One of the more interesting articles I came across in the days preceding the release, was on Technologizer, which asked How Long Does Google Baby the iPhone?

I am, however, fascinated by one thing about it: The fact that it’s debuting on the iPhone. It’s the second interesting Google app to do so in recent weeks. (Google Earth made its mobile premiere on the iPhone back in late October.) The iPhone is a terrific platform for mobile apps, so there’d be nothing noteworthy about this except for one thing: Google has its own terrific platform for mobile apps, Android.

The answer to the question, in my opinion, is simple: as long as iPhone is a first-tier mobile platform (read: forever).

To Google, the only platform that matters is the web. That is one of the key aspects to their success, and it is ingrained deeply in their culture. So much so, that any software platform developed by Google is done so under the primary goal of advancing the web itself.

Android as a mobile operating system is, clearly, the most overt platform play from Google to date. However, if mere in-house control of a platform exerted influence on support for third-party platforms, Google’s web strategy would begin to decay.

I suspect Google realizes this tendency, which is one of the reasons why Android is completely open source. No company, not even Google, its primary creator, can claim complete control. The act of open sourcing the platform created a level playing field, perhaps most importantly within Google itself.

Contrast this to Microsoft, where support for any non-Microsoft technologies is met with overwhelming resistance. Through their subsidiary Tellme, Microsoft had the capability to beat Google to the iPhone with this technology, and gain ground in the mobile search arena. That didn’t happen.

Microsoft sees the web running on top of its platform. Google sees platforms running on top of the web. Advantage: Google.

Indeed, even I, not known for being a Microsoft advocate, am impressed with what has been announced. Microsoft is making a substantial effort to support a variety of platforms, including all popular browsers on both Windows and Mac OS X.

The technical accomplishments behind Silverlight are also astounding. Microsoft has made their Common Language Runtime (CLR), which powers Silverlight, small, fast, and efficient. At the same time, they’ve created a Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR), which facilitates the CLR’s execution of code written in languages such as Python and Ruby.

True to form, Microsoft is touting their goal of building a developer ecosystem around these technologies. All the while, their sights are clearly trained on their competition.

Adobe, with Flash and Flex, is under the heaviest fire. With entrenched design and development tools, Adobe has the leading RIA platform. However, Microsoft is positioning Silverlight as a direct challenger.

With .NET and the CLR, Microsoft has gained traction against Sun and Java, the other major VM. Running dynamic languages on these VMs has recently become a hot topic, and advances similar to those seen in DLR are needed in Java.

Mozilla is the strongest advocate for open standards on the web. Firefox keeps the playing field level, and allows web applications to be written using techniques including Ajax. It remains to be seen how RIA environments will influence the future of the web browser.

Open source is the common strategy held by each of these alternatives to Microsoft platforms. This fosters a community and encourages a healthy evolution of the technology and tools. Microsoft’s competitive threats are welcome, as these will further increase the evolutionary pressures.

Despite being the largest technology company in existence, Microsoft’s latest products fail to generate the enthusiasm or disruptive impact of competing offerings. Apple is consistently defining the cutting edge of user interface and experience, Google is conquering the Internet and distributed computing, and open source development is rewriting the rules of software engineering.

Two interesting articles, both from SeekingAlpha, highlight the change that is underway. The first, Vista: End of a Revolution by Carl Howe, recounts the dawn of the PC era, a revolution that Microsoft helped usher in. Since then, time has passed, Microsoft established its dominance, and a new power structure emerged:

What began as the democratization of computing … has now become a distraction from getting work done. Rather than freeing …, PCs now are the policemen …, ensuring that no one moves too fast or too far from what’s approved.

Today, a different revolution is underway:

It is time for another worker rebellion. But this time, the tools are different. … Today’s rebel is wearing a Google T-shirt, carrying an Apple laptop and promoting their company from a Linux infrastructure they don’t even own.

Dan Farber picks up with Google’s enterprise efforts. He quotes Kevin Gough, enterprise product manager at Google.

“At Google Enterprise we look at consumer technology and figure out what is relevant for business.”

A true revolution brings power to the people. This time it is the Internet and Google, not Microsoft, doing just that.