Grab a seat, sit back, and enjoy the show as the two uncontested giants of their field appear destined to wage a battle of epic proportion…  If it’s Google and Apple we’re talking about, developments on several fronts just this past week have only contributed to the inevitability of just such a scenario:

• Apple goes into advertising (the iAd platform that’s an integral part of the just-released Iphone OS 4)
• Google’s Android mobile OS makes solid advances in the high-growth Smartphone market (Gartner recently reporting that Android will overtake Apple’s iOS by 2012)
• Both companies continue to quietly work away on the last frontier: the stubborn problem of implementing a viable lean-back  internet video solution (I have a hunch that Apple is leveraging their monitor expertise and building a television)
• Both CNET and the WSJ report that Google is planning to unveil a music streaming/download service tied to their search engine, while Apple works to move iTunes from a desktop app to the cloud.

Meanwhile, although largely overshadowed by World Cup soccer, this past week also saw the start of Wimbledon – so if the uncontested giants we’re talking about are Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, recent events also offer the possibility of a similar clash of the titans.  If the two can manage to make it to the mens’ singles finals, tennis fans around the world will grab a seat, sit back and enjoy a show of their own: a rematch of the 2008 Federer-Nadal Wimbledon final, often considered the greatest tennis match ever played.

It’s maybe a good time, then, for a few thoughts on Google (arguably the Roger Federer of consumer internet technology) and Apple (perhaps the Rafael Nadal of consumer electronics)…

At the always cool-calm-and-collected Google, both the corporate culture and the business model itself seem to exist on some higher plane – “above the fray”, as it were.  Meanwhile, at Apple, no attempt is made to conceal the evidence of their day-to-day competitive struggles or to make everything they do look easy.  In fact, quite the contrary: recently they’ve tended to wear their corporate heart on their sleeve (witness Steve Jobs’ very public – and very official – condemnation of Adobe several months ago).

From the consumer’s perspective:

Google Google’s core value proposition has always been openness. Further consumer buy-in is generated by the astounding and utterly industry-disruptive amount of free stuff they give away – email, productivity apps, digitized literature, maps, you name it.  What often gets overlooked by the average grateful gmail user, though, is that all this free stuff is subsidized by revenue generated by a historic change in the advertising paradigm, one in which the collection and mining of personal data is key.  Another thing that gets overlooked (in much the same manner of the oft-used frog and boiling water analogy) is that over the past few decades, internet technology has gradually (or not so gradually) resulted in a shockingly rich personal dataset on each and every one of us.

Freedom and privacy are, at best, two almost entirely independent concepts.  At worst, they’re somewhat mutually exclusive.

Google’s entire business model depends on the flow of a raw material.  This raw material is data, including personal data.  For this reason, it’s in their self-interest to protect and nurture the perception and/or the reality of being not only a good but an exemplary corporate citizen – it’s every bit as vital to Google’s ongoing success as the mere technical effectiveness of their search algorithms and advertising platforms.

Apple Apple, on the other hand, just builds one hell of a great product. In this sense, they’re more of a traditional company – they didn’t define and come to utterly dominate a completely new industry as Google did with targeted search-driven text adverting.  Rather, Apple is in the build-a-better-mousetrap business.   The fact that well-considered product design is so rare in the consumer technology space (Sony, anyone?) has much to do with with the large and and surprisingly intractable gap between the mindset of the engineers who design the stuff and the mindset of the folks who use the stuff – but that’s a topic better suited for the psychologists and anthropologists to discuss.

In short, Apple is in the old-school business of doing things better – way better – than anyone else.   And they do it over and over again.

In Conclusion As with Federer/Nadal, what makes the impending confrontation interesting is the differences between our two antagonists.  Also, much like Bill Cosby in the 80′s (who endorsed everything under the sun while simultaneously owning the most popular TV show on the US airwaves), neither seems inclined to leave any money on the table – both are gunning for a big chunk of each other’s business.  One key difference between the two companies, though, is that while Google finds itself in the enviable position of owning and controlling  a new universe of its own making, Apple (for all its demonstrated ability to execute) remains part of the  ’what-have-you-done-for-me-lately’ world of consumer electronics.

Can Apple’s winning streak continue?  Although they’ve been utterly outclassing the competition for a remarkably long time now, it would seem inevitable that another company will have a great idea someday and mount a serious challenge – or Apple could simply fall prey to the ‘fickle winds of what’s cool’ changing, as they always have.

For now, though, Apple remains committed to a ‘Steve-knows-best’ worldview, and that’s been working out quite well for them, thank you very much.  It’s really Steve’s show – and although I would guess that personally he’s actually a nicer guy than Eric Schmidt, as a company Apple simply can’t afford to take the aw-shucks “don’t be evil” stance that Google often takes.  In other words, I believe Jobs’ recent bluster and demagoguery are merely indicative of the rougher world Apple inhabits, while Google can afford the luxury of good karma.  In fact, as I’ve already mentioned (see above), they kind of depend on it.

In short, it’s good to be Google.  Like Federer, they’ve had a way of making astounding success look completely effortless and elegant.  Apple, on the other hand, is down there in the trenches gutting it out – and as with Nadal, it ain’t always pretty.

If the tennis analogy holds, don’t count Apple out, though.  Roger Federer is, by most accounts, the greatest tennis player of all time – he holds a record 16 Grand Slam titles (to Nadal’s 7) and also holds the record for most consecutive weeks ranked at the world #1 (237 – or over 4 years).  However, Nadal alone seems to have Roger’s number – his winning record against Federer stands at 14-7.

Evidence, I think, that one underestimates a scrappy warrior (such as Jobs and Apple) at their own risk.