Jason Kottke has been saying for some time that Google is working on a web-based operating system of sorts, and today he comments on how Google might release a Google browser based on Mozilla to support those efforts. That sounds completely plausible to me, but it brings up an interesting question. When does Microsoft turn all its guns on Google? When Netscape started making noise about being a platform company and Mark Andreessen started talking about Windows just being a bundle of device drivers, Microsoft stepped up its efforts to destroy them. When will that moment come for Google? Microsoft is already attacking Google on the search engine front, but to my knowledge there’s no evidence that Microsoft is attacking Google the way it did Netscape, that is to say, but coercing its partners and customers to abandon them. That said, Google is not and will never be as dependent upon bundling as Netscape was. Netscape lost the browser war when Internet Explorer was added to Windows and became a good enough substitute that people didn’t need to go download Netscape Navigator over their slow modem connection to surf the Web. I don’t think that Microsoft has a similar front upon which to attack Google, but let there be no doubt about it, if Google starts looking like a platform, Microsoft will stop at nothing to destroy them.