MICROSOFT VS GOOGLE

Microsoft

Corporation

(NASDAQ:

MSFT)

is

an

American

multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, United States that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services related to computing. It is the largest software corporation in the world measured by revenues. Microsoft was established on April 4, 1975 to develop and sell basic interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the home computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. The company's 1986 initial public offering, and subsequent rise in the share price, created an estimated three billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s the company has increasingly diversified from the operating system market. In May 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype for $8.5 billion in its largest acquisition to date. As of 2012 Microsoft is market dominant in both the PC operating system and office suite markets (the latter with Microsoft Office). The company is also active in areas including internet search (with Bing), the

video game industry (with the Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles), the digital services market (through MSN), and mobile phones (via the Windows Phone OS). In June 2012 Microsoft announced that it would be entering the PC vendor market for the first time, with the launch of the Microsoft Surface tablet computer. In the 1990s, critics began to contend that Microsoft used monopolistic business practices and anti-competitive strategies including refusal to deal and tying, put unreasonable restrictions in the use of its software, and used misrepresentative marketing tactics; both the U.S. Department of Justice and European Commission found the company in violation of antitrust laws.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is an American multinational corporation which provides Internet-related products and services, including Internet search, cloud computing, software and advertising technologies. Advertising revenues from Ad Words generate almost all of the company's profits. The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while both attended Stanford University. Together, Brin and Page own about 16 percent of the company's stake. Google was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 4, 1998, and its initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004. The company's mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful", and the company's unofficial slogan is "Don't be evil". In 2006, the company moved to its current headquarters in Mountain View, California. Rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond the

company's core web search engine. The company offers online productivity software including email, an office suite, and social networking. Google's products extend to the desktop as well, with applications for web browsing, organizing & editing photos, and instant messaging. Google leads the development of the Android mobile operating system, as well as the Google Chrome OS browser-only operating system, found on specialized netbooks called Chrome books. Google has been estimated to run over one million servers in data centers around the world, and process over one billion search requests and about twenty-four petabytes of user-generated data every day. As of September 2009 Alexa listed the main U.S.-focused google.com site as the Internet's most visited website, and numerous international Google sites as being in the top hundred, as well as several other Googleowned sites such as YouTube, Blogger and Orkut. Google also ranks number two in the BrandZ brand equity database. The dominant market position of Google's services has led to criticism of the company over issues including privacy, copyright, and censorship. MICROSOFT VS GOOGLE In Google's first decade online, Google and Microsoft didn't seem to be the kind of companies that would compete directly with each other. Google's main product is an Internet search engine and the company's revenue comes from ad sales. Microsoft's main products are an operating system, office productivity suite and other software. Where's the conflict?

Today, there are several points where Microsoft and Google cross paths. The two have taken each other on in their native product categories, and expanded into new markets as well. Microsoft's direct competitor attempt is a search engine called Bing. Microsoft launched Bing in 2009 as a step above its Live Search and MSN search engines. Its features are similar in look, feel, and function to Google's search. It hasn't boomed in the marketplace yet, though: As of February 2010, Nielsen reported that Microsoft search engines (Bing, Live Search, and MSN) all shared a mere 12.5 percent of online searches, nowhere near Google's whopping 65 percent [source: Nielsen]. It's still not close, even if you add in Microsoft's new 10-year search engine partner Yahoo, at 14 percent. Google has made an attempt to compete with Microsoft's Office software suite with its Web-based productivity software called Google Docs. Google Docs includes a word processor, spreadsheet application, slideshow presentation maker, and even a form builder and drawing tools, all with the portability of access from any Web browser. It also makes it easy to collaborate with others on a project, with the ability for both users to edit the same document, even at the same time. Google Docs is not as robust and feature-rich as Microsoft Office software, though, and depends on Google for privacy and availability. Microsoft fired back at Google with Office Live Workspace (OLW), free online collaboration versions of its Microsoft Office products. OLW readily works with files in proprietary Microsoft Office formats for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Plus, the SkyDrive gives you 25 GB of space in which to store files [source: Microsoft]. But Microsoft didn't just put OLW together overnight; it leveraged the power

of its well-established (though costly) SharePoint software to create the new free Web service [source: Foley]. Both Google and Microsoft have mobile operating system platforms. Yet neither company is close to overtaking the iPhone from Apple, which has close to 60 percent of the market [source: Quant cast]. However, Google Android is also growing rapidly, and it already has twice the share of Windows Mobile [source: Net Applications]. Will Windows Mobile survive? Microsoft is cleverly looking past Android and taking aim directly at the iPhone in promoting its Windows Phone 7, to be released in late 2010. Besides the mobile platforms, both Google and Microsoft offer Webbased e-mail platforms. Both are investing millions of dollars into cloud computing solutions. And both recognize the growing importance of the Internet for the average consumer. Google may have an advantage over Microsoft because it's a Web-based company; however, Microsoft has decades of experience in application development and consumer research. Let's look at some of the strengths and weaknesses of each company.

GOOGLE AND MICROSOFT STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES

One advantage Google may have over Microsoft is public perception. Part of Google's philosophy is "you can make money without doing evil" [source: Google]. Google has built a reputation on innovation and customer service. The company's headquarters -- the Googolplex -- is famous for its unique amenities and offices.

Microsoft had a similar reputation. But after years of dominating the operating system marketplace, Microsoft has become the establishment. Microsoft has received brutal criticism for some of its releases over the years, including problems with stability, security and compatibility. Windows ME and Windows Vista both made bad first impressions. Though Microsoft released patches to address many of those problems, many people had already decided to avoid them. Fortunately for Microsoft, it's retained some respect with releases that have left a more positive impression, like Windows XP and Windows 7. Google's position on the Web is solid. According to the analysis firm Efficient Frontier, Google held 75 percent of the search engine advertisement market in first quarter 2010. Gmail, Google's Web-based e-mail shows steady growth, up 27 percent from 2009 to 2010, while the reigning Yahoo Mail is losing ground [source: Saint and Angel ova]. In addition to its search engine, Google offers consumers online productivity software, video and photo sharing services and mapping applications. Google has worked its way into the OS market with its mobile platform Android and its Web-based OS project Chromium. However, it doesn't produce many desktop applications that can stand alone without Internet connectivity. Microsoft has a much stronger hold on the desktop application market. Beside the Windows OS, Microsoft produces the Office suite of productivity software, software for computer servers and the Web browser Internet Explorer. Another important Microsoft product is its line of Xbox consoles and games. The video game market is one area of strength for Microsoft that Google has yet to touch.

If consumers begin to buy inexpensive machines with limited processing power, Google will have an advantage. That's because almost all of its products are Web services. The only piece of software you need to access most of Google's services is a Web browser. As mentioned earlier, Google introduced its own Chrome browser that jumped to the third-largest market share quickly. The Chrome browser may pave the way for the Web-based Chrome OS to become a viable OS competitor. If consumers decide that they prefer to buy the latest and greatest computer hardware, Microsoft has the advantage. Their products tend to have more features because they rely on the computer's native processing power to run. Web services tend to be less complex -- not because the computers running the applications are less powerful, but because broadband speeds aren't fast enough for an ideal consumer experience in many cases.

CONCLUSION On the basis of above discussion it can be safely deduced that the competition between the two will be persisting for a longer period of time which is not going to end any time soon.Where Google has a larger market share in web browsing and is the biggest internet portal, Microsoft has a much stronger hold on the desktop application market.Only the time can tell who will over whom.