[wslh]

Before answering your question my extended rant is here: http://blog.nektra.com/main/2012/06/01/reverse-engineering-a...

Samba and Wine were both created using reverse engineering. Microsoft frequently made changes that broke both products. Don't get me started on Microsoft's PPTP and Kerberos. - Nvidia produced their own closed drivers on Linux. How does that involve Microsoft?

You agree with me then! that was my point. You can't reverse engineer Google Search, you can't connect with it in an unlimited way (except using web scraping techniques or using the restricted local search API). With Microsoft you can reverse engineer it.

And I have an story to tell: my company started selling a full API for a Microsoft product without one. Not only we reverse engineered the product but we built a complete API on top. One day Microsoft QA call us if they can help to test the compatibility of our product in operating systems under development.

[jorgecastillo]

One big difference is that you can choose to use or not to use Google Search. For all intents and purposes you can't avoid using Microsoft products.

[wslh]

You can't avoid AdWords. Have you tried to sell your software products via Bing/Yahoo? There is no audience there.

[jorgecastillo]

I am only a consumer so I wouldn't know about such issues. Maybe in the future my opinion of Google will change, but so far my experience with Google has been very positive. I can not say the same about Microsoft.

[wslh]

Did you hear about Google Reader?

[jorgecastillo]

Yes, I didn't use that service & Google Reader was totally opt-in, in no way were people required to use it.