AP Photo/Paul Sakuma
Google CEO Eric Schmidt delivering an animated speech about search engine strategies. See more Googleplex pictures.
There's a battle raging across the technological corporate landscape. Whoever wins this battle could dictate the way most of us use computers for the foreseeable future. This battle will be fought on hardware, software and over the Internet. It's not going to be pretty.
In one corner, we have Microsoft, a corporation founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. In February 2009, Microsoft shares traded at around $19 a share on NASDAQ. The company's market capital was nearly $175 billion [source: MSN Money]. The flagship product for Microsoft is the operating system Microsoft Windows. The company has leveraged its relationships with PC manufacturers to dominate the PC market -- according to the analytics company Net Applications Inc., Windows accounts for nearly 90 percent of the global operating system market.
And in this corner we have the young challenger: Google. Founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google set out to become the best search engine on the Web. Considering the Web had been around since the early '90s, Google had a lot of catching up to do. But today, Google is a powerful force on the Web, offering a suite of products ranging from mapping applications to productivity software. In February 2009, Google shares traded on NASDAQ for around $356 per share. Google's market capital at that time was nearly $117 billion [source: Google Finance].
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Both companies suffered setbacks as the global economy began to decline in 2008. Microsoft stock had once traded at more than $30 per share, while Google stock traded at more than $700 per share at its height. In January 2009, Microsoft announced that it would cut 5,000 jobs from the company. That same month, Google cut back on contractors and recruiters. Google also announced it would cut 100 jobs from its internal Human Resources department. It was the first time either company had announced job cutbacks.
Despite these market-driven setbacks, the two companies may still be on a collision course to determine the future of computing. Will the upstart company topple the software veteran?
