

Google Passes Microsoft’s Market Value as PC Loses to Web - joshma
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-01/google-passes-microsoft-s-market-value-as-pc-loses-to-web

======
martythemaniak
I think Google has a kind of purpose and drive which will take it very very
far.

They want to "organize the world's information", but that's less than half the
story - an even bigger challenge is making all this information not only
understandable and usable to humans but making it all work seamlessly together
- a monumental task they are barely getting started at.

Unrelated (but necessary) they also seem to be doing very well at the
organizational aspect of absorbing new ideas and companies and integrating
them into themselves.

~~~
kmfrk
There is a lot I don't like about Google, but Google Maps, Project Glass, and
the automated cars are nothing but inspiring.

Just the fact that they transported us to other countries so everyone with an
internet connection could go to Paris is laudable. And now they're going to
explore the final frontier of Earth underwater.

After iPhone and iPad, like them or not, Google is the one of the "big"
companies the most involved in inventing the future.

~~~
nsmartt
Though Glass is amazing, it will give a whole new meaning to tracking user
information.

As you get information regarding what you're seeing, Google is logging
everything you see.

A map with with a line detailing everywhere you've been over the course of
years. A video displaying everything you saw on your real trip to Paris or
wherever else-- not based on what you saw that day, but based on the
information Google has about that area, those landmarks, etc.

Privacy could cease to exist while you're wearing Google Glass.

~~~
tomkarlo
Recording alone is doesn't equate to a loss of privacy. If you kept detailed
written notes on everywhere you go, as long as those notes don't get disclosed
to anyone else, you haven't lost any privacy.

Taking a paranoid and oversimplified approach to privacy makes it's more
difficult to have the complex, nuanced discussions necessary to actually
protect privacy in meaningful ways.

~~~
nsmartt
I don't agree with your accusation of paranoia.

Keeping detailed notes on everywhere you go isn't something that would be done
as lightly as putting on a pair of glasses. You would consider the
implications of the existence of that data before keeping it. With something
like Glass, that part of the process gets skipped.

The argument for trusting Google with your data is that their privacy policy
keeps your data safe. I don't doubt that Google has the best of intentions,
but that doesn't mean my data is safe. A snooping employee, a change in policy
that isn't necessarily over the line but isn't comforting either, security
breaches, subpoenas (in the spirit of
[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/8/twitter-
fight...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/8/twitter-fights-
subpoena-in-nyc-occupy-arrest-case/)). There are a lot of ways that having
that data in someone else's pocket can backfire.

Yes, it would be fine if there were some guarantee that no one could ever see
my data. There isn't. It was not my intention to oversimplify anything. The
last thing I want is to cause damage to the cause.

Edit: grammar

~~~
tomkarlo
It's not paranoid when you include the caveats, as you do here. But to simply
say that "Privacy could cease to exist while you're wearing Google Glass" is
fear mongering, or paranoia. That statement is both staggerly broad in nature
and at the same time, unqualified.

At least Google Glass is an _opt-in_ form of monitoring and observation. If
you don't want to wear it, you don't have to. If you want to take it off, you
can. Those aspects alone mean it's a lot less worrisome than existing, and
much more involuntary, invasions of our privacy.

~~~
xibernetik
Opt-in for the user, but not opt-in for the people around them. I don't get to
choose to not be recorded. Compounded with modern law stating if you're in
public, you can be legally recorded, and that it's already difficult enough as
is to explain to people you'd rather they not tag you as being at a location
or to take photos and instantly upload them... It's really worrisome. The only
reason it isn't is because it's not popular.

If you "have nothing to hide", it's not a big deal. If you're fighting for
custody of your child, transgender, gay, a targeted minority, visit a
psychologist regularly, or even just happen to do a few things one day that
could be misconstrued, all of a sudden, the potential of it taking off becomes
a very big deal - sometimes much more so than current privacy issues.

~~~
tomkarlo
In that respect it's no different from the hundreds of security cameras most
of us pass by each day. If you're doing something in the presence of someone
else's view, and you know they're pointing a camera of any type at you, it's
hard to argue you have an expectation of privacy.

It's really hard to point at Glass and say it's materially different from the
broad array of recording devices already out there. If you're someone trying
to avoid being recorded, those are a much bigger problem - they're pervasive,
generally have better viewpoints (can see more total area) and often have
built-in illumination as well.

------
YokoZar
Alternative headline: Google passes Microsoft's market value as Microsoft
gives gobs of cash to shareholders rather than hold onto it to inflate market
value.

Still, it's a significant thing I suppose. But we tend to ignore the cash
position of companies in stories like this. If Google suddenly paid out 100
billion to shareholders tomorrow then it's market value would rightly drop by
about 100 billion, but that wouldn't mean Microsoft was suddenly winning
again.

------
ChuckMcM
Funny APPL has a market cap (624B) that is bigger than Google (248) and
"wintel" (248 + 115 = 363) _combined_.

Seriously, that Google has lapped the larger part of what was the Microsoft /
Intel juggernaut of the last century is notable of course, but I wonder if its
the wrong question.

~~~
Timothee
Tiny correction since I see this mistake often (and I was making it myself in
the past): the symbole for Apple is AAPL, not APPL. Not intuitive like Apple
is supposed to be, huh? :)

~~~
rbanffy
You can blame NASDAQ for that, not Apple ;-)

------
cma
They haven't quite done it on a dividend-adjusted basis yet though.

------
JumpCrisscross
Weak signal given the size of the companies and their volatilities.

Let's observe the quoted, albeit stale, Google market capitalisation of $249.2
billion with a current vega-weighted mean implied volatility (market's opinion
of what Google's volatility will be) of 31.12% and the quoted Microsoft market
cap of $248.7 billion with an IV index of 22.51%. The question is, assuming
these two Gaussian random variables vary independently [1], what is the
probability that GOOG is still bigger than MSFT in one year? The answer is a
_hair_ above 50%. Plugging in $249.65 billion for Google and $248.02 billion
for Microsoft (closer to present values) this probability rises closer to 51%.

Conclusion: insufficient evidence that this is more than random market
jittering just yet.

[1] If this were more than a quick, stylised analysis I'd construct a
covariance matrix or copula to describe the dependency structure. Given the
razor thin odds, however, it is unlikely that correlation will help the OP's
case too much.

~~~
paul
It's still a rather remarkable milestone. In a relatively short amount of
time, the #1 "unstoppable" company in tech was passed by both it's smaller
competitor (Apple) and an entirely new company (Google).

~~~
nostrademons
It makes me wonder if both Apple and Google will, in a relatively short amount
of time, be surpassed by a company that doesn't exist yet.

------
bencxr
Yet another "market value defines losing/winning" article between 2 products
that don't even compete.

------
zmmmmm
It's funny to call it "PC loses to Web" when MS doesn't actually make the PC
but the software that _runs_ on the PC. Whether you use Google or Microsoft,
you are using a "PC" in the terms of the article. One might say that it is
more about a three way contest where MS is losing mainly to Apple, depressing
their price down lower than Google, and Google is going up for other reasons.

To the extent it is about Google, this is really about commoditization of
software : Google is commodotizing the whole OS into the (free) browser. They
are commodotizing office software into free Google Apps. They are showing that
if you do it at scale and over the web you can operate at such efficiency that
you basically give people all this stuff Microsoft charges for and still make
huge amounts of money from the advertising revenue, or you can have pay model
where the costs are an order of magnitude less than what MS needs to survive
in its current form.

------
jebblue
1) PC stands for Personal Computer. It is not synonymous with Microsoft or
Windows. Personal Computer.

2) The web is useless with out Personal Computers or personal computing
devices such as smart phones so the web hasn't lost to the PC and the PC
hasn't lost to the web, they need each other.

------
mtgx
Google's long time dream of becoming a bigger company than Microsoft is
becoming real.

------
debacle
That's something of a non sequitur, I would think.

------
EGreg
I guess search is a business after all :)

------
recoiledsnake
PC loses to Web _ads_ is more likely.

I think Google's got better at getting people to click on ads. For example,
one of the following is a search result and the other is an ad. How many
people can differentiate between them on various monitors?

<http://i.imgur.com/Wmdd0.png>

I remember the time when Google differentiated itself by clearly marking ads,
now it's no longer true for high value keywords.

~~~
jamesaguilar
It's quite clear to me which is which just from the color differences. You
also cut the "ads related mesothelioma (?)" at the top of the section, which
should make it even more clear. And there's the fact that people who
understand the difference have already learned where Google ads are on the
page.

~~~
r3m6
Every HN reader knows that. But "normal" web users do not know it (anymore?).
Every so often I see some anecdotal evidence of that when I watch people doing
searches.

~~~
jamesaguilar
There are limits to the amount of due diligence companies should have to do to
ensure that people know they are clicking on ads. Anyone who is _interested_
in avoiding clicking on ads will easily identify Google's, or not see them at
all via a software solution. For the rest, there's not much short of an
acknowledgement overlay that will get the message across reliably (for text
ads -- image ads are easier, but google doesn't have them).

~~~
cooldeal
>There are limits to the amount of due diligence companies should have to do
to ensure that people know they are clicking on ads.

There are also limits on disguising search results as ads.

>For the rest, there's not much short of an acknowledgement overlay that will
get the message across reliably (for text ads -- image ads are easier, but
google doesn't have them)

Really? Just increasing the contrast or adding a border around the border or
using extra spacing as a separator or another separator can help a lot. But
it's hard to make changes that hurt the bottom line. Changing it the opposite
way is much easier. Google has a lot of UI and UX experts and I don't think
the changes are accidental at all. In fact, they must be very carefully
planned.

Edit: Found an old screenshot where the difference is much more apparent.

<http://www.jensense.com/archives/adsensehijack.gif>

~~~
jamesaguilar
Basically, clutter up the page more? Facebook has no background, nor do Yahoo!
(front page) or Reddit (sidebar). Bing's and Yahoo!'s SERPs and Reddit's
sponsored link are near Google's in terms of contrast and signage. Although
Reddit opts for a border but conflates ad space with space that is used to
promote results algorithmically, because it's not sufficiently confusing I
guess. In terms of HN darlings, DuckDuckGo is actually worse (approximately
the same contrast, "Sponsored result" doublespeak rather than just calling a
spade a spade). You're asking Google to follow a standard of behavior that
none of the other major sites I visit reach.

In terms of industry norms, Google is about as good as it gets. Maybe you feel
that's not enough, and I guess that's a qualitative judgment that you're free
to make. People will differ on things like this occasionally :P. I'd ask for
some kind of harm analysis at the very least before I accept that there's
anything untoward going on.

