A new world order of computing - an analogy of Microsoft and the US

A couple of weeks ago Parag Khanna had an article in the NY Sunday Times Magazine called "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony". I thought this was one of the most important and enlightening articles I have read in years.  For me it crystallized up my own thoughts about what is going on in the crazy world we all live in. The gist of the article is that over the first decade of the 21st century we have seen a fundamental shift in the distribution of power in the world.  While we were busy fighting a crusade, the so called peace dividend of the post-cold war "new world order" never materialized and the unipolar American hegemony that was going to bring peace, prosperity and democracy to the world never materialized.  Instead we find ourselves increasingly in a multi-polar world with two budding new superpowers (could Europe and China really be new?) - the European Union and China, competing very successfully, filling the vacuum we have left in many parts of the world.  There has been no lessening of violence or new golden age of mankind. Instead it seems like more of the same old, with the peoples of the world vying for more and more scarce resources.  The only thing for sure is certainly we are all interconnected economically more than ever.  This presents its own unique challenges and strategies. Who knows how the rest of this century will play out and whether or not it will be another "American Century" or not.  My blog is also not the right forum to explore my feelings on this topic either.

However, while reading an article in InfoWorld by Galen Gruman today on whether it is "Time to dump Windows", I was struck by the parallels (no pun intended with the Mac VM program which enables so much Mac adoption) between Microsoft and the US.  Like the US, about 10 or 15 years ago Microsoft was officially declared a monopoly.  It was the one true superpower of IT. Yeah, Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy could tweak Bill's nose and drive fast cars, boats and planes, but lets face it they were midgets compared to the Redmond giants.  Microsoft rolled over competition like Lotus, Wordperfect and Netscape the way we did Mexico in the US-Mexican war. They even invested in Apple to prop them up as a potential rival like the US did in setting up banana republics. By the late 90's did anyone in the mainstream dare to speak out in public about Microsoft being potentially vulnerable and competing with them? Quite the contrary, companies who found out that Microsoft was entering their space would roll over and die.  I didn't think I would live to see in my lifetime so much talk of Microsoft being a dinosaur and not able to compete.

But as I wrote about last week, it seems articles like Grumans are the topic du jour. It is quite fashionable to say that Microsoft's time as the undisputed alpha dog may be drawing to a close.  They are under attack via the SaaS/Web 2.0 space from Google (and who knows what a Google dominated world looks like, it could be the frying pan to the fryer), their OS monopoly is being eroded like a bite out of the apple everday by shiny silver laptops and sleek wide screen monitors.  On the server front, Linux continues to capture share. The specter of thin clients running some java based non-windows OS still hangs out there.  The list goes on and on.

So is it the sunset of the American dynasty and Microsofts?  I think not.  As I wrote earlier, rumors of their demise are pre-mature. Yes, all things change and one company or country (or political party or sports team for that matter) cannot dominate forever.  But just because viable competitors come to the fore, does not mean that great companies or countries shrivel up and die.  In fact good competition can drive these old dogs to learn new tricks and become greater than ever.  I for one would not vote against either Microsoft or the US in the coming years continuing their pre-eminent positions in the world.