GOOG vs AAPL, The Story Continues...

Apple bypassing Google and then becoming the biggest tech company in the World fuels a lot of talk and speculation. Apple is having a time of its life, with share price up 30% YTD in a shaky market. At the same time Google is down 30% YTD. Definitely investors have fallen in love with Steve Jobs at take whatever Google offers as granted. But paying a closer look may reveal quite a different picture. With all the credits due, Apple is chiefly a design company. Whatever they have done since the original iPhone 1 launch, can hardly be considered innovative or breakthrough. The iPhone was a breakthrough. Nobody expected anything close when they launched. But whatever happened after that has been just incremental, linear improvement. 3G. GPS. More memory and faster processor. Better screen and battery life. Yawn. The null-modem-cable iTunes connectivity remains the same. It is so hard to believe design sells so well. Or that good design is so hard to implement. I wrote about the new Mac Mini. There is absolutely nothing revolutionary about this computer, yet it is a class ahead of any comparable machines. So they can charge premium, people will pay.

On the other hand Google keeps silently improving the Web. Today nobody pays attention to the speed and quality of Web searches. We expect it to be fast and accurate and we take for granted it works. I guess not many people even noticed the improvements Google made to its service even this year. True. They never had an official launch, improving step by step almost every day. So the World pays no attention.

Then it takes a day like a week ago, when I returned from my vacation and uploaded some photos to Picasa. Then I got some comments and questions to reply. I started typing some comments when I noticed that whatever I type in Polish, Google types in parallel in English. My jaw dropped. Yes we have had Google Translate for some years now, but implementing online translation in a chat impressed me. A believe this is an order of magnitude more difficult than building a phone from off-the-shelf components and encasing it in two glass plates contracted from a 3rd party manufacturer.

The bottom line is, I think Apple is peaking today, being more smoke and mirrors looking forward, especially compared to the immense value buildout inside Google. The World is going to the Cloud, which is Google's primary domain and expertise. Open source Androids invade the market from all angles. Plus Google has a head start in the battle of the next generation TV. Half a year from now the tide will turn and I strongly believe investors will reward the value and reach of Google.

On a final note, just as a food for thought, may be Google should make more noise when they release some important features and upgrades to their services?