Google

U.S. regulators are seeking sworn declarations from Google Inc. competitors and advertisers as part of their probe of the Internet company’s bid to buy AdMob Inc., indicating the government may challenge the deal, said people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether Google’s proposed purchase of AdMob would reduce competition in the market for Internet advertising on mobile phones. At least two companies are being asked to sign statements, said the people, who declined to be identified because the probe isn’t being conducted in public.

The declarations put on paper information that Google rivals gave the FTC in its investigation of the $750 million purchase of AdMob, announced in November. AdMob sells ads that appear on Web pages and applications on mobile phones. The agency is assessing whether the purchase would let Google parlay its dominance in Internet searches on computers to phones.

Agency officials typically collect declarations “when they think there is some significant chance” the agency will ask a court to block a merger, or seek to modify a deal, said Stephen Calkins, a former general counsel at the FTC who is now a professor of law at Wayne State University’s law school in Detroit. Even so, it’s not uncommon for the agency to collect affidavits and then not litigate, he said.

Consumers to Google's Big Desktop in the Sky

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is continuing its march to put the desktop on the Web, with its offer to store files as large as 250 MB in Google Docs.

Google is offering 1 GB of free storage for files that are not converted into one of the Google Docs formats -- such as Google documents, spreadsheets or presentation. If more storage space is needed, it can be purchased for US$0.25 per GB per year.

The increase means users can back up large graphics files, RAW photos and ZIP archives, as well as collaborate and organize on such content online, according to Google Docs product manager Vijay Bangaru.

The increase follows enhancements Google made to its Docs product lineup late last year, rolling out such features as live sharing of folders and the ability to upload multiple items simultaneously into folders, along with a general redesign of the Docs page. Called an "incremental" improvement even by Google, the enhancements had their share of fans. The shared folders features, for example, had been the No. 1 request from users on the Google Docs Product Ideas page.

Google competes for the future; Microsoft, the past

Google was born on the Web and is increasingly giving Microsoft fits by forcing the decades-old software giant to compete on Google's terms. Like open source. Like cloud computing.

Microsoft may shore up its fortunes in the short term with a successful Windows 7 launch. But in the long term, its very success with outdated "desktop" products threaten to cede the market to Google.

We'll have all of it, please

It's not really fair to Microsoft. Microsoft is a victim of its own success, needing to cater to its existing clientele with each new release, in true "Innovator's Dilemma" fashion. Hence, Microsoft continues to make a lot of money, but its last two quarters have seen traditional strengths like Windows become a drag on earnings as enterprises spend more money with Google, Red Hat, and others.

Google's lack of legacy frees it to innovate rapidly and broadly, as Genentench CIO Todd Pierce, a Google Apps customer, suggests:

The rate of innovation at Google is - well I mean, the Oracle, SAP and Microsoft product cycle is five years; Google's product cycle is five days. It's incremental. In five days you're not going to be able to cancel your Microsoft Office license, but in five years, you won't have Microsoft Office.

Microsoft, for its part, is so concerned with "backward compatibility"--"Is this product/feature compatible with our ability to continue to monetize our 1980s-style desktop monopoly?"--that it continues to struggle to embrace the Web. CNET blogger Dave Rosenberg points out that Windows 7 should have been Microsoft's launchpad to cloud computing, but isn't.

There are a lot of "should have beens" for Microsoft when it comes to the Web.

Meanwhile, no one is slowing down for Microsoft. Let's stick with cloud computing for a minute. VMware dominates virtualization and has a strong claim on cloud computing, though open-source rivalry from Eucalyptus and VMops threatens to challenge both VMware and Microsoft as they seek to dominate cloud computing.

And then there's Google, which provides an increasingly wide array of cloud-based services to enterprises looking to untether themselves from the desktop. In an interview with CNET News, Google CEO Eric Schmidt argues that "The browser can be both enterprise- and consumer-capable. The architecture is driven from the browser. That is the story of enterprise IT today."