Google Is the Microsoft of the Internet

As the low-cost provider of Internet stuff, of files and searches and processing power, Google was coasting by mid-decade when two innovators threatened its leadership. Apple created the iPhone, and Amazon.com created the public cloud market. Everything Page has done in the last five years has been aimed at overcoming these companies' first-mover advantages. He will be measured based on his eventual success in that.

Against the iPhone, he supported Android, based on Linux, and distributed it to OEMs without charge as open-source. Against Amazon.com, Google launched the App Engine, which only now, in the form of the Google Cloud Platform , is truly competing with Amazon's EC2.

This month's launch of the Nexus 7 tablet, as reported by The Inquirer, shows that Google is now fully onto the Amazon threat.

The new tablet, being made by ASUS rather than Google's own Motorola unit, can be sold at the $199 price of the Amazon Kindle Fire with a small profit, , according to iSuppli.

A lot of the Google hatred I read on investment and technology boards is based on a clear understanding of what Larry Page is really all about. Some consider it evil for a company to see someone else innovate, then copy that innovation and beat it in the market.

It's not. It's capitalism. It's how markets work. Google is only evil if you think the first company to make something should have a monopoly on it.

At the time of publication, Blankenhorn owned shares of GOOG, AAPL, MSFT and IBM.