the cost of competing against each other

For over ten years, Google and Microsoft have been in a fierce battle for market supremacy. It’s been Chrome vs. Internet Explorer, Google Search vs. Bing, Google Cloud vs. Azure, Microsoft 365 vs. Google Workspace, Windows vs. Chrome OS. At one point, both companies even surpassed Apple in market cap. But this constant fighting made them lose sight of the bigger picture, especially with Apple pulling ahead in 2013, hitting a $500 billion valuation while Google and Microsoft together only reached $467 billion. This trend continued until 2019, but things flipped again in January when Google finally overtook Apple with a market cap of $3.98 trillion compared to Apple's $3.76 trillion, largely thanks to advances in AI that boosted Google's position. This scenario shows how damaging competition can be when it escalates into outright rivalry. It distracts from innovation and creates hostility, which stifles creativity and knowledge. In business, it’s crucial to maintain a strong focus and keep pushing for excellence instead of getting caught up in a pointless competition that detracts from the company’s original value. It’s worth taking a moment to think about this. I’d love to hear your thoughts or experiences on this topic.

As if we really care about that. That’s their game anyway, some will be on top and some will end up at the bottom. What matters for us is that because of strong competition, we get better experiences and better services as customers. In that sense, it’s not really a negative thing. Even for the companies you mentioned, reaching a billion or even trillion market cap is already a win for them. At the end of the day, they’re businesses and the goal is to be profitable. As long as customers are satisfied too, then both sides win.

The world economy would be a big mess if companies continue to copy what already works instead of working on what hasn't been existing or created by another company. Google and Microsoft dropped in market cap because they never tried to build something new, they copied one another, which wasnt healthy to the market until Apple gave the people a much better way to spend big on a mobile phone which skyrocket their market cap. The context here isn't about succeeding financially, but doing so with new great ideas, which helps the world economy grow.

no, competition makes you more motivated. to improve, to innovate, to be better. without threats, there will be complacency. there’s some healthy competition in having rivals or enemies

On the contrary, competition makes the companies want to create the best products to satisfy the customers the more and it makes each company value its clients base more for fear of them being won over by competitors. Innovation was rapid instead of being complacent with their products and services. It made each company want to match or outperform the other. let's see a few of their products that actually competes Chrome vs edge google docs vs word online Google meet vs Microsoft teams these competitions gave rise to better user interfaces, increased features, better performance and even fewer bugs. It also made the two companies reduce the price of enterprise software and even offered free version to get more people hooked to it. Competition is good, it gives users more choices and as such makes companies committed to providing better experience for its users. I would say the competition served as a motivation to Microsoft and google to get better, get innovative and upgrade their products and services at a faster rate. It had more positives for them than negative.

There's equally no point looking at dumb valuations of companies based on fickle markets. Apple was a great innovator and still has a reasonable lead in that area, but has seen it's market share be steadily knocked down by android phones and Chinese manufacturers. The moral should be, take notice of what your competitors are doing and pat attention, but don't just seek to copy ideas - you must really innovate and also maintain your core products which got you into a great position in the first place. I'd disagree with calling it a war, it's just healthy competition between obvious rivals with new entrants encouraging efficiency.

In the tech world it's termed a continuous war, however, Chinese manufacturers despite dropping down the market share of Apple, kills their entire economy, China's production revolves around mimicking whatever is produced in the USA, which is not giving them a better future in the financial market, the future they seek is like the life the US is living right now for steadily coming up with fresh ideas. Everyone thinks China would dominate the world market except China. The fact they can't come up with new product that hasn't been worked on, affects their economical value on the long run.

Great point about enemity in the mind distracting from goals. We see this often in the forum where projects spend more on marketing wars and attacking other coins than actually developing their codebase. Apple's success for that decade was largely due to them defining their own category rather than trying to build a better Windows. It’s a good lesson for investors look for the teams that are heads-down building unique value, not the ones obsessed with their rival's market cap.

Competition is not all about profit. It is a fight to maintain market share, relevance and a fight for survival. Any company that fails to create new products to outsmart its competitors will become obsolete. It's not all about enmity; it is a fierce battle to gain customer loyalty. Many good companies have become they fail to realise that if you don't give your clients what others offer, you will lose them

If you start a business in a market you should have the skill to gain the trust of the customer because it is very important.If you sell something profit will be a must.But along with this it is also very important for you to understand the customer perspective on what he wants to buy.By doing this the customer will not leave from  shop empty handed.For example you have a clothing shop in the market.In the beginning your clothes sold a lot but over time if you do not change the veratiy the customer will go to another shop because what they want is not available at yours but at another shop. And that is why you will lag behind others.

I came across a photo on social media where the owner of Nokia was lamenting saying "We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost" This is contrary to the competition between Apple, and other renounced products today that outperform Nokia products and took over the market leaving them overwhelmed with tears. The competition is real and really needs strong backup to stay at the top.

War is greatly exaggerated, it is just a competition. Competition is great for innovation.

Competition is war, that is the meaning, as long as the competition is within reasonable limits so that it makes them provide the best service they can provide, we can enjoy the results of their competition, namely products with more competitive prices, rather than being dominated by only one company, it will be a disaster because it will be monopolized, but when there are competitors, the price will be much cheaper because they are fighting for the interest of customers, I do not see the competition between these two companies as having a negative impact, in fact I see that this competition has more positive impacts.

It depends on how you see it and just to correct you Google did not surpass apple because Google is not the company. It was Alphabet that surpassed Apple and that had to do with investors not seeing the required signs that apple wants to advance. Ai is a future many investors see possibilities that is why Nvidia will hardly be surpassed and competition can make companies advance. For me competition is not bad and will not make you lose focus also compete to improve.

I might be wrong, but I think Nokia failed to upgrade its products consistently. Other popular phones keep releasing new models that offer something new to customers. There was a popular Nokia phone called the 3310 in my country. It took the company more than one years to introduce another version of the phone. Competition is still, so other phine manufacturers offered something diffrent and took Nokia's market.

Competition is one of the quiet distraction anyone can have, whether on company/business level or on a personal level. Competition will make you not to accept ideas that are general but produced by opponents to talk of going to them for help even if it's crystal clear that they can afford the best help ever (as in going to self made opponents for help is a forbidden move). Competition can even set siblings/relatives apart making them to fight against each other. When self induced competition is the order hatred becomes so cool that people don't mind making sure others loss their life for nothing talkless of belongings. for me I think competition should remain natural as in not acknowledged or induced or self made when I say natural, I am referring to the fact that even in Bitcoin investment we all can't really have the same numbers of Bitcoin so why hate others for nothing. One of the company will definitely take the top, so why the unquenchable useless distraction in the name of competition?

Nope it is exaggerated.  source: https://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/war

I can only imagine what big businesses war is like on small businesses. Especially considering AI assistance. Libreoffice has always been my go to instead of Microsoft 365. It is free and open source with basically the same functions and the community would grow even more if the big competition was not trying to drown it out.

I'm thinking the opposite, this competition is motivating them to surpass each other. It just that as it happens google allocate the right resource to develop their AI. Microsoft is having it bad because they wasted too much money on OpenAI but this is just my surface understanding of the situation. Apple on its own is like an anomaly. They manufacture their phone, built their own market. Their wallet garden is a fortress. Microsoft has also tried to compete with market using their windows mobile phone yet they failed. So it isn't like both google and microsoft never tried. They are corporations. There are enough manpower to do many thing at once.

Absolutely right. If competition were limited only to competition in improving the final product (as in idealized economic theory), then this would contribute to progress and benefit consumers. But it doesn't happen that way. It happens just the opposite. Competition does not lead to product improvement, but primarily dumping, courts, and at a smaller business level, criminal disputes, arson, and murders. Then eventually comes the monopolization of the market and the inevitable deterioration of the product, as the monopolist seeks to reduce costs. But the question is much broader. Why should everyone be the enemy of everyone? It would be understandable where there is not enough food. But in societies where there is abundance, the idea of unlimited consumption is instilled in universal hostility (competition). Divide and conquer...