new products in order to maintain some marketshare instead.

Google on the other hand is a model which I never thought could succeed. Better engineered and Spartan lead products devoid of bling I had always considered to be the recipe for disaster. It was the Betamax vs VHS competitive model which always leads to cheaper product winning (VHS).

Google seams to understand this and refuses to bling their products. From their revenue engine of advertising they realize that both speed and price is the winning combination in the race for Cloud based products and solutions. Therefore I doubt that Google will fall into the same Microsoft trap.

Apple has already demonstrated they won’t stand pat in having opened the iPhone to Verizon. They will not Google surround them in volume as they had with Microsoft previously. Truthfully I think this is better for not only Google and Apple’s long term health but also for us – the end consumers of their products. When there is zero competition reducing innovation and increasing price is just not a feasible strategy.

I had always thought the single winner takes all model to be a stupid one. I always hated visiting the winner de jure as the egos were nauseating. The business decisions were even worse. Not only did it produce monopolies but it also strangled innovation and most importantly value. I am hoping that both companies stay on their game and that we get to witness one of the great ping pong matches in tech history. One can only hope!