At some point the phrase "tech company" becomes completely meaningless. Microsoft is a software compoany, Google a search engine/ad buisness, and Amazon are a retailer. Although there are areas of overlap they are effecitvely in completely different markets. The tendancy to treat them as competitors just because they are identified as large tech companies seems short sighted. It was idiotic for Microsoft to invest so much money in Bing; they might as well have started selling condos or opened a sandwich shop.
Amazon cloud computing was originally so brilliant because they sold computing like a retail product (easy billing, no annoying sales or contracts). MS make money selling server software to people who don't want to buy computing as a retail product. They are actually different markets and are both sustainable.
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At some point the phrase "tech company" becomes completely meaningless. Microsoft is a software compoany, Google a search engine/ad buisness, and Amazon are a retailer. Although there are areas of overlap they are effecitvely in completely different markets. The tendancy to treat them as competitors just because they are identified as large tech companies seems short sighted. It was idiotic for Microsoft to invest so much money in Bing; they might as well have started selling condos or opened a sandwich shop.
Amazon cloud computing was originally so brilliant because they sold computing like a retail product (easy billing, no annoying sales or contracts). MS make money selling server software to people who don't want to buy computing as a retail product. They are actually different markets and are both sustainable.