Savings Experiment: Snow Removal
The Money Man Behind Rick Santorum: Who Is Foster S. Friess?
Even though the consumer electronics industry wants to have some company -- any company deliver an Apple (AAPL) iPhone killer, that company won't be Google (GOOG). Google, on the other hand, has become Apple's Microsoft (MSFT) from the late 1980s. What's that, you say?
Microsoft took the personal computer market by storm by not tightly controlling every piece of hardware and software that was used with its now-ubiquitous Windows operating system. Apple, on the other hard, guaranteed a solid user experience by tying its excellently-designed hardware with only its own operating system software. It's been said that Microsoft, more than any other company, enabled the PC era by not controlling the hardware it's software rode on top of. Google has the same goal in the mobile space, which is where the future of consumer computing is headed.
It's odd that Apple and Microsoft may team up to thwart Google's advanced, but that's the sign of the times. Whereas Apple controls every aspect of the iPhone --- from device selection to wireless carrier to software app approval to media ecosystem --- Google wants none of that. It simply wants to provide the baseline experience from its Android operating system and let the manufacturers and wireless carriers fragment that mobile software as much as they can to create differentiated product offerings.
Whereas Apple maintains a very simplistic iPhone existence, Android is guaranteeing assault on the iPhone's market share by brute force volume and selection more than anything. That's precisely what Microsoft did decades ago to ensure Apple's vision of the PC marketplace wasn't locked down to its own control. Google is now Apple's Microsoft. Microsoft is, in many ways, Apple's closer friend as a result.
Goldman Earnings Sink After Buffett Dividend
Johnson & Johnson's Income Falls 23%
Burberry Shares Leap on Sales Update
