I was attracted to Windows Live by a Web blog I respect, but whose name I have somehow lost.

The claim which struck me was images with Windows Live were clearer than those with Google Earth. Some examples were shown.

I tried it. The differences are marginal. In many ways Google Earth is better. In some ways Wndows Live is better.

But I'm left with a question. Why is Microsoft wasting money copying what someone else is doing, when it could be using that money doing what no one else can? This is a question that has been bothering me ever since Google rose to challenge Microsoft.

The only answer I can come up with is that this is the way Microsoft has always operated. It copies others' innovations, then crushes them with its marketing might. The difference is that Google operates on the Internet, not inside a client Windows can crush. Netscape, the challenger a decade ago, offered a browser, a client program which Microsoft could copy, throw inside its operating system, and crush.

The Clue should have been obvious when Yahoo was able to go and grow and beat Microsoft as a media company later in the 1990s, beat MSN because its services were on the Internet, not in a client program Microsoft could copy and destroy. It was Yahoo's own weaknesses and ambitions that obscured this Clue, that kept it from being what Google has become.

So now Microsoft has let Google grow to the point where Google is a real threat to Microsoft's dominance. Bill Gates said for years that he had no natural monopoly, that it could all be taken away, and he was right. The field of competition moved to a place Microsoft could not control.

So what happens now? Microsoft needs to do things that Google can't even imagine, let alone emulate.

Does Microsoft have it within itself? Not based on Windows Live.