Agreed. The more interesting question is: how will the others respond?
I see Google's attacks (especially +) as a big win for Microsoft. Only determined competition could cause the other players to look for partnerships with them. Ie: Nokia in mobile, Facebook in social (Skype just the beginning). Google is making Microsoft relevent again.
I think that's going to play an ever greater role in Google's expanding plans. They're pissing a lot of established companies off by competing with free, and mostly, quite simply better products. This is great for consumers because it kicks competition up a notch - but it could lead to the other companies, now having a common enemy, to partner up against Google. We recently saw this in the Nortel case.. FB comments include Yahoo, Bing includes Facebook, Nokia includes WP7, the list goes on and on. Lots of turkeys do make an eagle - Even if Google alone is better than all the other players in the market, as long as they're alone they'll quickly face pretty serious resistance.
I see Google's attacks (especially +) as a big win for Microsoft. Only determined competition could cause the other players to look for partnerships with them. Ie: Nokia in mobile, Facebook in social (Skype just the beginning). Google is making Microsoft relevent again.