Microsoft killed Netscape, but Google won't be as easy to bring down. And if Android Desktop Edition or Android Netbook Edition is in the works, things may get hairy for Redmond.

Perhaps Microsoft was right all along. In the 1990s, it saw the new kid on the block, Netscape, as a threat, and did what it could to destroy the upstart. With Google, the 'Softies won't be so lucky.

Most of you have heard the story about Netscape Communications, but let me summarize for the newcomers: Netscape was the first serious improvement to the Internet browser, and it grew like crazy, pretty much dominating the scene overnight. Then out of the blue, Marc Andreessen (the man credited with developing the product) decided to blow smoke about how this would eventually lead to the end of Microsoft. He was vague as to how it would lead there, but Microsoft determined that it had something to do with thin-client, browser-based computing somehow taking over everything.

Microsoft went into high gear, bought up a slew of little Internet companies and a minor browser company, and rolled out Internet Explorer as a freebie. This was important. The business plan for Netscape was based on selling the browser, but Microsoft was going to give away Explorer forever and bundle it with every new system. That was pretty much the end of Netscape, which eventually morphed into Mozilla's Firefox, a nonprofit browser that makes its money off its little Google search box.

The destruction of Netscape was awesome, Microsoft's "peak oil," as it were. The company was under the gun after that from various antitrust initiatives, and has never really been the same since. Now it is indeed vulnerable despite its overwhelming market share.

The new kid on the block today is Google, and everyone knows it. But Google didn't make Netscape's mistakes. The company has never claimed to be targeting Microsoft. Google mostly says it is interested in search and whatever else its minions create. Its approach is far different from that of any company Microsoft has ever encountered.First, Google has remained warm and fuzzy, with its cute name, cute logo, and cute gimmicks. Microsoft has never owned a fleet of jets featuring a 767. But to remain warm and cuddly, the 767 is called the Google party plane. Yay, a party!

The company also took a lesson from the early days of Yahoo, when keeping it simple was the key to success. Google just does search better than anyone else, and that's it for now. Of course, there are Google Docs, Gmail, and other "cloud computing" initiatives that Microsoft is watching warily. Just as Microsoft throws its weight behind the notion of the cloud, Google says it will build a client-side version of Gmailso people can go through their mail the way an Outlook customer can. Before that it rolls out the beta of an entirely new smartphone. It's one little thing after another. Nothing quite consolidated, just little experiments.

All along I keep hearing talk about a Google OS, probably based on Linux. Yet there's no real evidence that the company would do such a thing. Still, it is on the phone; what would it take to port to a netbook?

Well that's what a lot of people are beginning to ask. Linux suffers from a flavor-of-the-month complex, where the best Linux distro comes and goes. For years, the Linux community has resigned itself to not competing with Windows and the Mac OSthis despite the fact that the Mac OS is, like Linux, Unix-based. What if Google tried to be that competition? With its resources, could Google take over the OS business and push Microsoft up into the miserable enterprise computing scene, where it could take the place of the old dinosaurs while Google and Apple get to do all the fun stuff?

And how would Google make money from this effort? Linux is open-source, after all, and selling copies or even licensing Linux is problematic. Well, how about a Google-branded computer?

I've always wondered why Microsoft, the dominant software company, could never manage a branding program for its OS that was more than a crummy sticker stuck on a machine as an afterthought. Where is the "Microsoft Windows Computer by HP," for example?

Had Microsoft followed a branding strategy with a reference design computer (in collaboration with Intel or AMD) that could be licensed, the company wouldn't have gotten into trouble for bundling Internet Explorer, for example. That approach would have changed the way the game was played.

But Microsoft long since missed that boat. Google can still release an Android Desktop or Android Netbook, or whatever. I'd like to see it. The topper would be offering Microsoft an opportunity to do MS Office for Android. That would be rich.

This possibility all stems from the fact that Microsoft seems to have lost its way, coasting on its main cash cows and unable to do anything else confidently. To end on a positive note for Microsoft, I've believed for years that the company can effectively counter all this momentum by itself embracing Linux and doing a fully supported MS-Linux as a kind of competitive jujitsu. It's the only long-term solution to this slow death we seem to be observing.

Meanwhile, look for Google to step things up shortly.