I got my first email at 12:28 pm – “rumor: Google to buy Brightcove.”

I got my second email at 1:07 pm – “rumor false: Google to buy Brightcove.”

I spent the time during those emails scratching my head – What is wrong with the Brin/Page/Schmidt triumvirate? Does it really make sense for Google to invest in an up-market (at those price points Brightcove is no Walmart) white-label video streaming provider?

Google has an audacious goal – organize the world’s information. I guess it does make sense for Google to acquire tools that publish that information… but Brightcove? Seriously? Some reports went on to expand that it would create synergies with Youtube. Um… you mean the same synergy that Brightcove and Brightcove TV created?

Sometimes the sum of the parts is less than the parts themselves… what these speculators are missing out on is: the white-label video platform space is different than the UGC video portal space. Publishers in the white-label video have different needs – they are not looking for platforms that market their content.

They are looking for tools that let them publish, manage and track their content at affordable price points. Then they are looking for a platform that lets them scale up and scale down on-demand. Simply put, IMHO – Google + Brightcove makes as much sense as Pizza + Ketchup. Sounds exciting for 39 minutes… and then you wake up.

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.

Looks slick, and has been engineered beautifully.

There’s enough already said about it, but just like a lot of other things, this is worth checking out yourself: http://www.google.com/chrome