At the turn of the 20th century, John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil and J.P. Morgan's General Electric were duking it out for to see just who would bring light to the homes of America. Now, we find ourselves in the 21st century, and a similar battle is taking place. We are today in the midst of the Tech Wars.
The Backstory
The Tech Wars started in 1985, when Microsoft came out with the first Windows operating system. The Mac OS X system was born only one month earlier, and it introduced the magical technology of GUIs, or graphic user interfaces. The GUI revolutionized computer by making computers the least degree user friendly. Before GUI, the only way to operate a computer was by typing flawless lines of command prompt code. Needless to say, both Microsoft and Apple jumped on the innovation.
Then, everything changed. In 1990, the first web browser was released. The browser was originally called WorldWideWeb, but became known as Nexus. Microsoft countered by releasing Internet Explorer.
A mini-war, known as the Browser War, was short lived. Internet Explorer did, but does not continue to dominate web browsing, but there will be more on that later on. Meanwhile, the U.S. government had given up neutrality in the Tech Wars and took a stance against Microsoft. It was apparent that Bill Gates had monopolized the PC industry. The trial of United States v. Microsoft began on May 18, 1998, when the Department of Justice and the Attorneys General of twenty U.S. states sued Microsoft for disposing of competition in order to protect and extend its software monopoly. In October 1998, the U.S. Department of Justice also sued Microsoft for violating a 1994 consent decree by forcing computer makers to include its Internet browser as a part of the installation of Windows software.
Bill Gates was called "evasive and nonresponsive" by a source present at a session in which Gates was questioned on his deposition. He argued over the definitions of words such as "compete", "concerned", "ask", and "we". Businessweek reported that "early rounds of his depostition show him offering obfuscatory answers and saying 'I don't recall' so many times that even the presiding judge had to chuckle. Worse, many of the technology chief's denials and pleas of ignorance have been directly refuted by prosecutors with snippets of email Gates both sent and received." Intel Vice-President Steve McGeady, called as a witness, quoted Paul Maritz, a senior Microsoft vice president, as having stated an intention to "extinguish" and "smother" rival Netscape Communications and to "cut off Netscape's air supply" by giving away a clone of Netscape's flagship product for free.
On June 7, 2000, the court ordered a breakup of Microsoft as its "remedy". According to that judgment, Microsoft would have to be broken into two separate units, one to produce the operating system, and one to produce other software components.
In January 1996, while the trial was in its twilight, two Stanford PhD students were beginning a research project. The project went through many names, including PageRank and BackRub, but the final name was eventually chosen: Google.
The domain name for Google was registered on September 15, 1997, and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998. The name "Google" is actually a play on on the word "googol" Googol is the number 1 followed by one hundred 0's.
Google's original homepage
Google's first production server
Google is currently in an attempt to slowly win the Tech Wars outright, but there will be more on that later on.
On November 10th, 2001, a new battlefield was burst into by Apple, when they introduced the first iPod. iTunes arrived on the seen in January, 2000. There have since been four lines of iPod: the classic, shuffle, nano, and touch.
While Windows XP, the then and still now most widely used computer operatring system was flourishing, It was a cold night at Harvard in February, 2004. Another new battleground was found when Mark Zuckerberg launched The Facebook.
Facebook was ruler of social networks, even called "The Social Network," but little did Zuckerberg know that his status was about to update. On March 21, 2006, a new social network was formed with a courageous battle cry, or more appropriately, tweet. Twitter and Google+ are simultaneously plotting a coup to overthrow Mark Zuckerberg as you read these very words.
Today
So, who exactly is ahead in the Tech Wars. We shall now break the battle down, topic by topic.
Computers
As we can see, Microsoft clearly crushes all competition when it comes to computer usage and operating systems.
As far as smartphones go, the result is not as expected.
Websites
While Facebook is on the decline, it is still up toward the top of the website list. Twitter still has a long way to go, but Google has extended its tentacles and seizes control of the World Wide Web with a combined 1.35 million monthly visitors to the Google homepage and the google-owned YouTube.
Yahoo! is in 3rd with 500 thousand. Who still uses Yahoo!, anyway. Yahoo! is to Google as MySpace is to Facebook. Wikipedia, MSN, Amazon, and Ebay all then preeed Twitter, which receives 200 thousand monthly visitors.
At number 10 is Bing. Bing gets 165 thousand views a month. Bing is an acronym for "Because It's Not Google," and because it's not Google, Microsoft's search engine has no chance in the internet game. Bing is to Google as Amazon is to iTunes. Stay in software, Billy.
On the other hand, Microsoft and Google are neck-and-neck in the browser wars.
Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox
Money
The almighty dollar is the driving force in the Tech Wars. The battle for cash is a four-horse race between Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Facebook.
No one touches Bill Gates in personal fortunes.
Apple, though, leads the way in company value.
Apple: $176 Billion
Microsoft: $121 Billion
Google: $93 Billion
Facebook: N/A
Wild Card: Google
Google is the wild card in this war because it is the only competitor to have a popular search engine (Google), video site (YouTube), browser (Chrome), computer (Chromebook), and social network (Google+).
The winner of the Tech Wars will ultimately be in sole control of the most powerful thing ever created by humankind: the Internet.
(The internet as shown by site traffic Google is the brightest dot.)
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