Well, OK, Terraserver. Microsoft got there first. But who cares? Google Maps is attractive not because it was first (there's been mapping on the web for years) but because it's the easiest to use. And Google Maps is here now.Google's secrets: it's very good at reliability, speed, simplicity, and cleanliness.
Microsoft may have been sitting on this stuff, but they did not know how to leverage and use this stuff. Take IE for example. They had no idea what to do with it, and in fact had disbanded the dev team until firefox came along. Without competitors Microsoft cant do shit. And they know it now. They wipe out competition, then the application market becomes boring. The app becomes boring. An app that is boring, but without a serious competitor for now. Office. Microsoft does not know what do with it. How can they come out with a new version that has features that everyone wants? They have to wait for a competitor to come out with some important features. They will copy those then, and the office suite space will become hot again.
