Microsoft has finally had to abdicate its throne to Google; the Internet giant has surpassed Microsoft’s market capitalization to take second place among technology companies. Only Apple sits above the two, though it has more market capitalization than Google and Microsoft combined. If nothing else, this finally does confirm that the Internet is serious business, especially for a company in the technology sector.
Businessweek explains:
Google rose 0.7 percent to $759.98 at 11:13 a.m. in New York, for a market capitalization of about $249.2 billion. Microsoft, the world’s biggest software maker, fell 0.3 percent to $29.67, about a $248.7 billion valuation.
The milestone follows Google’s rise from a search-engine invented by two Stanford University students into an advertising powerhouse that makes the world’s most used mobile operating system and tool for digging up information on the Web. It also reflects the ascension of the Internet as the delivery channel for more of the software and computing tasks that were once left to the Microsoft-dominated PC industry.
Obviously, the market is always volatile. This might change, or it might not. The most likely course, however, will see Google continue to rise faster than Microsoft, which means that the search engine behemoth might never be caught. That’s all just speculation, though. Maybe Bing will suddenly become relevant.
(via Businessweek, image via 401(K) 2012)
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