Exec: Google is a 'Native Web Speaker'

I like it. Former Microsoft executive Vic Gundotra may have come up with what is the simplest way to describe the differences in Google's and Microsoft's approaches to cloud computing: Gundotra demurred when asked if Microsoft just doesn't get Webdevelopment. He said some companies are native Web speakers, whileothers speak Web with a heavy accent . It happened at a dinner party When one of his friends asked him aquestion he didn't know the answer to, Gundotra's four-year-olddaughter, Tiger, asked where his phone was. Gundotra realized that his daughter asked him for his phonebecause every time he didn't know the answer to something, she'd seenhim whip out his Palm and do a Google query. Of course, Tiger didn'tknow that Google was responsible for imparting the knowledge, but sheknew the phone was the place to look when daddy was stumped. "That's what the information age is," Gundotra said. "Everyquestion that is knowable is answerable because of the power ofGoogle." Programming for the Web is, of course, an entirely different culturethan programming for a single software platform, and Gundotra has takento the new culture with all the zeal of a convert. "The previousplatform I was responsible for evangelizing helped one company. The Webhelps all of mankind," he said. [Before Google, he spent 15 years at Microsoft working on variousiterations of the Windows operating system and presiding over thecompany's move from Win32 to the .Net architecture.]