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Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

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Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#101

Post by yarrel »

rb808 wrote: post #5

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.

Yes Azure's user experience isn't going to persuade anyone to choose it over the alternatives. It's a me-too offering that behaves like a compromise between internal factions.

Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#102

Post by frandroid »

oculusthrift wrote: post #62
jobu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with most of your points, this one seems arguable: > Microsoft Excel remains the default lingua franca of business. Google Docs and Spreadsheets has not replaced Office. Google Docs, Sheets and Slides have taken over the education market from elementary school through college, and for many businesses Google's offerings have become interchangeable with Microsoft's. Outlook and Excel still have a strong h…

I agree with your comment but as it stands the business market is MUCH larger than the education market. Most schools don’t use either or don’t pay much. Schools are seen as essentially a small vertical in the extremely large market. Just think of all the companies who pay for 20,000 microsoft licenses. A lot of the market you describe is free.

The education market is important to recruit future customers though.

Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#104

Post by tonyedgecombe »

radarsat1 wrote: post #97
Semaphor wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, MS just uses some Dark Pattern (at least on home) to make it seem that way. The link to make a local account is not obvious.

> Nope, MS just uses some Dark Pattern (at least on home) to make it seem that way. The link to make a local account is not obvious. I don't know how to prove it, maybe i should have taken a photo (but who cares right), but the link was not dark, it was _not there_. I was able to make a local account and switch to it after installation, but I was not able to completely the installation without a Microsoft account. Yo…

It’s very easy to miss, I’ve had to search around for it.

Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#105

Post by pjmlp »

jobu wrote: post #18
lkrubner wrote: post #3

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: 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 d…

While I agree with most of your points, this one seems arguable: > Microsoft Excel remains the default lingua franca of business. Google Docs and Spreadsheets has not replaced Office. Google Docs, Sheets and Slides have taken over the education market from elementary school through college, and for many businesses Google's offerings have become interchangeable with Microsoft's. Outlook and Excel still have a strong h…

> Google Docs, Sheets and Slides have taken over the education market from elementary school through college

Which market? Surely not in Europe.

Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#106

Post by odonnellryan »

eddieplan9 wrote: post #66
tlarkworthy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google Play are unprofitable. ??? https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/05/app-revenue-climbed-35-per... $20B in revenue.

sales != revenue. with the 30% commission, it would be at most $6B. From http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/01/technology/google-earnings/i... : > Alphabet posted nearly $15 billion in sales for the year from Google's "other revenues," which include cloud services and hardware products, like the Pixel phones and Google Home smart speakers.

Even $6B is extremely far from the unprofitable claim.

Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#107

Post by pjmlp »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #86
outside1234 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stock market doesn't care about users, it cares about profits. Android and Chrome and Google Play are unprofitable.

I believe the Oracle lawsuit showed that Android and Google Play are both quite profitable. Contrary to popular belief, Android is not free. You can download and install AOSP for free, but "full" Android including the Google apps, Google Play Services and the Google Play store cost real money. And Google has sold billions of those. They might not charge much, but when you multiply by a few billion it can still end up…

On the contrary, by being free beer it means many OEMs avoid paying Java licenses and try to use Android instead, thus diluting the Java brand.

So it is not about the profit Android brings to Google, rather the money Oracle looses by OEMs not paying for licenses.

Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#108

Post by adventured »

wonder_bread wrote: post #4

Kind of interesting to see Microsoft & Amazon 'passing by' Google lately, considering how much more earning power they have than either of them. 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. Meanwhile, if Google decided to go full-profit last year they would've had on the order of $42B.

That's not a very good accounting comparison.

If Microsoft had zeroed out their R&D last quarter, they'd have produced $12 billion in operating income. Your $35b figure includes a fluke quarter.

Microsoft's trailing four quarters figure, with R&D zeroed out, will jump to ~$47 billion once the present quarter is reported. Google's trailing four quarters figure will be similar, around ~$48 billion, assuming their present quarter is close to the prior three (which are at about $36b together, with R&D zeroed out).

Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#109

Post by zpallin »

lkrubner wrote: post #3

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: 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 d…

> Google essentially has just one, and it’s based on diminishing user privacy to the maximum extent possible.

You seem to be defending Proven, so why do you think this is correct?

Google does not have just one single product. It may have only one "profitable" product through direct sales (adsense) but Google offers many popular services, Gmail, Google Hangouts, Google Drive, Google Play, 8.8.8.8, GCP to name a few. Not to mention, Google is the driving force behind a number of open source technologies, such as Android, Kubernetes, Golang.

The funny thing about this is that I don't really care about defending Google against Microsoft. I just think it's strange that you, nor Proven, are trying to be factual about this.

Re: Microsoft is now worth more than Alphabet

#110

Post by meuk »

Analemma_ wrote: post #85
oculusthrift wrote: post #73

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: http://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/cotd52602.png Google is literally just Ads whereas Microsoft is very evenly spread. If it lost one area itd be fine in the others. I think people have an exposure bias where they can onl…

HN in general has an info bubble problem, where it looks to them like Microsoft is dying because trendy Bay Area startups all use Slack and Google Docs. But in the rest of the industry, Microsoft is huge and, if anything, getting stronger over time and not weaker. Microsoft products that HN has never even heard of, like Dynamics and Host Integration Server, still make billions in revenue.

Just wanted to add this. My perspective is skewed because my consultancy firm focusses on Microsoft, but most of the companies I've seen use TFS, C#, VS Enterprise, SQL Server, Skype for Business, and Azure (and usually git and Angular as well, as non-Microsoft technologies).

.NET Core has a lot of momentum, and a lot of people like the new approach, which seems to be to move faster and to break backwards compatibility.

Ironically, I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, but I can see how using almost exclusively Microsoft products helps integration.

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