Yeah. What Google has done is succeeded at funding their platform of choice without having to charge humans for it, fundamentally altering people's relationship

Yeah. What Google has done is succeeded at funding their platform of choice without having to charge humans for it, fundamentally altering people's relationships with computer technology. That it happens to (from some angles) look like they're competing with Microsoft in the PC space is purely coincidental; what Google's done is add a layer of indirection that allows them to push the profits in the platform business to 0. If you think of Microsoft as making their zillions of dollars not by selling software but rather by imposing a tax on every single computer purchase, then you understand why Ballmer was 100% right on the money about Google being by far their most dangerous competitor (and, incidentally, why some people believe that Apple and Google are not fundamentally in competition; and further why some believe that Android is no longer necessary to Google.)