As a long term investor, I'm worried with Google. All the bills are paid by ad revenue, a single horse. Then there is this bubble of claims that they have the best engineers and work environment yet this has not produced any other business equivalent to the ad business. Then they have a reputation of creating awesome tools that then get killed in years, enterprise customers don't like this unpredictability. Microsoft on the other hand is the master of supporting old platforms, I've seen some really old apps (from the 90s) run on the latest OS's. Enterprise loves this and that is were the money is. The only clear strength I see on Google is that they are masters of advertising and I see how they sell to developers that there way is the way to go. That is a good HR strength since they will always have a pipe of engineers that want to work for them.
Kind of interesting to see Microsoft & Amazon 'passing by' Google lately, considering how much more earning power they have than either of them.<p>Even if Amazon didn't spend a dime on R&D the most they could've earned on operating income is ~$26B, if Microsoft zeroed out their R&D they could've had about ~$35B.<p>Meanwhile, if Google decided to go full-profit last year they would've had on the order of $42B.
>Google’s demotion is undoubtedly only temporary.<p>I think so, the revenue trend for Google is too strong. Google passed Msft in revenue in FY2016 I believe.<p>But the public perception around Google has taken some hits, and Microsoft has reformed its public image.<p>>Still, this is big news for Microsoft who has shifted focus under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella<p>Hope so, I've been bullish on Nadella.
Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet. Fixed that.<p>Alphabet includes Google but also all their other companies. I wonder how many of these included companies are not profitable entities at the moment but future investments and dragged Alphabet's value down a bit.<p>I don't know. I'm just sayin'.
I find this inline with my own positive vs negative views of microsoft over time.<p>I spent a good part of my early career in the 90s building products on windows and both fearing and admiring microsoft - but mostly fearing and hedging my skills on linux.<p>In the 00's microsoft seemed almost like a non-player and their products mostly legacy.<p>But since windows 10 and my recent experience building on Azure I've been pleasantly surprised and find my view of them back on the positive side.<p>I'm particularly impressed with Azure -- a few years ago I wouldn't have thought they could have created a competent alternative to AWS ..and here they are.
They are very different companies culturally -- attract different kinds of people. MS is better in business, Google better in tech. In MS you would have to fight for the permission or space to make something better if its already bringing in enterprise money, where 'making better' could mean well known bugs with possibly easy fixes. At Google it used to be ok to make something better to scratch one's itch, or just because it really ought to be better.
I'm puzzled why "Proven"s comment is dead? What they wrote seems accurate. There is no reason why this comment should be downvoted, and certainly no reason why the comment should be dead. This is what they wrote:<p><pre><code> Simply speaking they actually make more products people like to use.
Google essentially has just one, and it’s based on diminishing user privacy to the maximum extent possible.
MS collects user data but so do Ubuntu and CentOS... not to the extent Google and FB do it.
</code></pre>
That is absolutely true. Microsoft has a huge range of products. It produced three of the most profitable products in history:<p>Microsoft Windows<p>Microsoft SQL Server<p>Microsoft Office<p>For awhile, circa 2005-2015, there was some thought that Microsoft's products were going to be replaced by online equivalents, and was a contributing factor that held down Microsoft's stock at that time. But it is now clear that Microsoft's products are going to survive. Partly, Microsoft has adapted to the online world, and partly, large enterprises are more comfortable with Microsoft's model, rather than Google or Zoho or Wufoo or any other online replacements.<p>Microsoft Excel remains the default lingua franca of business. Google Docs and Spreadsheets has not replaced Office.<p>And SQL Server continues to have a huge number of fans, even in a world full of very good open source databases.
Simply speaking they actually make more products people like to use.<p>Google essentially has just one, and it’s based on diminishing user privacy to the maximum extent possible.<p>MS collects user data but so do Ubuntu and CentOS... not to the extent Google and FB do it.
I dont really understand this. The race for hosting VMs/Containers is a great short term opportunity but there is no long term differentiation to be had. I suspect in 10-20 years Azure wont make much money . Meanwhile Windows and Office are still popular but not as compelling as they used to be. Xbox? I'm not sure why Microsoft is so popular with investors.
I think most people really don’t understand the wide breadth and the real market of Microsoft as compared to other companies. Just look at these charts of income sources of each company:<p><a href="http://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/cotd52602.png" rel="nofollow">http://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/cotd52602.png</a><p>Google is literally just Ads whereas Microsoft is very evenly spread. If it lost one area itd be fine in the others.<p>I think people have an exposure bias where they can only comprehend fo the consumer market. When in reality a lot of the consumer market is free and Microsoft is making a killing selling to businesses.
I use only one product of Microsoft,
Visual studio code
But I use many products of Alphabet Inc ,
Google, (servers)
Google docs, (servers)
Google drive, (servers)
Google keep, (servers)
Gmail, (servers)
Android, (client)
Maps, (servers)
YouTube, (servers)
Tez, (servers)
Play store, (servers)
Google translate, (servers),
...<p>Many people don't realise it because almost all of them are available for free.
Google products have very market.<p>Incase of Google, they have cost of maintenance almost for every product they develop.<p>But in case of Microsoft, they have less overhead.<p>Windows (client)
Azure (servers)
Xbox (client)
Visual studio (client)
Visual studio code (client)
SQL (client)
MS Office (client)
...<p>Microsoft also needs to push updates but, less than that of Google.<p>YouTube consumes too much of bandwidth,
Same is the case with Play Store.