Microsoft's goal is to keep you in their ecosystem, Google's goal is to sell your eyeballs to the highest bidder. Here's a thought. Msft know their goal: Keep

Microsoft's goal is to keep you in their ecosystem, Google's goal is to sell your eyeballs to the highest bidder. Here's a thought. Msft know their goal: Keep you in their ecosystem. This has been their goal forever. The market for OS/Office & the rest of their old products, was pretty much destined to grow over 20 years. Keep your 90% share of a growing market and you grow. Google don't know their goal. They make money on search. Search works and they still have power. They're still not making much from platforms or webapps or online publishing or any of the other noteworthy things they do good work on. The search business is pretty much at perfection right know. But the odds that search will be (a) as important in ten years and (b) exclusive Google property in ten years is not a 1/100 bet. The strategy for increasing the odds in Google's favour is not clear. While they might imporve the monetisation slightly, I don't think the search market will grow that much. Keep your 90% share of a flat market and you don't grow much grow. You can still lose market share though. Maybe this accounts for part of the difference between the two.