This is one of those matches headline writers love and fight promoters wish they could schedule for the ring. Google v. Microsoft, Microsoft v. Google, is there room for both?

This reminds me of the battle in the 1990s between upstart Microsoft and market dominating IBM which, many wags love to claim, was won by Microsoft. The lesson pf those days, they claim, is that Google, now offering products which compete with Microsoft on almost every front, is bound to defeat the reigning software champ just because they are younger, bolder, and cooler.

Let me give a little perspective. From my view, Microsoft didn't win that battle as much as IBM lost. Faced with a new and disruptive technology, IBM failed to see the opportunity and enbrace the vision of a computer on every desktop. Bill Gates did. The IBM PC was a breakthrough product. But many at IBM decided to play down the PC because they were afraid it would cut into their mainframe margins. They were right about the margins but wrong in their decision. They were also afraid if they became dominant in PCs the government would rev up the antitrust engines. Who knows?

In any respect, IBM let the PC market get away. But it should be noted that the mainframe market is still going strong and remains based on an IBM architecture and IBM operating system which can trace its root to 1965.

So I don't see Microsoft losing the desktop in any big way to Google's Chrome on Linux operating system. There are too many questions. How well will Chrome perform on old PCs? Will Chrome users be able to load the tens of thousands of device drivers needed to make their old hardware gadgets work? Will corporate IT bosses be willing to give up the centralized control Windows Servers and clients provide? And will they be comfortable with their company email and data stored "in the cloud", that is, on Google's computers instead of their own? I doubt it.

But my view of Chrome on the desktop does not mean I believe Microsoft is safe and sound. Just as IBM was vulnerable to change brought about by new distructive technology, so too is Microsoft. And this is Google's opportunity. Microsoft may be safe on the desktop, but what if computing moves from the desktop to something else, just as much computing moved from the mainframe to the desktop as the PC age unfolded?

I think the netbook, the "small PC" which is the current rage and which is Google's target, at least for the first release of Chrome, is a short timer. I see a future where the "smart phone" grows up to a larger size, maybe with a rollupable screen and keyboard, to fill the netbook and even the small laptop space. Microsoft is a player in this market but so too is Google. And so is Apple, and Blackberry, and Palm and others.

This I think is where the next wave of computing hardware will take place. And writing the software for this new hardware is anybody's game.