Apple or Google, who's going to dominate the Cloud?

Apple computer released its iPad with a lot of anticipation for it and now we can see what this marketing giant was up to. There was a sigh of relief that its out and that there wasn't some hidden feature to blow everyone away. Its just another slick appliance that gets its power from the web. Its secret sauce is that delivers an improvement in experience which is one of the core values consumers make buying decisions on. Some have described it as a giant iPhone without the phone because it can run all of the iPhone apps immediately. It capitalizes on touch as a big part of the experience as well as speed and visual enhancements. Apple is referring to it as magical, and who doesn't like magic!


So is this a threat to Google. I'm not sure they are in the same game. Google's revenue comes mainly from business advertising and Apple's from consumer's downloads. With the exception of the recently released Nexus One, Google doesn't sell anything to the consumer products the compete with Apple. Apple sells their devices and delivers content in the form of apps, and tunes to its customers. 


The one thing they both have in common (which might have happened when Eric Schmidt was on Apple's Board of Directors) is a focus of simplifying their products so that there are no impediments to adoption. It will continue to be interesting to see how these two companies, that are headquartered within in a few miles of each other and who continue to have rapid growth, maintain their distance and keep focused on their core competency. Google has announce their Chrome OS which when run on netbooks or the future computer pads, should give the consumer an enhanced experience which is hoped to conform to a wider audience than Apple's iPad.


We'll have to see how these two companies re-invent computing and the web. Stay tuned, as the stakes get higher and and the competition gets closer, it might turn into a bumpy ride.