Google and Microsoft executives trade jabs
Google's Vic Gundotra and Microsoft's David Treadwell have a brief exchange at the Web 2.0 Summit that shows how the two companies feel about each other.
SAN FRANCISCO--"We don't control the platform. It's magical when it belongs to all of us." Those were the words of Vic Gundotra, who spent 15 years at Microsoft and is now leading Google's application development efforts. He was speaking about the open Web, and Google's open sourcing of much of its code to the developer community at large at the Web 2.0 Summit on Friday.
David Treadwell, vice president of Live Platform Services, took issue with his former colleague's statement about Google not controlling the platform. "If you want to be open, where is the open search and ads?" he said. Gundotra responded that not all parts of the platform have to be open. "The Internet has places to build businesses," he countered. Gundotra closed with, "The big story over the last 10 years is Windows versus the Web, and the Web has won." Treadwell just smiled or grimaced and let it go as the panel came to an end.
Google's Vic Gundotra and Microsoft's David Treadwell
(Credit: CNET News/Dan Farber)It's clear that Google plans to use its free and open Web strategy to attack Microsoft, but based on the PDC announcements last month the Windows company has a lot of ammunition to fight back.
