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Microsoft Is Now More Valuable Than Alphabet (cnbc.com)
Microsoft has surged 40 percent over the past 12 months to become more valuable than Alphabet. "As of Tuesday's close, Microsoft was worth $749 billion and Alphabet's market capitalization stood at $739 billion," reports CNBC. From the report: Microsoft's latest rally has been sparked by growth in its cloud computing business, which is bigger than Google's though it still trails Amazon Web Services. In March, Microsoft reorganized its Windows and Devices Group and moved its engineering resources into other units, including one focusing on cloud and artificial intelligence. Both Microsoft and Alphabet beat analysts' expectations in the first quarter. Microsoft still trails behind Apple's market valuation of $923 billion and Amazon's $782 billion market cap.
This seems entirely academic to me. They're about the same size and neither is out for your good.
And the difference seems to be mostly from re-arranging things on paper to boot. Colour me suitably impressed.
Once investors realize their supporting a company which everyone here can see is not going to be around for much longer in any significant way much like IBM. If I had to put my finger on it, it is the updates, it is a public debacle, damages their credibility, but most important it sears a personal note into our brains when some company screws up our precious computers. We hate that, and a company we hate, we do not give money to. A lot of us are finding various ways around microsoft services because of their reputation, they have a browser? Use a different browser (chrome/mozilla/opera)! They have a media player? Use a different media player (vlc)! They have an operating system? Use a different operating system (linux/mac)!
They might be able to keep going in certain business avenues but as far as the personal level goes we are starting the mass switch to linux everyone has been talking about for 2 decades. It is just the critical mass being spun up at this point, kind of like cable cord cutters, cable is going to die there are no two ways about it and the future is going to be streaming, it is not something that it takes a crystal ball to see. Everyone picking up Ubuntu and Mint lately are also not hard to see and it is happening like crazy (again most likely due to those bad updates, we really really really hate having our entire hard drive contents lost, I cannot stress that enough).
If investors really wanted to make some long term investment dosh they'd be taking a look at mint, ubuntu and probably valve for their steam app which is killer in terms of linux games.
HAH, imagine that, no I'm just kidding, there are no investors anymore, ai's are just doing bulk stock transactions and cluster trades like this happen.
I mean, nobody every buys a fucking number.
It's always a vowel.
Comparing Microsoft to Google is embarrassing. Google makes much of its revenue from ads, Microsoft is extremely well rounded tech company selling a OS, Azure, Xbox, Office Suite, Cloud services, and hardware. Now comparing Apple to Microsoft would be a much more equal comparison.
It's GOOGLE, stop calling it alphashit, nobody calls it alphashit, I don't call it alphashit, you don't call it alphashit, YouTube doesn't call it alphashit, every news outlet calls it GOOGLE, it's GOOGLE.
older Evil vs newer Evil works for me
Can anyone beat Apple to a Trillion?
Then I learned that Apple reported net income of 50B annually recently.
Apparently, marketing works. They probably have the highest markup margin in tech.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
"Man, that's a lot of ___". (Fill in the blank in your reply.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Look at the actual stock prices of the "most valuable" companies:.
AMZN - 1624.89
GOOGL - 1077.47
AAPL - 187.50
FB - 187.67
MSFT - 98.95
Apple, Microsoft and Facebook have achieved their huge "market cap" simply by issuing more shares of stock than anyone else -- billions of shares.
All those "value" declarations are made by people, whose opinions provably aren't worth shit, since they are completely nuts.
And fuck profit for profit's sake anyway. How did they advance humanity? (Actual advances! Not iTardedness.)
How did they make our lives better? (Actually better! As in: More non-delusional happiness and real wealth.)
That's not how that works.
I'm no expert, but does issuing more shares not just mean you are more in debt?
Aren't shares essentially taking a mortgage on your company, but you do not even have to pay anything back, beyond empty promises.
That is not a good thing to me, for anyone except the money taker.
Damn, I wish I could bullshit people into lending me literal billions of dollars.
Market capitalization = (# of outstanding shares) X (Share price of last completed trade)
It's not a declaration, it's a calculation.
According to cocaine nose jobs from WallStreet?
(Sorry, I've never been convinced by the stock market - to me it's one enormous speculation).
That's an amazing grasp of market economics you have there.
Increasing or decreasing the number of shares outstanding doesn't really move the valuation number. The price will move in the opposite direction from the share count. Investors are trying to assign the actual 'worth' of an individual share as a portion of the entire company. This is why the price and count move in opposite directions.
Oddly, getting the share count really high does make the price low enough that individual investors are more easily able to afford to trade in it, but this is less important in the presence of large investors like mutual funds and other institutional investors.
Low count / high price makes less fluid trading.
High count / low price makes more fluid trading.
You win the award of the wrongest person on Slashdot today
Then I learned that Apple reported net income of 50B annually recently.
They've been around that number for the last three years. Please do keep up.
Apparently, marketing works.
Companies don't get to Apple's size without provide a shit ton of value to customers. Might not be value to you but it definitely is value to a lot of people and it sure as shit isn't just marketing.
They probably have the highest markup margin in tech.
No they do not. It's not at all uncommon for software companies to have higher margins than Apple. Microsoft routinely has higher net margins than Apple. On average around 5% higher which is a HUGE amount.
What ?
You know you can split stocks right ? Microsoft did it multiple times to reduce the price of one share, but it doesn't change anything on the market cap.
The only metric that matter is market cap. Alphabet and Amazon could decide to split on a 1:10 ratio to lower the entry price, market cap would stay the same... basic math.
Apple, Microsoft and Facebook have achieved their huge "market cap" simply by issuing more shares of stock than anyone else -- billions of shares.
Umm, you do realize that if you put more shares out they will be worth less individually, right? The share price isn't fixed so you don't get a bigger market cap just by issuing more shares. There has to be demand for the shares regardless of the number of them. Berkshire Hathaway famously hasn't split their shares for a long time so each share is worth tens of thousands of dollars. You can have the same market cap with fewer shares with a higher value or more shares with a lesser value. It's literally identical to saying a $20 bill is identical in value to two $10 bills. It's only the total value that matters.
The price of an individual share is immaterial. Issuing more shares just dilutes the value of existing shares. If you do a two-for-one stock split, the share price halves. The main benefit of having a lower individual share price is that it makes it easier for smaller investors (e.g. individuals) to get in on the game. Apple in particular doesn't like their share price to get too high, so they've done regular two-for-one splits to keep it at a level where it's easy enough for individuals to afford to buy a round lot of shares.
American stocks are ridiculously overvalued. Sell! Buy crypto currencies (not Bitcoin Core though).
Shares are only worth what investors are willing to pay for them, because a share in a company is a say in how the company is run. You're buying and selling votes.
That's slightly less wrong than the original dumbass, but still rather out to lunch.
In very simple terms stocks are just a representation of ownership. If I start a business, I own 100% of the stock. If I then decide I would like some cash instead of ownership, I can sell you 50% of my stock. Now you and I own an equal share of the business. If the business earns a profit, we each get 50% of the profit (this is known as dividends). When a major business decision needs to be made, we each get an equal say. If the business gets bought up by an outside entity, we split the price of the sale. Etc.
Of course each of us is free to further sell our one half to as many people as we like. And if we agree to it together, we can split our shares to slow for a finer grain of subdivision. This is where the other guy was confused. If you and I each own 50% of 1000, worth $100 each, we can agree that we each own 50% of 10,000 worth $10 each. The number of shares doesn't affect the goal value of the company, nor does it have anything to do with debt; it only affects the unit price of the stock.
I'm no expert, but does issuing more shares not just mean you are more in debt?
No. Debt is a different thing. Shares are not a loan, they are a percentage ownership in the company. When you issue stock for sale you are literally selling a portion of the company. Nothing is being loaned. Debt holders typically get repaid before anyone else. Equity holders typically get paid last.
That's not to say that the new owners won't expect a return on their investment but the expectation is that this will come from company growth without a fixed timeline or cash outlay. Generally speaking equity is usually more expensive than debt because the risk to the investor is higher. Research "cost of capital" if you want to understand more.
Aren't shares essentially taking a mortgage on your company, but you do not even have to pay anything back, beyond empty promises.
No they aren't like a mortgage at all. The new owners will expect a return on their investment, this will come in the form of a growing company profits. If the company doesn't deliver those profits at some point the stock price will plunge and the company will either be sold/liquidated or will be unable to raise additional capital. If the company cannot raise capital and isn't profitable then they will go bankrupt.
It doesn't matter, if it's M$, it's every day, all day, on planet /.
One evil empire just pulled ahead of another evil empire.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Holy shit bro, you are a fucking moron.
You have literally no idea how stocks, market cap, and valuation works. Or even basic math...
But valuation is based more on potential than revenue.
One can value a company anyway they want to. Discounted Cash Flows, Book value, P/E ratios how tall the management is, what one thinks the potential is, what one is TOLD the potential is, ALL the above, one's own model,.....
But keep in mind, ALL of those methods are trying to predict the future. Finance is the only field I have ever witnessed fortune telling being taken seriously - to be a bit hyperbolic.
In the end it's what people perceive the value is. And some is panic..
I was scratching my head over why some of these tech valuations are so out of line with the mean (we're approaching year 2000 valuations here). Who's buying this at these prices?!
Hint: Their money doesn't grown on trees but is pumped out of the ground and they know it isn't going to last so they are looking to diversify. They have a welfare state to support and their citizens are known for blowing shit up.
That is one way to do it (although technically it's a little bit more than just agreeing ;))
Another way is to issue new stocks, let's say for instance we need $50000 for some investments, and we have an investor willing to pay that.
Then we can issue 500 new stocks, for $100 each, which would bring the total number of stocks up to 1500. Each stock would still be worth $100, but the market value would raise from $100 000 to $150 000, and each of us would own 33.33% of the company.
Of course, if the investor is really keen on investing, and we decide to only issue 100 new shares for $500 each, then the market value would raise from $100 000 to $550 000, and we would own 45.45% each and the investor 9.1%.
Stock value works on supply & demand. If the company issues more stock, the price will go down if there are no other factors pushing it up. A company with lots of cash and a poor performing stock price will do a buy back which forces the price up because now there are fewer available.
Who is Older Evil and who is Newer Evil?
Microsoft Started April 4, 1975
Apple Started April 1, 1976
Neither are new companies, they are actually rather old for tech companies.
They have been flip flopping back and forth which is more hated.
Microsoft was well liked because you could buy a computer from multiple manufacturers and have your software work on it, while Apple you were stuck with Apple Hardware.
Microsoft with dominance in windows, Began to make their products shotty and broken (Windows ME) because they had such a hold on the market. That alternative systems such as OS X seemed to be a refresher ( I am leaving Linux out of the discussion, because in terms of consumer tech, Linux stayed at a distant 3rd ) as it was a newer interface with a more solid back end. Then Apple got into the iPod which made Apple cool, so people started to want to get those cool Macs. It was still Apple Hardware being stuck with Apple software, but it was good enough to take the risk.
Now today. For the consumer market. ( Not including power users, and gamers ) The OS isn't a big deal. The Browser is the king. And the browser has been ported to most of the popular platforms, and every browser now works more or less the same way. So I can have an Apple device, a Microsoft Device, a Google Device, With different OS's and software. I could get something with some unknown OS, and some unknown browser. Just as long as it is complete and supports the standards, it will work for most of my tasks.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
See subject: For offline/remote storage of digital security film footage even though DvD+-R is cheap & so are CD/DvD burners + Multi TB SSD/HDD.
NEVER hurts to have security film data in a REMOTE offsite area (can't be destroyed/as easily 'tampered' w/ potentially - & though I don't PERSONALLY trust 'cloud' OR use it? I would for that)
* For what it's worth I'd wager it's a good part of how/where it's used & it would be a place I'd use it too.
(Good 4 M$ though I'm a "Penguin" now & PROBABLY "4 good": I find Kubuntu 18.04 + patches EXCELLENT (much better than 10.10 I tried in 2010 which was good, certainly better vs. Slackware 1.02 I 1st tried in 1994 & RedHat in 1999) along w/ FreePascal + Lazarus 1.8.2 for development of APK Hosts File Engine 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux (blows DOORS off Delphi XE4 model for Windows on ALL fronts) - M$ gave me a great career for 25++ yrs. so I wish 'em well...)
APK
P.S.=> REPOST to piss off troll downmodbombing me... apk
Jeez even microsoft employees are turning to linux. Well, this will only be a good thing. I'm really excited about what is going to come down the pipe as more developers start picking up the linux craze and the general population explores it and likes it.
I'm with you though, tried out linux (mint/ubuntu/raspbian for me), never went back, it was just awesome. My wife is using it too, she's got a little raspberry pi hooked up in the bedroom to do facebook and watch tv shows and movies, she loves the thing. I'm thinking about getting some for our relatives since they make a great little stocking stuffer gift.
You've stumbled upon the solution to debt! Print more money!!
Is essentially cherry picking profit from the rest of the company pretending it comprises a cloud offering.
Told MS mgt. figure who posts here (Foredecker) Linux WOULD catch M$ (1st putting your HEART into what's "yours" on projects & 2nd a "socio-technical" phenomenon proving folks WORLDWIDE work together for something free/good (even corps like IBM/MS pitch in))!
MS has Linux in "Azure cloud" & command-prompts too!
Inevitable as I told him - innovation's HARD & can only do so much 'til "peak" - catchupball = easier.
* I REALLY like Linux now (KDE Plasma OpenGL 3.1 highly configurable GUI (always liked KDE & I did below in GTK3 + can quickly port to Qt & other *NIXs)).
BEST PART's dev tools (FreePascal & Lazarus 1.8.2) = EXCELLENT (Did a superior Linux version off 90% of SAME CODE used in Win32/64 Delphi 2.0-7.0/XE2-XE4 in 2 weeks & tested clean in 1 more (& ports to BSD + MacOS X coming soon & I'll be on EVERY major platform (my goal)).
No more "stone knives & bearskins"!
APK
P.S.=> Win32/64 ver of APK Hosts File Engine = good? 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux = 10x faster/MORE accurate & reverse DNS 'ping' NON-Root (Impossible? Not @ API ICMP level! No Root/Admin SuperUser use + writes Root/etc - "pats self on back"
As a developer who now works in the Microsoft stack, they are a godsend. Their Azure offerings reduce the boilerplate overhead that I would have previously had to deal with in our local datacenter. And their .NET framework extremely powerful, extensible, and easy to use. Developers asked for them to be open source, they did. Developers complained about Visual Studio being too bloated, they introduced VSCode (which right off the bat beat Sublime and Notepad++ as a powerful text editor).
Every day it's Microsoft press releases and cheerleading. I miss Slashdot.
Your logic suggests we can have the government simply print twice as much cash, give the second half out to the poor, and cure poverty. Why didn't anyone think of that!
There are twp really good reasons for Microsoft to have a larger valuation than google.
The IPO prospetus that google issued in 2004 contains the sentance "We currently intend to retain any future earnings and do not expect to pay any dividends in the foreseeable future."
If a company does not pay dividends then holding it's shares is a gamble that either a bigger sucker will buy them from you for more than you paid or a gamble that the company will start paying dividends.
At this point it is clear that Alphabet is not using their profits in ways that will bring them significantly more revenue in the future. The smarphone market is saturated, realistically self-driving car technology is still many years away from being able to cope sufficiently well with bad weather and unusual events to actually be sold to the public.
The second reason is that the shares held by the google founders get ten times more votes than the shares that were issued in the IPO.
The founders still control it and can ignore the wishes of the general shareholders. The general shareholders can't replace the directors and get profits paid out to them instead of spent on acquisitions and projects that are not producing a benefit for them.
Of course, Googles valuation is a totally different thing to their benefit to society.
I don't own any shares and I'v never seen an advert from them that made me want to buy anything so I'm happy to get excellent search engine results for free. I don't care which horse or company gamblers choose to be bet on.
Cannot be any worse than the approach of the last 10 years. Print twice as much money and give the second half to the rich. Aka Quantative Easing.
To be fair, you're comparing a software company to a hardware one.
No I am not. Apple is a software company at its core. No less an authority than Steve Jobs himself has said so publicly. Not a traditional one to be sure but they don't actually make any of the hardware they sell so they by definition cannot be a hardware company. A company is what it makes and for all practical purposes the only thing Apple actually makes themselves is software. They design some of the hardware but that's not the same thing.
Yes devs are turning to it + have been (know Brad LaRonde indirectly thru a tenant of mine who wrote the 1st FAX program on Windows NT who long ago did).
* On app I wrote /. users like (not webmasters, advertisers & malware makers who frequent here though) does MORE 4 FAR LESS vs. any SINGLE other "so-called 'solution'" full of bugs (DNS/Antivir), slowdowns (hosts speed you up 3 ways via hardcoded fav sites you spend most time @ bypassing remote DNS slow resolution & dns security bugs + dns requestlog tracking + scriptblock faster vs. noscript & adblock faster + more efficiently vs. addons (UBlock/Ghostery/AdBlock) NATIVELY - no "Bolt on 'MoAr' ILLOGIC-LOGIC" inefficiency?
I did what you say - tried new platform & thought on architecture, made it FASTER + far more efficient albeit on Linux.
APK
P.S.=> What's best is feeling like I did early on in VMS, System 34/36/38 on midranges + DOS - learning @ leaps & bounds albeit NOT @ userlevel but @ code + API level too
Go home Ben, you're drunk.
Not to mention most investors are various types of institutions. So entry price is not even that much relevant...
He's saying Google is the "newer evil", not Apple.
People think of Microsoft as a software company still, but the reality is that they're not. Google may own all your data, but Microsoft's looking to be the platform that basically every on-premises computing environment migrates to. They are officially done selling software licenses...it's going to be guaranteed perpetual monthly revenue from their customers forever. Soon as they get customers to move to Azure, it's the ultimate vendor lock-in.
You might say "there's no lock-in, I can go to AWS/GCP/whatever anytime I want!" Maybe, but they're being very smart...allowing anyone to build totally platform-agnostic solutions, but dangling just enough proprietary stuff that Just Works(TM) and is the path of least resistance. It's also by far the easiest way to run Windows environments in a hybrid manner where some stuff lives in your data center and others can run in the cloud. I think this is what's going to keep them going the same way IBM is. IBM is making billions off customers who can't migrate off the mainframe and whose businesses literally depend on the mainframe applications running the core of everything staying up. IBM has been able to fumble around trying to become a management consulting firm and bargain-basement offshore workhouse for the sole reason that their mainframe business is an ATM.
I think that once Microsoft saw how willing people were to pay monthly for Office 365 forever, that was the end of enthusiastic support for perpetual licensing and on-premises deployments.
My first thoughts were "Alphabet?...what does Alphabet do...." Didn't even remember that stupid name from google restructuring at first....
The most VALUABLE company in the world: Berkshire Hathaway. After all, their stock price is a huge $290,975 per share! They have to be the most highest valued company according to your logic, right?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
from giving away an OS for free.
The data users send back must be of great value when sold on the open market.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It is not just older vs newer evil, these companies have different evil based on their business model.
Apple is a hardware company, their evil is planned obsolescence
Google is an advertising company, their evil is invasion of privacy
Microsoft is a software company, their evil is proprietary software lock down
Amazon is an online shopping company, their evil is destroying the local economy
From a business standpoint, you have to give Microsoft credit for staying on top for 4 decades. No other major tech company has done that. Even IBM didn't reign on high as long. The rapid pace of tech change usually grinds giants down.
Don't get me wrong, M$ is a conniving jerk, but they pulled off an unprecedented business feat.
Table-ized A.I.
It still implies your business worth is not just imaginary.
But when I look at the stock markets, imaginary worth seems to be what it's all about.
Not even profit, let alone actual work aka actual worth.
I remember that somebody got the Nobel prize, for proving that a healthy stock market must crash every 30 or so years, to be healthy. As that is when the imaginary worth diverges so much from the real worth, that it stops being believable, and tha crash is just the market putting prices back to where they should be. ... by using a *bigger* cork.
And 2007 happened, because they thought it would solve things, to put a big cork in that volcano.
Of course, now they fixed that
Anyway, that is what I know, and hencd all I can reason upon, right?
No need to call me a moron.
I just was raised in a society that actually gave a shit about humans and fairness, instead of praying to money and delusional dreams, psychopathic prescription-hard-drug-fueled profit-for-profit's-sake mass-murder and organized schizophrenic mass-child rape.
Maybe you guys need your own Hitler and total defeat too, to change your ways for almost a century.
I mean it is not like those companies are actually worth much. I mean in real things like work hours, skill, and physical real assets.
They merely "sell" dreams of how great their company supposedly is.
Let alone in other scales than the pointless money-for-money's sake one. Like improving humanity.
Apple, Microsoft and Facebook have achieved their huge "market cap" simply by issuing more shares of stock than anyone else -- billions of shares.
LOL, that's not how shares work.
I can find stuff on the Internet with Google. I have absolutely no use for Microsoft.
Ergo, in fact, the headline is 100% wrong since Microsoft has no value at all. Actually, considering its various illegal shenanigans over the years, I'd rate it as being a parasite with negative value.
Comparing Microsoft to Google is embarrassing. Google makes much of its revenue from ads, Microsoft is extremely well rounded tech company selling a OS, Azure, Xbox, Office Suite, Cloud services, and hardware. Now comparing Apple to Microsoft would be a much more equal comparison.
Google has an OS, Cloud offerings (which you mention twice for Microsoft), Google Docs (as well as other cloud offerings), and hardware. They also do things MS does not, like sell phones. And create services that people really want and use. It could be argued that they jam them down your throat via the Android platform - which is most assuredly true - but they are true innovators. They rule search (you forgot to mention Bing). They gave us Maps maps with traffic and streetview. So many more things that while I don't find valuable I know others do. Here is a link in case you need it... https://www.google.com/about/products/.
So yes, it is embarrassing to compare the two companies... one has been innovating and producing for a long time, the other has always been about maintaining a grip on a monopoly. That monopoly that has slowly slipped away. I think that the only reason Azure is taking off is because that monopoly was so strong for so long. And to be clear, I am not really a big user of google because I value my privacy. I don't turn on my location on my phone. I used maps to check traffic. I disable as many of their services on my phone that I can. I just don't quite trust them. But I can't deny their innovations, investment, and ability to drive technology.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Or issue class B shares with lesser voting powers, and class C shares who get in the back of the line when there's a bankruptcy, and so forth. These are all ways to keep the original invetors happy, or as ways to maneuver around dislodge the original owner, etc. This happens with private companies, since when becoming public you have to be much more transparent and follow external rules.
Android will kill them, because they are open. Not totally. But kill growth and then a long, slow decline.
Even some of my kids friends at school have given up on expensive iPhones. And Apple is, today, a one product company.
They pulled a rabbit out of the hat with iPad. Then continued that with the iPhone. But there is now no obvious place to go.
They are hoping for another rabbit with self driving cars. But that is already a crowded space, unlike the old iPad or iPhone markets.
If Apple had been a software focused company they would own the entire smart phone market, like Windows still owns PCs. Sell some high end hardware themselves, but also license the software to others. Before something like Android has a chance to become established. Microsoft owns PCs because everybody else makes them.
But Apple started as a hardware company (supported by software) and that is how they will, eventually, die. Very profitable in the short term, but absolutely guaranteed to produce a strong competitor that is more open.
Microsoft is a software company, their evil is proprietary software lock down
Did you forgot about the whole Windows 10 spying stuff? Your evil description for Google could easily apply to Microsoft as well.