…The question was how to prevent what happened at Microsoft from happening at Google. Consumers have had more choice on the internet. And we have a set of policies that we follow—entrenched inside the culture—the most important of which is that we won’t trap user data in proprietary systems. So we have a rule: You have to make it possible for people who don’t like your service to get out. If I don’t like Google, I can switch to Yahoo, Microsoft, or whatever. This has another impact that’s not as obvious. It serves as a check and balance on poor-quality teams. They can’t prevent users from fleeing bad products. It also helps us with this question of becoming too big and powerful.
One of the many gems from this article. If that’s not enough for you they also have a little flash applet that represents the struggles between microsoft and yahoo as a game of battleship
