Google and Microsoft,

You have more money than you know what to do with – literally billions sitting around. (As of the end of 2009 Microsoft has $9.4 billion and Google has $10 billion.) So how about you put a little more effort into making your products a more visually pleasing?

And by “more visually appealing” what I mean is “less ugly.”

I’ll even tell you how to do it: buy away designers from Apple and UX gurus from Adaptive Path.

Offer them $250,000 per year and the final word on how your products should look. Give them the ability to do what they do best and get out of their way.

Then take the committee of engineers, middle managers and their spouses who have been making those decisions, and put them to work doing something useful like cleaning staplers or minding their own business.

Lord Vader image via here.