Google And Microsoft :: Copycats

I want to make one thing clear, if you have some brilliant idea that no one else has ever thought of and you really think it will set the world on fire then you should go for it.

For some reason since I was a little kid I have dreamed about inventing a transportation device that will take you anywhere in the world these devices could be built very cheap and the whole world could travel for about .10 cents a trip.  

If you wanted to go off planet it would be .20 cents, you know to the moon or mars something like that.

They are very safe and no one will ever get hurt during transportation.  If I could just figure out how to make them work I would do it.

Anyway, back to reality. I was just reading John Dvorak at abcnews.go.com he said:

• I was thinking about all the cool stuff Google has done when I realized that none of it was original. The folks at Microsoft, long known for being copycats, must be furious, since nobody has ever accused Google of the same thing. Everything Google has done has been derivative. The search engine was taken from the AltaVista idea of huge computer farms. Gmail is a clone of Hotmail. The Google Chat is nothing special. Orkut is a copy of Friendster. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Hmmm, find someone who is successful and do that they are doing.  Google has a good plan no wonder they are successful.

This makes me wonder why Google has such a good image when they are taking other peoples ideas and using them. While Microsoft who does the exact same thing as Google is know as the evil empire?