Microsoft is now the most valuable company in the world

In the USA.

 

Your widget factory in East Bolongne is worth 10x that but you aren't selling?

Aramco (Saudi Oil) might be worth more, but at the current price of oil it wouldn't be much and without being publically traded (seems like they have called off an ipo for now) it is hard to know for sure.

Both Apple and Amazon reached a valuation over $1 Trillion earlier this year, but have since fallen. The only other company in the race is Alphabet. ( also in the US).

 

that's cause they hired me

 

Not yet but soon

https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/aapl
Market Cap

817,584,621,420

https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/msft
Market Cap
791,187,865,120

Imagine how much MS would of been worth if they kicked out Ballmer years earlier

 

I'd say its more the anti trust shit that scrwed them. Made them late to too many things.

 

Well the anti trust shit as you call it was warranted. And Google needs a large helping right now as well as most of the rest.

That does not mean I disagree with you. It definitely curtailed them, but it was probably good for society.

 

Was it ? MS got in trouble for their browser bundling. Every single OS shipping right now Andriod , Chrome , IOS , OSX and so on come bundled with a browser. It was all bullshit. But what it did was stop MS from moving into markets because they feared having to deal with the same bull again. Instead of releasing something like the zune earlier they didn't want to do top down hardware to software for a mp3 player and instead they did windows play for sure program while apple stormed the market. With mobile even though they have a successful OS with windows mobile they were afraid to intergrate their own store into it and by the time they launched windows phone os apple took that market too along with android. They even feared including an antivirus program in windows. Even now they allow 3rd party antivirus programs to disable the built in one causing tons of problems .

 

And yes it was better for society. They are still tremendously powerful and much less evil than don't be evil. If they had not been curtailed I shudder to think what the world will is be like. Amazon needs something to happen as well. There is a reason for antitrust regulation. It sucks for Ms that they were the only tech company in the US that actually got hammered but it is better for society in my opinion not to let companies get too large.

 

The problem is, MS is now a worse company than when Ballmer was in charge, at least with regards to Windows stability. Sure, Windows iterates faster, but that means that many things aren't tested as much as they used to be. Hence we had the debacle with the Oct. Windows update.

MS is doing well in the stock market now because the Stock investors on the board finally got what they wanted. A CEO doing the things that are best for investors but not necessarily best for Windows customers.

Products are fast tracked through, but often in half baked shape. Look at how Edge was fast tracked through despite not being ready for prime time. It's been years now, and Edge still lacks significant functionality. Thank goodness they finally implemented right click to search for highlighted terms...after how many years? While fast, it's still not as feature rich or useable as IE. But since IE isn't updated anymore, it's not terribly useable other than with legacy sites. Shame. And you have far less control over security features in Edge than you did in IE, or even the anemic security features that Chrome offers.

Bleh. Where before MS was a very solid company focused on fundamentals, I feel like the current MS, while still highly talented is focused a bit too much on chasing rainbows and unicorns all to the delight of stock brokers and investors, and much to the chagrin of working people like myself.

Regards,
SB

 

is it though?

 

SB I think that stability may have decreased, but things are largely overblown in that respect . I think the bigger problem is MS is giving up on consumers They are afraid of throwing good money after bad. Google flushes money down the toilet for years on things. Investors like Microsoft giving up on things faster but they will end up like IBM soon if they are not careful. MS is small in cloud compared to Amazon despite being large. They have no mobile platform. All the kids raised on Google docs will never bother with office . Chrome books are displacing pcs. I think despite current good financials MS has some serious long term issues. The cloud direction is fine, but they will need more to justify their valuation.

 

Sure they are smaller than Amazon for cloud, but absolutely gigantic compared to Google. There really is only 2 major players in the cloud right now, Amazon and MS.

I wouldn't be too sure on Google docs. One thing I've noticed recently is that Office 365 is free to college students just about everywhere now, even at community colleges. So, they are going after people when they form their document habits, college.

Regards,
SB

 

windows also free for students right? or they removed that? (i got my home-pc windows 7 pro for free thru student account)

 

The 3 highest are so close (Microsoft, Apple and Amazon). It's crazy the amount of perceived value they have.

 

More crazy is the worth of facebook. Though its hard to take some of these valuations seriously, eg Uber being worth more than ford or whatever
Shows how much tech dominates todays industries, 7/10 are tech companies.

most profitable is prolly a more accurate picture
1 Apple United States $48,351.0
2 British American Tobacco United Kingdom $48,327.8
3 Berkshire Hathaway United States $44,940.0
4 Industrial & Commercial Bank of China China $42,323.7
5 Samsung Electronics South Korea $36,575.4
6 China Construction Bank China $35,845.2
7 Verizon United States $30,101.0
8 AT&T United States $29,450.0
9 Agricultural Bank of China China $28,550.4
10 Bank of China China $25,509.2

 

I know that it was just an example, but to remind people who perhaps might not already know this, this is really about total addressable market here, among other things.

For example, Ford has a much smaller TAM than, say, Uber. So it is valued less. Add some fantasy finance shenanigans and yes, Uber has a huge market value. But the reality is that a lot more people will generate revenue for Uber than they would would for Ford, and that's the reality.

Now, having said that, I also agree that some of these tech companies valuations look simply ridiculous. Unfortunately TAM is how venture capitalists invest in new companies, and they like big numbers to justify their investment, so *uber shrug*...

Also, I think this thread belongs to the PC Industry or at least the General forums?

 

Not really. One year of profit can be very misleading.

 

So very proud to be British.