Brian Glick of the UK’s Computing had the chance to discuss the threat of Google to Microsoft during an interview with Bill Gates. According to Glick, even though Gates respects Google as a competitor and serious company, Gates was dismissive about the Google threat to Microsoft. The Bill Gates view on Google as a non-search competitor is priceless (perhaps Steve Ballmer has been briefing Bill on his Google-blasting etiquette).

“Which Google products are you talking about? Seriously? Other than search, which are you talking about? Google Talk? Wow. A total “me too” product. Even Gmail – what is the unique thing?”

Gates added; “The idea of development tools, a natural interface, productivity software – Google is not in any of those categories. People are acting as if they will magically be in these other categories with something more than a ‘me too‘ offering. It is kind of fun that people underestimate what we are going to do here.”

Gates also commented that Google can be beat by their own game, web search : “‘We need to surprise people and do a search that is way better than Google, and we are very on top of that.”

And about Google being the darling of the press : “Google is great, they are smart people, the press should continue to feed their arrogance as much as possible..”

“They [Google] say they are going to organize the world’s information. Well, we don’t think that is our job. We think you need to get tools to editors and subject experts to let them organize the world’s information. There is a bit of a philosophy difference here. The only sure winner is the consumer.”