Continued:

Another area where Google is approaching Microsoft like proportions is the VC funding for startups. Every time someone goes around asking for funding, the question eventually will turn to "What are you doing that Google cannot do better or just as well?". This line of reasoning is logical as Google is into Newsfeeds, e-mail, VoIP, Wi-Fi, search and perhaps even soft drinks (Google Gulp?), so even our trusty neighborhood Coke is in trouble.

All this is already sending people into jitters, but Google being Google doesn’t stop here. It goes one step further with poaching. If it can’t buy the company (read Microsoft) it simply poaches the key executives from it. Everyone knows (even though they might not agree) that a company is about the people in it, and at the moment, Google has the goodwill and the pay scale to lure away whomever it desires. This creates a problem not just for the giants like Microsoft and Sun (in addition to others), but even for smaller companies as there is no way they can retain talent by beating Google’s offers, which leads to a brain drain from them. This in turn kills any chance they might have of taking their product to heights it deserves to reach.

For instance, Blogger and Picasa were great products but since Google just couldn’t take the trouble to come out with a weblog site and a photo management software of its own, it decided to acquire these firms. Assuming they were bigger companies, it would’ve probably poached the key people who had been responsible for the software and would’ve come out with their own versions, thereby, completely wiping these firms off the planet.

If you think about it (read my previous column on Google), Google has been practically getting away with murder, both in terms of security and privacy concerns. The overall arrogance it displays with regards to anything that goes against it or doesn’t cover it with superlatives is outrageous. Simply put, Microsoft isn’t the only one with unfair practices anymore. Google is already showing signs of Microsoft like behavior, and it won’t be long before the search giant becomes an 800-pound Gorilla, despite Sergey Brin’s claims at the recently concluded Web 2.0 conference.