Yesterday was just the latest in a series of mysterious Google product "announcements!".  Google seems to have more sightings than Sasquatch. 

These announcements got me wondering if Google is taking a page from Microsoft's playbook.  Microsoft was known (and still is) for announcing products years in advance of an actual product launch.  This essentially froze the purchasing market as buyers would wait for the Microsoft release.  In the process business plans, start-ups and some pretty successful companies went adios!

It seems odd that Google keeps on "accidentally" releasing these products to the world.  One hypothesis is this is a strategy to get attention and impact other companies.  Since Google is such a media darling, it seems to have worked pretty well.  The impact to related companies ranges from annoying blogs like this to sometimes far greater impacts.

I'm certainly not saying Google is anything close to Microsoft in terms of market influence.  After all, Microsoft has a long history of releasing successful products (and subsequent versions of them).

Right now Google has a bunch of me too products (Froogle, Talk, Mail) with limited adoption.  Time will tell how much revenue they really drive.  However, it is clear that Google is riding the media wave of all time.

As always, these are my opinions and not those of my employer.