This post is part of our Battle of the Brands feature. Let us know which brand you prefer, and check out other Battle of the Brands posts.
Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) has been around more than 30 years now and continues to make money hand over first every quarter. Its growth has slowed to levels representative of a mature company, but the power the computer software maker has over the flow of the world's information is very formidable. Then you have Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), a company just a decade old but with power that rivals Microsoft in many ways. In a sense, Microsoft provides the river, and Google provides the current.
That's probably not what Microsoft executives had in mind, but that's reality. The two companies are uniquely different cultures: Microsoft is a standard, dyed-in-the-wool, buttoned-down corporation and Google operates in an organized chaos type of way, much like a start-up software company. The difference is that Google's revenue and growth is slowly reaching where Microsoft's is, and it's only taken a fraction of the time.
Now that Google is starting to deploy online-based software "products" (webware, if you will) that compete head-on with Microsoft's products, is a showdown between these two brands imminent? News flash -- it's already here, a fact Microsoft may nor may not realize. Now, dethroning the world's largest software maker may seem impossible to many of us, and it very well may be impossible. But that may not be Google's goal; it may want Microsoft to just become irrelevant, which would be a self-imposed death sentence in a way.
By 2015 or so, we'll have a very clear picture of the competitive landscape between these two, but if today is any indication, Microsoft's largest challenge in its history is well under way.
Vote in our poll for Microsoft or Google as your preferred brand, and let us know in the comments why you love it.
Entrepreneur's Journal: Putting together a solid sales contract
The week in preview: Earnings from Walmart, Macy's, and other retailers
Six top trades for the rest of 2009
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-29-2008 @ 8:20AM
Buck said...
Ha ha ha,
It's about time someone stuck it to MICRO$HAFT! They've screwed over computer users for decades by it's predatory business model, forcing computer manufacturer's to "use their O/S or ELSE!". They =rush their "buggy", security-holed, software to market, then have the "chutzpah" to "Charge" for "upgrades" to fix their buggy software!
Now, I'm all for a business making money, but not at the expense of it's consumers. THANK GOD, there is "Open Source" software and operating systems like Apple and Linux. Problem is since M$ forced computer sellers to ONLY put M$ on computers, there aren't many programmers writing code for Apple or Linux.
I don't mind laying down my hard earned money for software that WORKS, but I'm very glad to see that GOOGLE is venturing into the software market to compete with the "Evil Troll King of Redmond, Washington's" products.
GOOGLE is your "friend."
Now, if AOHell had a Linux "client", I'd use it to keep the SPAM and porno "invites" away, LOL! I can be on-line, chatting in an IM with my grandson and I get a "porno invite"... Geez!
4-29-2008 @ 12:28PM
skullheadjupiter said...
Microsoft sucks! They sell everyone junk at high price. XBox 360's freeze up and get the"Red Ring of Death" Their windows have so many problems...they are prone to viruses adware, malware, the whole lot! Vista is incompatable with many types of software and it uses far too much memory to run Windows and the programs it uses. Their messenger frequently crashes, their browser is slow, and their search engines are awful. Google gets ten times better searches. Nintendo has systems, that now, do not crash or freeze or fail easily over time (at least for me). Apple's Macs are tons better! I will avoid Microsoft's poor quality software as much as possible, unless I see improvements.