Big Heads In Technology

Yahoo!
Started in In March 1995, $2 million from Sequoia Capital.
Founders, David Filo and Jerry Yang, Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
CEO, Terry Semel
Market Value: $47Billion

Products
Yahoo Mail
Yahoo Search
Yahoo Messenger
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Microsoft
Founders, Paul Allen and Bill Gates started in 1975, Microsoft Registered in 26th Nov,1976.
CEO, Steve Ballmer
Market Value: $270 Billion

Prodcts,
Widows Operating System
MS-Office
Internet Explorer(IE)
MS-SQL Database,
Outlook
MSN Search
MSN Messenger
Hotmail
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Google
The place where it started was attached to the garage of a friend who sublet space to the new corporation's staff of three. On September 7, 1998, Google Inc. opened its door in Menlo Park, California. Initial investment was $1 million.

Founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin from Stanford University graduate students.
CEO, Dr. Eric Schmidt
Market: $51Billion

Products
Largest Search Engine on Internet.
Deskbar
Gtalk
Gmail
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Oracle
CEO, Larry Ellison.
Market Value, $64 Billion.

Products
Oracle Database
CRM Products
Oracle Financials

Apple
Started in 1976, almost 30 years back in his parents garage by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
CEO, Steve Jobs.
Market Value, $44 billion.
Products
iMac
Apple Macintosh.
iPod
iPod nano

Good Info

Sun Microsystems (JAVA)

Founders Andy Bechtolsheim , Bill Joy, Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy incorporated in February 1982. There were only 4 employees in the beginning.
CEO, Scott McNealy.
Market Value, $13.4 billion.
Products
Desktops
Servers
Java
Star Office and many more..
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IBM (International Business Machines)
Founder, Thomas J. Watson Sr.. Operational since 1888, incorporated in June 15, 1911.
CEO, Samuel Palmisano.
Products
Desktops
Servers
Laptops
DB2 Database… too many to list.
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How Open Office Can Make Difference?

I just saw OpenOffice1.1.5 release at www.openoffice.org . It’s really a great application to enjoy freely. I don’t see any reason in using MS-Office by paying money and processor power. It may be good alternative to small and medium business establishment and home users. It has everything what a normal user require from a office suit.

I agree MS-Office has lot of things. Can you do miracles? not much. Its a tool to share information. Openoffice supports all the formats and features, except too much fancy things. I expect as days goes, the juicy team which is working on Openoffice suit, will sprinkle juice on all.

I wonder why Oppen office active members not able to learn from Mozilla foundation. Instead bundling entire suit as one and making it too bulky. There can be separate applications for "Write (MicroSoft-Word)", "Calc (Spread Sheet)" and "Impress (Power Point )" for presentations etc.. .

I think many of office suit users typically use more either "Word" Or "Spread Sheet" and some times "Presentation". Why don’t these guys have independent applications for these? Like firefox and sunbird etc from Mozilla (www.mozilla.com).

Instead of packing everything as one application, there can be separate tar balls, where Only "Word" and / or "Presentation" and/or "Spread Sheet etc.,, can do good. I understand the problem of maintaining various builds. But it gives one more advantage of working specialized groups. Not sure, if already some activities are going on this front.

Can Google take further on Microsoft..?

Hey! As you guess I am not either pro or anti to any one. By looking at the tech place (kind of market place) got few things in to mind. As I perceive Google still has some kind of giving back nature than Microsoft, thought it can go on as below...

What is really Microsoft well known Strength? No doubt, either you agree or not it's Windows Operating System. Some how its supremacy has been tackled by Linux recent days and continues in future, earlier there were UNIX, Mach, Solaris and others...

Strengths(ofcource there are more than below):
-Operating System
-Desktop
-Server
-Web Browser
-Office Suit
-Database Server (MS - SQL)
-Visio

Operating System
As more than 90% of users use this operating system, always Microsoft enjoys its suprimacy in all the domains of computer.

Threats to Microsoft Desktop

• There is no out side competitor require Microsoft to slow down its revenues from the desktop sale market than its earlier versions (such as windows 9X and 2k versions).
• Nix based operating systems (Debian, Fedora, Redhat, Linspire, Suse etc..) are already in their way to slice max pile from corporate and individuals.
• The % of upgradations from older versions should be minimal, as new version of Windows operating systems never convinced users to spend what Microsoft expect.
• The ever changing attitude of typical users (business environment) and sys admins pose threat to Microsoft in selling new versions.

What Google can do here?
As there are already enough threats, no immediate need to Google pitch in and do some thing. But in long run, certainly it needs to do something in this sphere.

Threats to Microsoft Server
Its own browser which work as agent to hack, its web server which serves code where ever users want. Ofcource there are efforts going on to make this secure time should decide how hackers respond to it.

What Google can do here?
As already nix servers dominates this market, no need Google to pitch in.

Web Browser
Oh! la... This is interesting thing for now in the tech and non-tech domains. Firefox (www.mozilla.org) doing enough job to kick Microsoft. After recent kicks Microsoft started investing to make its well-known browser Internet Explorer. Its heaven to hackers and hell to users. If we go deep in to problems of Internet Explorer, we may come out with a book.

What Google can do here?
Support as much as it can to Mozilla foundation as its doing now. Beware no killing games like Microsoft.

Office Suit
Though I dont have exact figures how much this suit gives revenues to Microsoft, it should be good in numbers.

Threats to Microsoft Office Suit?
As similar to Operating sytem, already this suite facing problems with its own old versions such as office2k. Users are reluctant to upgrade to new versions. As they demand large memory and processing speeds and costs more $$$.

But one thing is sure; there is no other dominant player in this arena.

What Google can do here?
I come across a good open source office suit by name openoffice (www.openoffice.org), which works similar in windows machines and Unix/Linux machines. This can be a right choice to Google to either fund this project and take base from it, and enhance and give to people. Though Google may not benefit in direct revenues, by way of cutting its rival revenue it can benefit in many ways. Once Google office product available in system, then it knows how to use it for other revenue generation purposes.

Database Server (MS - SQL)
Why not Google buy or My-SQL or fund Pg-SQL and release its own version to developers. Since, tech place has enormous trust on Google brand, it certainly need to pitch in "Software Development Tools" arena, rest developers will take care.

Visio
There is a very primary tool by name Dia, it’s a open-source application. No where near to Visio. Google can think of it once.

Future:
Microsoft Expression (A web and application designing suite)
Google has an option to look-in decent open source creative tools Gimp www.gimp.org