The State of Consumer Technology at the End of 2014

“Microsoft still sells a lot of Windows licenses, and businesses especially still rely on Office. Still, it’s striking how unimportant Microsoft’s defensive move into browsers ended up being, especially when you think about…

Google seems strong, but as I’ve written previously, there is a lot about the company that feels like Microsoft: just as Microsoft jumped into the next epoch at the OS level for defensive reasons, Google too jumped ahead, also at the OS level, and also for defensive reasons. “Free” figured prominently in both strategies, and in the long run, it’s worth considering the possibility that Google’s Android dominance will have as much long term value to the company as Microsoft’s dominance of browsers – i.e., not very much at all. Ultimately, I expect an increasing amount of Google’s energy to go towards taking away what Microsoft has left: Chromebooks versus Windows, and Google Apps versus Office

Facebook is in a unique position: while they were started as an Internet company, they were an exceptionally young one, and have clearly made a successful jump to mobile. Their position in mobile, though, while secure, is by no means dominant, and it’s interesting that they are in fact following the Microsoft/Google playbook: both the WhatsApp and Oculus acquisitions were about securing a stake in the OS for the next epoch”