In all great competitions, including some riveting drama, there are three forces at work. This goes along with one of my grandmother’s favorite saying, “Things happen in threes.”
Once upon a time there were the Big Three auto makers in the United States: Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler.
There were also once three major television networks in the USA: ABC, CBS, and NBC.
In drama you often have two antagonists for the protagonist. In Star Wars it was Luke versus the Empire but also Luke versus Han Solo and Leia to some extent. On the TV show House, it’s House versus Wilson versus Cutty.
Yeah verily, the old dual dynamic (true/false, positive/negative, up/down) gets boring unless there is a third force available to add some spice to the mix.
Things work well in threes.
Having three names in the game leads to competition, innovation, and choice for the consumer. It also leads to picking sides, but even that plays well into the game.
In the computer industry now, there are three titans battling it out: Microsoft, Apple, and Google. There are alliances and rivalries between all three.
Microsoft represents the old school. It’s the traditional, stogy, slow, and reliable company. It has a small clutch of fans and enthusiasts, but a majority of its followers aren’t really into Microsoft. They don’t eagerly await the next release of Windows or Office with excitement and anticipation.
Nope, it’s more like dread.
Apple was once the new school, the cutting edge. It’s motto was “think different.” It’s followers are a creative bunch, fiercely loyal, and rabid fanatics. They care, and are willing to spend more to care more. And they’re very into Apple culture. They’re eager to hear what’s going on with the company. Witness the recent excitement about the iPad, the the subsequent disappointment.
Google is now the cutting edge. It owns the Internet as far as search technology and advertising is considered. That’s a lot of revenue. It also expands into other areas, such as the Chrome OS to take on Microsoft and Android/Nexus One to take on Apple’s iPhone and the iPad. But Google is hardly an Apple replacement.
Honestly, I don’t know what Google really is. I suppose a one-sentence description would be, “Google is an Internet company.”
Likewise, Apple is a software company that develops custom hardware to run that software very well.
Microsoft is a software company that develops software to run on as many hardware platforms as possible.
Each of the three has its own strengths and weaknesses. Like it or not, they all need each other. In fact, efforts by one or two to kill off the third would be disastrous.
So just like in the early days of TV and car manufacturing, we have the Big Three. For now.
