if (Microsoft > Google) then Surprise++

[Rick Law]

In terms of market cap, Microsoft edged pass Google to the number 3 slot on May 29.  Some time ago when Google passed Microsoft, most expected Microsoft will never regain the lead.

$923 Apple
$782 Amazon
$753 Microsoft
$739 Alphabet (Google parent)
^{($ in billion USD)}

* These are Fortune Magazine numbers reported May 30, 2018 (link below).  Microsoft first surpassed Alphabet on May 29 as evaluated by CNBC.  I was waiting a bit to see if it sinks back.
Fortune Magazine article link:
^{http://fortune.com/2018/05/30/microsoft-surpasses-google-value/}

While Amazon is second only to Apple, it is interesting to note that Apple made more profit in three months than Amazon has generated during its lifetime, as least according to another CNBC article.

Article title: "Apple made more profit in three months than Amazon has generated during its lifetime" by Tae Kim.  May 11, 2018.
^{https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/11/apple-made-more-profit-in-three-months-than-amazon-has-generated-during-its-lifetime.html}

[bd139]

Amazon doesn’t operate to generate profit. That’s one of the weird things about it.

For Microsoft this is temporary. The only thing that is selling well is office 365 and the incumbent enterprise price hikes and buggering that is going on have bolstered this. Developers and enterprise are running away fast from this. Windows 10 is only doing well because it was free. Most of their estate doesn’t actually work very well either as automation and devops is the game there and they are so late to that party as usual that they are almost irrelevant.

Also most of the shitty data driven business models are being killed by GDPR this year as well.

Exciting times. Who knows what’s going to happen?

My bets are on AWS rising, enterprise sector arse falling out, cloud confidence declining based on data/privacy/GDPR outcomes and people generally having no idea what the future holds. Dev will shift more to Linux due to automation, cost and time to market improvements. Office and windows will be on the desktop until most people over the age of 45 now have snuffed it.

[Kjelt]

I don't agree. This has been said for over 20 years and it does not work out.
The change for IT costs for a large company to change from MS to Linux and all the automated processes, like SW installment, company software portals etc, outweigh the operational costs by a large number.
What I get from the IT guys is that MS is a company that gives good customer support when something fails. With an OS as Linux you have to wait till someone finds time to fix it or they won't because no-one else has a problem with it. The commercial Linux companies are too small to support thousands of large international operating companies.
MS is here to stay IMO, they goofed up with Win8 and the wrong way Steve Balmer thought it should go, but regained with Win10 which I find the best OS they ever made. Even the highest expecting users, the 24/7 gamers are positive, which is quite a difference from years back.

The only thing that could interfere IMO is if Apple were to ask decent prices for their computers. Instead of making them tiny, having only one socket (what idiot made that decision) , and priced in the ultra luxury Louis Vuiton and Prada pricerange while offering an obsolete slow performing POS, they could make a difference.

[bd139]

Haha MS good support. Doesn’t exist. Seriously I spend hours a week on critical cases from them where we’ve had production kit fail. Historically that was true but most of partner support have bailed out to go private consultancy or moved to google, QA has gone down the shitter and genuinely we have no support on some of the larger products. Then there’s the blame game between the hardware and software vendor (HPE vs MSFT). We have two high end HP blade machines we can’t provision for SQL server because of a bitch fight between the two.

Windows 10 is proving to be a compliance nightmare in some circles.

Have you had red hat support? It’s amazing. We build back office and network software so it makes sense to push it out with python and RHEL now. We’ll never use it on the desktop though.

Apple make fine desktops. I think most of our dev team have them or Hp desktops now.

[Kjelt]

Just to recap my point: Multi billion $ companies don't shift that easily or it already would have taken place years ago when it was much worse. Didn't happen back then why would it now?

[bd139]

They do actually. The market has merely got larger. MSFT have failed to take on a lot of it and are still hanging onto a shrinking section of it. To hang onto this they are forcing people into subscriptions with a higher TCO and people aren’t stupid.  One trick pony.

Bear in mind I owe the last 20 years of my income mainly to them, I’m not going to bet my future on them at this point.

[Kjelt]

The whole sw industry is going towards subscription.

For normal SW I really object to it because if you don't need any new features you are still blead dry, each month they collect, for what?

For an OS that needs to update against security threads and fix weaknesses you want to keep on updating.

[BBBbbb]

It’s my impression that the subscription model is more appealing to the big companies, easier and more stable financial projections.
Also in big systems I’ve heard of more shifts from some IBM stuff to MS, than away from MS.
Exchange seems to be doing well.
I’m not directly in the IT stuff bu from what I see MS is doing well.
W10 sucks, but business line computers are still supported with drivers for W7, and switch from MS to linux is too expensive, I’m sure big companies can negotiate a custom tailored W10 for their needs, w/o all the BS MS packs in it.
MS has local offices in probably every country with (good or bad) support, but they are present everywhere and globally wise they are way superior to any other vendor.

[Rick Law]

Haha MS good support. Doesn’t exist. Seriously I spend hours a week on critical cases from them where we’ve had production kit fail. Historically that was true but most of partner support have bailed out to go private consultancy or moved to google, QA has gone down the shitter and genuinely we have no support on some of the larger products. Then there’s the blame game between the hardware and software vendor (HPE vs MSFT). We have two high end HP blade machines we can’t provision for SQL server because of a bitch fight between the two.

Windows 10 is proving to be a compliance nightmare in some circles.

Have you had red hat support? It’s amazing. We build back office and network software so it makes sense to push it out with python and RHEL now. We’ll never use it on the desktop though.

Apple make fine desktops. I think most of our dev team have them or Hp desktops now.

I agree with you about MS support.  But I think death of MS is not going to come from Linux or another desktop OS.  I believe MS's OS business today is going to be history sooner or later because most real corporate data processing is going back to central with employees using thin client.  OS may remain MS's offering but will be a much smaller part of MS.

Desktop is going to be the niche market of gamers and someone who really wants a computer they can control.  This may be at most 1/10 of today's personal computer market.  The cloud doesn't matter either.  For the vast majority on their thin clients, they wouldn't know if their company IT uses a private or public cloud, or if they even use one at all.

For MS to continue, they have to provide business services.  They may be moving more towards Amazon's and Google's turf.

Those (above) are my views.  Here is some real-world events (below):

Actually, MS have another big opening right now that Google is giving up on because of employee objections. (as reported by UPI) ...About 4,000 Google employees asked the technology giant to cancel the contract in a signed petition... ...Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene told employees [ about Project Maven contract with US Pentagon (AI to do drone footage analysis) ] will be let to expire [ in 2019 ]...   ..."Other tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft have pursued Pentagon contracts without backlash", per NY Times' report...
(RL: stuff in square brackets are added by me to make the quotes understandable without reading the whole article)


Above from UPI:
Google will let its AI contract with the Pentagon expire after backlash, June 2 (UPI)
^{https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2018/06/02/Google-will-let-its-AI-contract-with-the-Pentagon-expire-after-backlash/6601527949026/}