Microsoft surpasses Exxon as second most valuable company | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft surpasses Exxon as second most valuable company

washingtonpost.com

11 pointsandrewfong7 comments

I used to follow stocks more in college and had a pretty good idea of market caps of the Dow components. I remember that MS was always near the top.

Then I tuned out for 12 years. (I came to believe the stock market was a rigged insider's game, but that's another story.) Given how badly they've been managed during that time and the explosion of mobile, I assumed Microsoft had dropped not only out of the top spot but out of the top ten, probably worse.

Nope. Never dropped below 6th worldwide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by_...

That's just astounding to me. Google has done almost everything right since its founding, dominating the Internet wave (and a massive portion of online advertising), grabbing a huge chunk of the mobile revolution and getting its tentacles in almost every area of disruption... and yet for all of the success and raw brainpower, batting as close to 1000 as a company possibly can for 15 years, they still haven't eclipsed Microsoft, which bumbled its way through the 2000s in embarrassing fashion. Very hard to comprehend.

From a business perspective, Microsoft also did almost everything right[1] for 15 - 20 years, and for as much bumbling they did during the 2000's, they still maintained a few strategic advantages:

1. SQL Server

2. Sharepoint

3. XBox/Live

4. Exchange (one of the earliest demands by corporate iPhone users was ActiveSync)

5. Live/Bing

6. Office (mostly Excel)

7. Lots of cash

[1] Or their competitors screwed up.

I mostly agree with this with some additions/deletions:

0. Windows. Everything else flows from the monopoly, including Office/Excel.

Remove #3, Xbox is not a big money maker for them, IIRC. Remove #5, Live/Bing are a joke, unless I'm misunderstanding what Live is.

Funny, neither one of us mentioned IE, which was dominant for a long time.

The Xbox division makes over $8.5B/year in revenue and is the 4th largest division after Office, Windows, and Server.

I'm sure MSFT has been disappointed with the profits they've seen from Xbox due to the repair charges and higher royalties and sales costs than expected. On the other hand, they earn a ton of revenue from Xbox and have Microsoft products in tens of millions of households.

I elided Windows because it required too much exposition. As a platform, it also entails a bunch of strategic liabilities, and I'm not sure how everything cancels. At least Office/Excel, Exchange, Sharepoint, SQL Server, et. al. can be ported to other platforms.

XBox is not a big money maker, but neither was Amazon for a long time. Investors also care about potential.

Bing will probably turn out to be a strategic advantage: If Google creates or dominates new markets, it's going to have competitors who will not want to use its search engine and other online services, case in point: Apple.

8. Visual Studio and C#/F#.

It is kind of surprising. I guess it goes to show how powerful dominating the os market has been.

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