Apple, Google and Microsoft are three very powerful companies. What I found interesting was that both Google and Microsoft largely were on the same page about focusing on the customer.
Both Google and Microsoft have been making massive advancements with artificial intelligence (AI). Both have increased their efforts to make the world a better place.
Apple, on the other hand, is still using the lock-in model to keep customers from abandoning it, and increasingly appears more intent on increasing margins than on satisfying its unusually loyal and valuable customers.
Google was the first to embrace open source, and by a considerable margin, Microsoft has matched it. Both firms now are pretty much on the same page not only with regard to an increasing customer focus, but also when it comes to putting their efforts into making the world a better place.
They have been getting there with different tools, but the concept of building around the customer, while more pronounced at Microsoft than at Google, is very visible at both companies.
Google never has seemed to care that much about profit, largely because its revenue source typically is decoupled from the product, and Microsoft historically has been product-focused.
Google’s pivot to privacy is largely sourced through government sanctions that likely have scared. Microsoft’s is more because its model favors privacy in the first place but both firms largely were in lockstep on the importance of their respective efforts.
On AI, both Google and Microsoft had interesting stories to tell. Google highlighted a huge effort to eliminate bias in its AI models. Microsoft having an open AI system that could be modified by the customer to create bots that could target needs uniquely as a result of learning about the user.
Wrapping up both have the better competition in the cutting edge technology. As this is the era of golden technology everything is digitally transformed and becomes the key to success.