Microsoft's Market Value Hits a Dot-Com Era Milestone: $600 Billion (wsj.com) 101
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft's value is returning to tech-bubble peaks. The software giant closed with a market value of $600 billion Thursday for the first time since January 2000, according to the Journal's Market Data Group. Shares rose 0.4 percent to $77.91, setting a fresh all-time high. For the year, Microsoft shares are up 25% and on track for their best year since 2013, as the firm continues its rebirth as a force in cloud-computing. The firm is the third-largest S&P 500 company in market value, trailing Apple (about $800 billion) and Google's parent company, Alphabet, (about $690 billion). In July, fellow technology and internet stalwarts Facebook and Amazon.com joined the trio as the only U.S.-listed companies valued at more than in the $500 billion. The last time Microsoft was over $600 billion back in 2000, it didn't stay there for long. The tech bubble would peak in March of that year, and the Nasdaq Composite Index wouldn't climb back to the level it reach that year until 2015.
WSJ Paywall (Score:2)
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The heady days of the dot com bust... (Score:1, Interesting)
Are we in a stock market bubble? Another crash? (Score:4, Informative)
Recently I asked someone who works for an investment company if the U.S. stock market is in a bubble again. The answer was, "Yes, that's why we are buying stocks of foreign companies."
If, as in the years before 2008, stock brokers can convince a huge number of people that the stock market will continue to rise rapidly, the brokers can sell what they have for a huge profit, and there will be another crash, as in 2008.
Not adjusted for inflation (Score:5, Informative)
Adjusted for inflation MS would have to reach a value of 877 billion to match the 2000 value of 600 billion.
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I don't know the answer to your question, but it's interesting that the companies /.ers love to hate (myself included to some degree) are incredible financial successes.
With power and money, does abuse inevitably follow? We rail at all three of these tech giants, often with very good reason, but they do whatever they want, because they can, and what customers have to say doesn't generally matter very much.
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Yes, of course there are small companies that draw /. hate, but my point was to emphasize the hate for very successful companies. I could have been more precise about that.
Re:Not adjusted for inflation (Score:5, Funny)
640B ought to be enough for anyone.
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That was funny.
Now if only I had a nickel for every time I've had to suffer through "640K should be enough for anyone" comment I could have been rich for the rest of my life, instead of amused for five minutes.
Shorts (Score:3)
Laptop OS market - moribund at best
Server OS market - MS's one bright spot is a bubble fighting a better free alternative
Tablet OS market - does MS even have an offering?
Phone OS market - Yep, that went well for MS Office Suite - on life support as on line and free alternatives eat their lunch - anybody write documents?
Outlook - Please somebody put this out of its (and my) misery
$600B?? Time to short and profit!
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Desktop OS Market - Still the deFacto Standard
Laptop OS Market - Still the deFacto Standard - Also, why would this be any different than a desktop OS, I want the same OS and applications running on as many devices as possible
Tablet OS Market - See Laptop OS Market. You shouldn't have a whole different operating system for tablets.
Phone OS Market - Probably won't be too many more years before you're basically running a full OS on your phone. We have the computing power at this point. I think this is where
Re:Shorts (Score:4, Insightful)
Tablet OS Market - See Laptop OS Market. You shouldn't have a whole different operating system for tablets.
Apple's success on tablets comes from realizing how absolutely wrong you are.
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Microsoft's success with Surface comes from there being room for both. Personally I fine a lot of value in being able to switch fluidly between tablet and laptop functionality which I can't do with an iPad.
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The Surface is a niche in a niche. I understand your point, but most people don't care about having a tablet that is also a PC, they care about having a tablet that is a good tablet - with an OS and apps properly designed for this format, not desktop software that often doesn't work quite right.
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I get your point but I stand by mine as well. The Surface is a successful niche that has spawned competitors in the market. It competes more with other laptops more so than iPads but it's still a tablet so it makes sense that it would have a full OS. They hopefully learned from WinRT that people don't want a stripped down windows.
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Tablet OS Market - See Laptop OS Market. You shouldn't have a whole different operating system for tablets.
Apple's success on tablets comes from realizing how absolutely wrong you are.
Do people still buy Apple tablets anymore? I thought this died down in around 2012 and 2013. I do see Samsung and Surface Pro tablets popular with professionals and around the office. Samsungs runs either Android or Windows depending on which model and all the Surface line obviously runs Windows.
Sure Apple may still some some but they are losing steam and certainly not used in the enterprise.
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Still the top selling tablet brand. [9to5mac.com]
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I'm sure that's true. However anecdotally, I haven't seen an ipad in our office for a long time, but there are always a bunch of Surface Pro and Books around, maybe 15% of all laptops.
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Yep. People act like desktops / laptops are going away. MountainLogic also doesn't seem to understand that Office has made the transition to online. Office 365 makes a lot more money now than the stand alone version.
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That all greatly depends on the kind of work you do and for who.
Does your mother need a full fledged Windows PC to do her day to day computing? Expand from that.
It is horrifying at times to realize just how many can get by without the 'deFacto Standard' as you call it.
Long ago a full Windows PC (or Mac) was the norm for running all of the apps/services someone would want... now you can most of the core things on a tablet or via a web browser.
I work for a company where the only machines running Windows are t
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Outlook - Still waiting for someone to come out with a viable alternative.
I keep promoting Gnus/BBDB for this role, and for some reason my idea doesn't get much traction :)
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A few you forgot:
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Desktop and Laptop OS Market: Microsoft is still the #1 player. Businesses are still using these devices even though the personal use market is shrinking.
The Sever OS Market: Still in businesses there is a preference towards Windows Server and SQL server, Active Directory... Being that they are using still using Windows in the Desktop and Laptop Market for businesses. Staying in the same Vendor Echo system unfortunately makes life a bit easier, even though it makes some tasks much more difficult.
Tablet Ma
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Haha.
Windows on Desktop on life support? WTF. Go look around your office and tell me this? No really go ahead. GO walk into a BestBuy and tell me how many Linux desktops you see on those shiny new laptops and desktops you see?
Server OS? Majority of servers run on Windows. I know this pisses off Linux guys here who are admins but outside of Silicon Valley most regular fortune 1000 companies MDFs have a few unix and Linux boxes and racks and racks of Windows based servers for Active Directory, SQL Server, Exc
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Desktop OS market - on life support.
Laptop OS market - moribund at best
Both of these are at, or near, saturation levels, but Microsoft still dominates on these platforms. Which means that while there will be revenue decline, it will likely be slow and steady.
Server OS market - MS's one bright spot is a bubble fighting a better free alternative
What "better free alternative"? Microsoft has only seen revenue increases as VMs took off. If LINUX is a valid cheap alternative that could save tons of money, why aren't companies replacing their Windows VMs with LINUX VMs? Because it isn't a valid alternative in most cases. In other words, it's hard to run your corp
Market Value of others? (Score:4, Interesting)
What is the market value of those companies that exist to fix Microsoft's mistakes and poor security choices?
One of these is different (Score:2)
Trump (Score:2)
How valuable Facebook really is ,is proven from the fact that Facebook ads can influence an election and give us Trump as President. None of the other 4 (with maybe the exception of Google) have that kind of impact on the real world. An instrument of mind control which users sign up for themselves and is powered by user generated content which is also profitable . If the soviets had managed to come up with something like Facebook , the west would have lost the cold war.
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The dems need to stop acting like an outside force caused Hillary's loss. It didn't. She lost because she has no redeeming value and the party had no message, and many voters saw that.
The dems will continue to lose elections unless they come out with better/younger candidates and a message other than Trump is Hitler.
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The point is even if Facebook is towards the bottom of the list (and Google with its ranking of news stories as per their biases during a search is probably on the list too), besides Facebook none of the other tech giants have the kind of society altering (even to a small degree) influence that Facebook has. Hence its valuation. Plus Facebook is earning a ton of money from ads pretty much the same reason Google exists - earn money from ads.
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proven from the fact that Facebook ads can influence an election and give us Trump as President
Oh, come on. First, it wasn't just Hillary losing. Under Obama, the Democrats lost nearly a thousand legislative seats. Most of the governorships. Both houses of congress. They lost the White House because they put all of their resources into backing a wildly corrupt, incompetent, serially lying, awful person up as the standard-bearer for their party, and then were too scared of her future power over them to remind her that doing thing like calling half the women in the county deplorable and not even bothe
Color Revolutions and Arab Spring (Score:2)
Its not just the US. Govts have been overthrown in Ukraine, Georgia and across the Arab world through the power of Facebook and Social Media. Social Media and Cell Phones are a very powerful and proven tool. America has been using it to cause mischief all over the world. Now the Russians beat America at its own game.
Facebook is powerfull in the same way as Hollywood was at one time - the Soviet Union fell because common Russians believed everyone in the US led the lifestyle they saw in Hollywood movies even
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Are you fucking kidding?
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I know lifelong democrats in California who did fundraisers for Bernie who ended up voting for Trump. Thats how bad a candidate Hillary was.
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Services that was once covered by Email, Newsgroups, Instant messaging, Blogs, and Personal Web Sites. Have coalesced into Facebook. So Facebook really manages much of the worlds communication. So year it has some influence and money.
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The problem was AOL implied that they were the internet. When people switch to broadband and realized many of the AOL features were actually free or not part of AOL they never bothered going back.
AOL downfall was with the downfall of dialup. Its main money came from subscription. The services it offered were just good enough to be useful. While Facebook makes its money off of adds so hey ray harder o make heir features better to keep people on he site. While AOL was happier to get them to pay for servi
Good news (Score:1)
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Amazon is dominating that space the way Microsoft dominated the desktop.
TFIFY.
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Amazon may be dominating from a pure infrastructure standpoint, but with every new feature added to Azure it becomes that much easier for an org using MS programs and OS to move somewhat seamlessly to the cloud. I know because I'm in the midst of doing it.
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every new feature added to Azure it becomes that much easier for an org using MS programs and OS to move somewhat seamlessly to the cloud
Existing MS programs and Operating systems are NOT cloud applications. What it sounds like you're referring to is Server Virtualization; or packaging up existing servers and virtualizing them on someone else's infrastructure -- also known as virtual private server hosting. Amazon can do that too through EC2 or the new vSphere on AWS.
Virtualizing servers does no
Thank you! (Score:1)
WTF? (Score:3)
How the hell is Microsoft continuing to make money? I don't get it. They are hurting in every area as people bail on their garbage, proprietary software left and right. From the complete failure of Windows Mobile, to people's complete hatred of Windows 10, to people abandoning Windows entirely for Mac and Chrome OS/Linux. How is this even possible? Is it still just the same, old monopoly problem with them bullying manufacturers into pre-installing their operating system on all of their machines? Or is it the mega-corporations with incompetent IT staff that continue to insist on using their software on thousands of PCs? This is just incredibly sad news...
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That isn't happening. The whole "hatred" thing is mostly in your head, too.
incompetent IT staff that continue to insist on using their software on thousands of PCs
Right. Everybody using Microsoft software is "incompetent".
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
How do they make money? That's simple: Azure, Office 365, Active Directory.
While nobody was looking, Microsoft developed a powerful and flexible cloud computing platform in Azure that integrates with businesses Active Directory and local network. It has warts, but the product is improving rapidly.
Office 365 solves business's email infrastructure woes, works well with all mobile devices, runs Sharepoint, gives all employees video conferencing tools to rival WebEx and Go2Meeting, provides all of the Office licensing they need, and does it for a very reasonable price.
Active Directory makes it easy to configure and set policies on every Windows desktop and server in a way that settings only have to be done one time. I'm sure the same could be done with LDAP, but nearly as quickly and easily. AD integrates with Azure, Office 365, and a large portion of third-party services. As a result, businesses run Windows because it lets everything work together with very little fuss, and the employees are productive. And productivity is what it is all about.
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They are hurting in every area as people bail on their garbage, proprietary software left and right.
Maybe you should spend less time posting to Slashdot and more time looking at where Microsoft is positioned in the work place.
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You left out a possibility - your view from inside your bubble might be cloudy and not correspond to reality.
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
How the hell is Microsoft continuing to make money? I don't get it. They are hurting in every area as people bail on their garbage, proprietary software left and right.
Oh it's quite simple when you actually look at it rather than applying some of your wishful thinking to the situation.
Where is Microsoft hurting?
Not in Windows which still enjoys the largest market share of any desktop OS in the world.
Not in Office where most moves away from traditional desktop Office has turned into recurring revenue in the form of Office 365, and sometimes both at once for the same user.
Not in the enterprise where they are just finding new ways to up-sell people on yet more stuff (skype for business, sharepoint, etc)
Not in Gaming where Microsoft seems to be making close to $2bn per quarter.
Not in the Cloud where Microsoft has been closing the gap to AWS more and more every quarter and is now the number 2 service provider by a wide margin to number 3.
Not in Hardware with their Surface line of products being highly profitable.
Not in ... okay in Mobile they failed miserably.
So maybe if you look beyond the Slashdot comments section you'll realise that MS isn't actually failing at anything that matters and are laughing all the way to the bank.
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How the hell is Microsoft continuing to make money? I don't get it. They are hurting in every area as people bail on their garbage, proprietary software left and right. From the complete failure of Windows Mobile, to people's complete hatred of Windows 10, to people abandoning Windows entirely for Mac and Chrome OS/Linux. How is this even possible? Is it still just the same, old monopoly problem with them bullying manufacturers into pre-installing their operating system on all of their machines? Or is it the mega-corporations with incompetent IT staff that continue to insist on using their software on thousands of PCs? This is just incredibly sad news...
Correction 1: now that they've pulled the plug on Windows Mobile, they're no longer wasting money on it, hence more profit.
Correction 2: it's some of slashdot that hates Windows 10, no one else.
Correction 3: I haven't seen any clear trend of abandoning Windows for Mac/Chrome/Linux. My workplace is mostly mac laptops for development, but more and more people are moving to Windows because they want better laptops (cheaper, touch screens, pens, more ports, whatever).
Correction 4: you don't seem to payed attent
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