⚔️ The Silent War Between Microsoft and Google
Issue 30 - Technology
Microsoft and Google are both one of the most valuable companies in the world! Some may think of Google as a search engine company, and Microsoft as a company that sells software to businesses. The truth is that they are very similar in a lot of ways, so much so that they kind of compete against each other. So this article is going to be about the competition happening between the two tech giants. Make sure to like, share, and subscribe! NOTE: From next week onwards, I will be switching platforms from Substack to Medium. This is for some added benefits for me and my readers. I have already imported your email to the new platform, so everything should be ready to go. I have released this issue on Medium as well, so you may have two articles in your inbox. You can find my new homepage here.
History
Google was invented in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Their motive to found Google was, to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful as their mission statement says today. Google was kind of like the next generation of Yahoo, because back in the day, Yahoo was an internet directory of people’s most used websites. It was like a webpage with easy access to others, but you had to scroll down and find the website you were looking for. Google comes along and makes a new and faster way to do this called the search engine. At the time, this technology wasn’t really heard of. Yahoo was falling behind at this point, and Google came to Yahoo and asked to buy them out for 50,000 dollars (about a hundred grand in today’s money). Yahoo declined this offer and went on with their own business, but had this offer gone through, you may be watching content on Yahoo Videos or something instead of YouTube. Anyways, Yahoo was declining, so they struck a deal with Google to integrate their search engine into Yahoo. This worked in the short-term, but Google was gaining market share with Yahoo losing theirs. Currently, Sundar Pichai is the CEO of Google and its parent company Alphabet.
Microsoft was founded in 1975 by two childhood friends named Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Both these people were heavily invested in the company as Allen quit his job as a programmer in Boston, and Gates dropped out of Harvard. Their purpose was to build software for an early personal computer named the Altair 8800. They based the company in Albuquerque, New Mexico, because the computer manufacturer’s headquarters was also located there. Microsoft sales topped more than one million dollars by the end of 1978, and the business moved to Bellevue Washington which was a suburb of Seattle where the two co-founders grew up. Microsoft then licensed its “MS-DOS” operating system for IBM to use on their first personal computers which came out in 1981. Other companies also started to adopt this software for their computers. This operating system provided no graphical interface and fully relied on commands to run.
In 1985 Microsoft Windows was announced as the successor to MS-DOS which featured a graphical interface with a drop-down menu, scroll bar, and other features. The company then relocated again in 1989 moving to Redmond, Washington. They also went public later that year going for 21 dollars a share, and the company was able to raise about 61 million dollars! By the late 1980s, Microsoft had become the biggest personal computer software company, at least by sales numbers. Currently, Satya Nadella is the CEO of Microsoft and is credited with reviving the company after some stagnant years they had in the mid-2010s.
Competitive Areas
Both of these companies have evolved over the years to the point where the two companies have almost identical services to one another. Google has Google Docs, and Microsoft has Microsoft Word. Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint. Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, and these are just to name a few. This leaves the consumer with a choice to make. They can either go with Microsoft’s suite of products or Google’s. Most scaled businesses tend to use Microsoft Office as it’s more widely used in the professional space, and it has a lot more solutions to tightly integrate your business. Google has been getting better with its products like product management and collaboration, but it’s not close to Microsoft’s level. One of the reasons Microsoft has an edge is that they have a long history of developing software to be used commercially. Google started as a search engine which is not as useful when doing business-related things. Small startups are using Google products for their business, mostly because it’s more affordable, and they most likely won’t need all the features that Microsoft will have to offer. So it’s clear that Microsoft is winning over Google in the business space. What about people who need services for personal use?
By the way, if you are enjoying this article, please be sure to share and subscribe. I have a promotion going on which allows new and existing subscribers to get a 1-month free trial to Skillshare (the best place to learn any new skill).
Solo creators or people who need things for personal use will generally use Google products. This is mainly because of Google’s “wide arms” approach because, unlike Microsoft, Google gives the user 15 GB of cloud storage and free use of all their services like Google Docs. Of course, once they exceed this limit, the consumer will have to upgrade. Microsoft on the other hand gives you five gigabytes of cloud storage and the limited functionality of their products like Microsoft Word. Google most likely does this to form a good relationship between the company and the user by offering more free tools in the hopes that the user will become a paid subscriber later. In this case, the tables are turned with Google gaining the W.
Another major thing is software. Microsoft started as a software company and that is its core even to this day. Microsoft Windows is the most popular computing software in the world. It has the most compatibility and is very easy to access. Google has also tried to make its own software by launching ChromeOS, which is just a very laid-back version of Windows. It has received plenty of hate over the years, and it’s mainly just for very basic needs, hence why a lot of schools use it especially because of the price. Other than that though, ChromeOS isn’t really useful. Microsoft has a huge advantage in this case.
Browsers are also a very popular topic of discussion between the two companies. Internet Explorer which was invented in 1995, was once the most popular web browser in the world. It was broadly used by most of the internet’s users and had the most traffic, and that was until Google Chrome came along in 2008. Since then Chrome has quickly gained popularity and is now the most popular browser on the internet. I think that this is mainly because of the integration Chrome has with your Google Account and the seamlessness when using Google Services.
Edges In Industries
There are some areas where one of these companies has the other beat. Here are some of the major ones:
Google with YouTube - YouTube is arguably the best/most used social media platform in the world today. The great monetization that creators received has only motivated them further to keep pursuing their careers on the platform and to create content. This is a win-win for the consumer, Google, and creators. The creators get a cut of ad revenue, consumers get good content, and Google gets paid by advertisers.
Microsoft with Xbox - At one point, Sony’s PlayStation was extremely popular and arguably the best console. However since Microsoft entered this industry back in the early 2000s, Sony has had some tough competition. Microsoft has recently acquired Activision Blizzard which has some widely played games, and Microsoft could potentially make the experience much better for Xbox users and worse for others.
Google with Smart Home Products - Google arguably has the best compatibility for consumers to develop their smart home, an area Microsoft hasn’t done much in. It is by far the smartest AI assistant and can be linked to almost any smart home product, making it convenient for the consumer and companies surrounding it who develop accessories.
Google with Phones - Smartphones are what connect us everything in the world today. To text your friends, chat with people or play a game, they have it all. Microsoft has never really had a good attempt in the smartphone software space, but Google has. After acquiring Android in 2005, they have made major leaps in the industry achieving the most popular smartphone operating system as of now, mostly due to its easy access. However this also kind of hurts them as I explain in an article I wrote last week on Apple’s marketing strategies, link to that here. Google has also launched its line of phones which they call the Pixel, which has received tremendous support and reviews from tech enthusiasts. Microsoft tried making their phone called the Surface Duo which ran Android a couple of years back. It was a folding phone with dual displays, but it made a big flop (get it, folding phones and flopping 😀) and is now discontinued without many plans to revolve it.
A New Area of Competition
Microsoft has made a huge leap in features by investing heavily in an AI firm called OpenAI. Since then they have been rolling out ChatGPT (one of the products of OpenAI) into many of their services like Microsoft Edge and Bing. I wrote a more in-depth article about this topic which you can find here. In response, Google unveiled their AI chatbot called Bard around the same time. Both of these products achieve the same goals, and it will be interesting to see how this little war plays out. I think that Google may have an advantage because of their other AI services like Google Assistant and all the data they have, but Microsoft with OpenAI also looks promising with their chatbot since they are already rolling it out.
Thanks for reading this week’s article, and I hope I was able to entertain and inform you about this competition between these two American Tech Giants! I’ll talk to you next week!
—Luke Rapaka