Bill Gates spoke with Computing magazine in an exclusive two-part article about, among other things (including his usual nostalgic rememberence of the PCs of yesterday), Microsoft’s fiercest competitor, Google. Gates claims he is “unimpressed” with Google so far:

“Which Google products are you talking about? Seriously? Other than search, which are you talking about? Google Talk? Wow. A total “me too” product. Even Gmail: what is the unique thing?”

Gates also goes on to say:

“We need to surprise people and do a search that is way better than Google, and we are very on top of that. The idea of development tools, a natural interface, productivity software: Google is not in any of those categories. People are acting as if they will magically be in these other categories with something more than a “me too” offering. It is kind of fun that people underestimate what we are going to do here.”

I don’t know about you, but it sounds to me like Bill is much more frightened than he lets on. It’s also obvious that he’s jealous of the tremendous growth and media buzz that Google has/is experiencing, similar to Microsoft in the early days. It’s smart to hide your anxiety when asked about your number one competitor, but it’s not smart to follow it up with derogatory remarks that show that you’re actually in panic mode:

“Google is great, they are smart people, the press should continue to feed their arrogance as much as possible”

I’ve been a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer since 1998 and have a great deal of experience with Microsoft. I also remember when Google was brand new and popular only with IT professionals because they were running on nothing but Red Hat Linux servers. Google is quite impressive no matter what Bill says. To double your revenue in only one year is simply amazing. On the other side of the coin, I have been using Microsoft products since Windows 3.1 and would have to say that I’ve been very unimpressed with Microsoft and their products for over a decade now.

Is Google developing software to compete with Microsoft? Of course. And I can’t wait for the beta release of Google Office or down the road, Google OS.