Google has been slowly, but surely, displacing Microsoft as the number one PC technology company. Google has done it by misdirection. Instead of taking Microsoft head-on in desktops, Google first consolidated their hold on Web search and only then started moving into Web-based desktop applications.

Today, Google announced a new project - a web browser called “Chrome.” (A Windows-only beta will be launched on Tuesday.) This could be a major transition for Google, taking them right into the desktop space and fighting Microsoft head on where Microsoft reigns. It could be, but I don’t think it is.

Microsoft's search business continues to have trouble, so Yahoo is harassed further (Google too)

At first glance, Microsoft’s software portfolio — Windows, Office, Small Business Server and Exchange — still dominates the small business market. But Red Hat CEO Jim Whiteshurst says his company has found a back door into the small business market. Perhaps surprisingly, it doesn’t really involve desktop Linux.

I've just read the post by Brian Proffitt, regarding Microsoft's tactics in Africa. I have something to say to Brian:

Not everything a big corporation does is illegal. Yes, even Microsoft does most of its business in completely legitimate way. Now, you argue, that Microsoft has to "help" people choose its products?

Scott Dorsey on Microsoft's behaviour in many areas .

"Listen all! This is the truth of it. Fighting leads to killing, and killing gets to warring. And that was damn near the death of us all. Look at us now! Busted up, and everyone talking about hard rain! But we've learned, by the dust of them all... Bartertown learned. Now, when OSes get to fighting, it happens here! And it finishes here! Two OSes enter; one OS leaves."

Google's protests over the way desktop search is handled in Microsoft's Vista OS have so far fallen on deaf ears. A U.S. district judge denied Google's request to extend Microsoft's antitrust agreement with federal and state governments, essentially saying the matter was none of Google's business. The judge suggested that Google appeal to DoJ, which has shown no sympathy for the search giant.

Has the time come at last to live a Microsoft-free life? That thought crossed my mind yesterday morning as I read an announcement from IBM that (with Canonical Inc.) it was offering a new Linux-based virtual desktop suite that, at user prices as low as $59, would compete directly with the iconic Microsoft Office.