Word: microsoft
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...assumption about Google's prospects is that the search company is the next Microsoft. Twenty years ago, Microsoft had the hot hand. Sales of Windows and the company's business and server software were stunning. The margins on some of Microsoft's software franchises were over 70%. Then the hyper-growth stopped as the company's market penetration of PCs and servers reached a saturation point. Microsoft's stock never saw the level it hit in 2000 again. Without lucrative stock options, employees who wanted to make it rich moved to start-ups. The people who had been...
...About seven years after Microsoft's stock hit an all-time high, Google traded at $747, its peak. It now changes hands at $348, and if the company's sales can only grow at 10% or 15%, the stock is not going back above $700, ever. The myth about companies like Microsoft and Google is that what they do is so important to business and consumers and so pervasive that the growth curve never flattens out. It does flatten at every company. No exceptions...
...capital arm which will make it the 1,000th largest venture operation in the world. In other words, it will not be managing enough venture money to matter. Then word came out that Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) might use Google's operating system in some of its netbooks instead of Microsoft Windows. The important word in that report is "might." The news that Google is adding thousands of employees a quarter and that the founders have bought a 747 or an aircraft carrier probably hit a high point two years...
...Saying that Google is doing poorly is not the same as saying that Microsoft is doing well. What matters to Microsoft is that Google becomes less of a threat each day as it fails in its diversification attempts. Google's cash flow does not continue to give it an almost limitless capital arsenal. Google has to consider cutting people in areas which will never be profitable. The entire ethos at Google is in the process of changing. Microsoft may be in third place in the search business, but it is in first place in software, which is still the larger...
...Investors still ask Microsoft why it is in the video game business. There is not any reasonable answer. It is an awful business with poor margins. It has nothing to do with selling Windows. There may have been some idea that being in the hardware business would help the software business, but, if so, that idea didn't work out a long time...