• CNET News.com, Thursday, April 26, 2007 1:13 PM

Few would argue that Google is eating Microsoft's lunch when it comes to Web advertising. The software giant has tried to build its way (piecemeal) into a position to compete with Google, but its efforts have failed to gain traction--or at least, so goes the consensus in tech circles.

Nevertheless, a pair of Gartner analysts paint a picture of Microsoft as a sleeping giant, overlooked by an increasingly complacent Google. In other words, the tables have turned: Google isn't going after Microsoft, as much as Microsoft is Google. "Microsoft is clearly going after the advertising world," Gartner vice president David Smith said Wednesday, adding that the Redmond, Wash., giant, now the underdog, is at a "critical [turning] point." The days of Microsoft's dominance are over, he adds, as Web-based applications--and not desktop software--are the order of the day. Microsoft has put as much as $2 billion behind efforts to steal share from Google.

Yet that may not be enough--Google just spent $3.1 billion to buy DoubleClick, a company that could give the Web giant a leg up in graphical advertising as well as search. Smith warns that Google may be taking its eye off its core business in expanding into so many new territories. Alan Weiner, Gartner's managing vice president, says that strategy could prove dangerous for Google. The company's pedigree is in search, not Web-based software or media. He says social search and rich media search are opportunities waiting to be exploited.

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