With Google crossing the $700-a-share threshold, it’s hard not to be euphoric. But wait a minute, says Trip Chowdhry, of Global Equities Research: “Google is not winning the platform war.” And that could be a serious stumbling block in the road to long-term supremacy. First of all, Chowdhry is NOT saying Google is in serious trouble. But what he is saying is this: Becoming a platform is not easy. You’ve got to h With Google crossing the $700-a-share threshold, it’s hard not to be euphoric. But wait a minute, says Trip Chowdhry, of Global Equities Research: “Google is not winning the platform war.” And that could be a serious stumbling block in the road to long-term supremacy. First of all, Chowdhry is NOT saying Google is in serious trouble. But what he is saying is this: Becoming a platform is not easy. You’ve got to have the developers (the ISVs that is); and right now Microsoft, not Google has them. Here are some stats he presented in a note to clients this morning: • Total developers in world: about 8 million, probably only 3 million are “real” developers. The others are testers, release engineers, occasional fixers/maintenance programmers• Out of 3 million “real developers” MSFT has an exclusive lock on about 1.5 million. Oracle, SAP, IBM, and other ERP folks have a lock on total some 1 million developers. “These guys are doing enterprise development, not the consumer web.” So we are left with about 500k developers. • These 500,000 developers “are targeted by every wannabe platform” vendor — including both SaaS Enterprise companies and Web2.0. On the enterprise side, there’s Salesforce.com, Netsuite, Workday, Adobe, and Nokia. On the consumer side there’s Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon.com, Google, Facebook and Bebo. Remember, Chowdhry is not talking about employees. Google has no problem hiring as many as it needs. But ISVs are another story, he says. “Microsoft has the strongest monetization model. Google does not.”For ISVs, he says, “Google is a concept. Microsoft is reality.”Is Chowdhry right? Too early to tell, but given the hysterical runup in Google’s share price, it’s certainly worth considering. I welcome your comments, tips and suggestions. Reach me at bill.snyder@sbcglobal.net. Technology Industry