• The New York Times, Monday, December 17, 2007 11:03 AM

Web critics used to complain that Google was spreading itself thin by launching too many unfinished products and services that didn't add up to a discernible whole. Google reveals that its expanding package of Web-based software and services are part of a greater movement than many would have imagined. As Google CEO Eric Schmidt says, Google Apps, the company's suite of free online computing services, represents no less than Google's march to put your entire desktop on the Web.

Schmidt says it will be a real improvement in people's lives if a powerful gatekeeper like Google offered computing services over the Web. Schmidt and Google believe that 90 percent of computing could end up in what the company calls "the cloud," a vast databank containing most of what you produce and retain on your personal computer. Inside that cloud resides "almost everything you do in a company, almost everything a knowledge worker does," he says.

In that regard, a vast battle is brewing between Google and Microsoft, its bitter rival. Google's Web-based "cloud" plans threaten the very territory that Microsoft has dominated for more than a decade through its Windows operating system and desktop based software. Microsoft senior exec Jeff Raikes dismiss Google's ambitions as fantasy, considering Microsoft's commanding lead in computing services, and the cost of providing and maintaining them on the Web for free.

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