Future of the "big three"

[Fade_z]

Hi guys, what are your thoughts on how google, Microsoft and apple will look in the future?
They already do/will in the future offer similar products and services (mail, documents etc)
Which will prevail and gain the largest substantial amount of users?
Will the future tell us that this way of tech was an mistake in the first place and go back to more traditional methods of communication?
Or will it triple in size and offers thousands of way to store, communicate etc
And will we still be "safe" from governments looking in our private affairs thus being able to track our lives?


How do you think they company's will evolve in the next 20 years?

 

[Fade_z]

Anybody ?

 

[gedzum]

I wish they could settle their differences with an online mulitplayer game. That would be good.

In all seriousness though, I'm not too sure it's going to change much. At least not any time soon. Probably see the same back and forth, maybe throw in some court battles. It's hard to see any of those companies not prevailing. All have a big following. It's also hard to see how fast tech is advancing and expect to go back to traditional means.

20 years is a long time. I'd like to think they would at least learn to coexist and compete in acceptable fashion in that time. Who knows, maybe they get together for some projects and live in peaceful existance. Or they can continue on this destructive path and maybe they all lose.

 

[jmshub]

Maybe it's ****** colored glasses, but I see Microsoft as the best of the three companies in the next bunch of years.

Everybody is chomping at the bit for the "next big thing" from Apple...except that Apple doesn't seem to have anything in the pipeline. The Apple TV thing sounds like vaporware unless they release something soon. The iphone rumors that I have been hearing about point to a phone that is iterative, and even some hardcore Apple fanboys I know are absolutely hating the mockups of iOS7 available so far. Despite them being as popular as ever, and with Windows 8 allegedly a bust, Macintosh marketshare doesn't seem to move in any appreciable metric. They aren't gaining marketshare. Their sales comprise of Mac owners buying new Macs.

Google has an iron in every fire in technology, it seems. They are massively popular in mobile, with Android comprising a huge share of the smartphone market. Except that Google doesn't make money off it...at least directly. And those Nexus tablets, except that they don't make real money from it. And Google Glass is all over the news, except that Google doesn't make money on that. Google has self driving cars! But they aren't making money on that either. The TL;DR is that Google does a metric crap ton of things in technology, but their only source of income is the ads they sale against their search. And it seems that people aren't as happy with Google search as they used to be..that's why Google seems to be willing to sacrifice almost everything, including search quality, to get people using G+, among their other up and coming services.

Microsoft is in a state of transition too, as they recently became a "devices and services" company. Windows 8 is a press failure, but not a bad product (in my opinion). And it's selling relatively well... even as the desktop market is getting weaker than ever, Microsoft stands to become a serious player in mobile and tablets with Windows 8/RT and Windows Phone. They need more assistance from their partners to build compelling devices that run Win8. (I used a Dell XPS 12 over the weekend at a friend's house. It's a fantastic product, I believe).

Microsoft is still a force to be reckoned with in business, and products like Azure and Sharepoint will be a large part of Microsoft's income in the future.as on premises server installations become increasingly less common for a lot of businesses.