Just found this brilliant image at OneComics.

I’m not sure that Federico Fieni realizes how beautifully he’s merged art with technology. And art is always open to interpretation, so my interpretation is:

• Chrome is the new Windows.
• Instead of a PC equipped with an OS + Application stack, you now have a browser equipped with an Internet connection + web services stack.
• The choice of colors (and even the hue of each color) was oh-so-intentional. And I bet that some folks over at Microsoft aren’t best pleased with this insinuation.

But most importantly, this sounds like Google has officially started the war of the worlds. And since all is fair in love and war, will we excuse Google’s occasional deviances from “do no evil”?

Can Google even win this war? To be fair to Microsoft, I loved Ballmer’s recent memo that talked about “Software plus Services”- it makes an incredible amount of sense, and Microsoft is definitely very well positioned to push hard at it.

The way I see it, Google’s plan of baiting Microsoft into the online ads market has failed(through chance, or circumstance), and now Microsoft has $40b extra (maybe less, given where we are today) to invest in this new breed of computing that combines hardware, software, services and cloud infrastructure.

So Google will have to build a really compelling case to convince us that they can take away the Hardware, and the Software, and YET…build us a dream based on services and the cloud. And as much as I like Google, I think they’ve already lost the battle. Some veteran strategists at Microsoft have just pulled a very fast one on them.

Microsoft, Rebooted and stronger. Google, Chromed and prettier.

Hm. I’ve already made my choice. This is no time for pretty.

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Update: Steve Gilmor just wrote a very interesting perspective on this over at TechCrunch.