Re: Chrome vs. Bing vs. You and me

For some reason, you can't respond to certain Nytimes articles. I recently read this this article in the New York Times. While the underlying message is spot on, I couldn't help but disagree with two things the author mentioned. First, that Google created the Android-based G1 Phone to compete with Microsoft, as if Microsoft were the only competition (Symbian doesn't exist?). Second, this paragraph:

And don’t forget Apple, which with the iPod and iPhone has shown an ability to revolutionize markets other companies saw as mature. Microsoft and Google have yet to do something like that.

Are we to assume that Google's gmail did not revolutionize the web-mail based market? Or maybe we should assume that it wasn't mature when gmail entered, even though now, even years after Gnail's launch, Yahoo's Y!Mail and Microsoft's Hotmail are no where even close to the comfort level produced by Google's Gmail: I have lots of space, free pop/IMAP access, a working (not broken or unusable) interface, the ability to freely and easily check my email on my phone. That sounds like a revolution of a previously "mature" market to me.