Don't know if I would agree with your assessment of Google's influence. It's high, but debatable about "most bar none".

As for "no Microsoft", one only has to look at who runs Google and what he did in the past to understand reasons why there is no Microsoft there.

>Well a lot of it is obvious but probably taken for granted now- ever wonder what Google is using/developing in?? Google is the most influential company today in technology bar none. Linux, Python, Java, C, MySQL, AJAX - no Microsoft to be found.