Microsoft and Google extend battle for dominance to Scotland

Published on Saturday 7 November 2009 16:37

THE battle between American technology giants Microsoft and Google for global dominance has spilled into Scotland.

Microsoft's new regional director Derrick McCourt, successor to Raymond O'Hare, staged his first public engagement in Edinburgh last week and announced Microsoft's Scots partner-companies now number 1,500 and that a global round of 800 job cuts would not affect Scotland.

However, within hours Google staged a "spoiler" event at the city chambers for more than 100 small firms which council economic development leader Councillor Tom Buchanan described as the most "oversubscribed" he had experienced.

Ninety per cent of desktop computers run Microsoft Windows, and Windows 7 was launched last month. But Google remains the top search engine, with 65 per cent of the market.

Microsoft recently launched a rival, Bing, but is awaiting European antitrust approval for its multi-billion dollar 10-year collaborative search link-up with Yahoo. The two combined would equal up to 30 per cent of the global search business, and they aim to target Google's dominance by grabbing a far greater market share of highly lucrative search advertising revenues.

Microsoft's UK managing director Gordon Fraser, who accompanied McCourt, dismissed attempts by Google to muscle in on their small to medium-sized business activity in Scotland.

Referring to Google Wave, the latest of numerous online tools launched by its competitor, Fraser said: "It's a case of letting 1,000 flowers bloom but I don't think they are sure which ones are winners."

Google had combined with Scottish Enterprise's Business Gateway programme, the Federation of Small Businesses and Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce to stage a first-time marketing event in Scotland.

The tech company's UK industry head Andrew Barke claimed business and commerce can make more of the internet by speeding up their operations. "Digital technology is changing faster than ever and 41 million people, equivalent to 70 per cent of the population, are online in Britain. That represents a heck of a lot of search engine web activity," he said.

Google has launched Chrome as a counter move to Microsoft's desktop dominance, hoping it will one day pass Internet Explorer as the most popular web browser.