People often compare market capitalization (current share price times the number of shares outstanding) for public companies as an indicator of success / failure, and one surpassing the other as a sign that one is overtaking the other, regardless of whether they’re actually full-fledged competitors or not.
Google and Apple, for example, have been making headlines when stock transactions move their respective market cap to top the other company’s (see this Bloomberg article from August 2008 or this one from GigaOM from two weeks ago).
So here’s a fun fact to start off the week with: the market cap for both Google and Apple are currently tied at about $170 billion after Friday’s market close.
Google closed at a share price of 536.12, while Apple’s closed at 188.5 but with nearly three times as many shares outstanding. To the investment community, the tie in market cap means the companies are exactly the same size today (the measurement is an important indicator of the value and size of a company and thus a determining factor in stock valuation).
Both companies beat analysts’ estimates when they announced their latest earnings earlier this month (relive our coverage of Google’s Q3 earnings announcements and Apple’s Q4 results). It will be interesting to see how both stocks keep performing as we continue to slowly but surely crawl out of the recession.
And just for the sake of comparison: Microsoft’s market cap is currently approximately $246 billion, while IBM’s is $158 billion and Yahoo’s closed last week at $22 billion.
There’s more than stock market valuations. While apple provides value to snob hipsters, google has revolutionized the way we work, we do science, created value and changed the way we think about the net.
or is it the other way around? fight now!
Google stock is not as hot as Apple stock. Everytime Apple releases a product, it goes BOOM. Everytime Google release a product, it goes BANG. Everytime Microsoft releases a product, it goes bing.
Silly question Robin, but if you could be at the helm of one of them which would you choose?
Microsoft!
Would be good to use some Wolfram Alpha here and provide revenue/employee comparison
And here it is:
http://www.wolf...a.com/input/?i=(apple+revenue+%2F+apple+employees)%2C+(google+revenue+%2F+google+employees)
gives:
$ 992,853.26 person^(-1) yr^(-1) (US dollars per person year)
vs.
$ 1.101 million person^(-1) yr^(-1) (US dollars per person year)
(Dec 31, 2008,Jun 30,Sep 26 and Sep 30)
That’s impressive that wolfram-alpha was able to calculate and even plot graph over time..
interesting that apple had a sharp increase from 2005 to 2006 (ipods), and again till 2008 (iphone). The beauty of economies of scale..
(btw: for others too lazy to reconstruct the url, here’s the short link http://bit.ly/3rfCzq ).
The GigaOm story text doesn’t link to its correct source.
thanks, fixed
Leave aside valuations, let us see how many industries they have made disruption in
Apple: Personal Computers, Music Players, Music, Telecommunications
Google: Internet Search, Telecommunications, Navigation, Internet Advertising
Almost hand in hand I must say
The biggest factor here is how both Companies earn revenues in each of those four industries.
In all four, Apple makes huge turnovers with new inventory released for added growth across all industries year by year.
Google on the other hand has all of its revenue earnings in one basket with its popular but peaked, Search & Advertising platform.
Now Google may find new revenues and growth by replicating their Search & Advertising Platform across the Mobile Web – but their main problem is that almost all of their other Web Services are free.
Free is not a word in the Apple World.
I don’t know how you can possibly say that their advertising dollars have peaked. Perhaps you don’t know that they keep putting it into new platforms, like their mobile OS, and print media just to name two brand new mediums.
Apple holds a microscopic share in these areas, while Google revolutionized and dominated theirs
Apple may only have a 5% to 10% marketshare in computers, but holds a 70% marketshare in online music retailing and and mp3 players and is now over 10% in smartphones worldwide. Also, Apple has 36% profit margins which is why it is making money, whereas as Nokia is not, even thought they sell 10 times more phones than Apple.
So, your saying Apple has room to grow and Google needs to find new markets?
Apple definitely has room to grow in mobile and computers and I would guess Google has plenty of room to grow in mobile as well. The difference is that Apple has already learned how to make lots of money off of every aspect of mobile (hardware, apps, peripherals, subscriptions, media sales and even retail) while Google is still dinking around with their OS and ad revenue. Does Google break down their ad revenue by catagories? Desktop vs mobile, for example?
I don’t see what the “disruption” is in Telecommunications and Navigation. I’d give you that they disrupted “Advertising”, but not Internet Advertising.
As someone else said, the more interesting thing is that Apple sell things end users buy and Google sell ad space to subsidize what end users do.
Shouldn’t the real story be “Apple worth more than Google”?
I agree! Apple being more worth than Google is a story!
I googled Marissa Mayer and I liked it
yea well I binged her.
I sure you both felt like screaming “Yahooooo” …after googling and binging her.
+1 for this.
i would do her
+1 from me too
I poke her yahoo and google on her facebook
I hope they buy out Apple in the near future.
Like that is going to happen…
Google the following, but I saw quite effective against apple, yahoo, microsoft
What I really want to know is how much cash does Google, Apple and Microsoft have on hand? Can someone do a look up and post this info?
I think Apple wins there, since they always keep gathering money from stock and profit but they aren’t really doing anything with most of it. It’s been long known that they have a huge pile of money and disputed because they don’t don’t do anything with it for the profit of their shareholders, eg. acquisitions, dividend, …
I don’t know what the number is but from what I’ve heard they have about 50 billion dollars in leftovers. Of course I could be horribly mistaking.
I found a post on TC by MG Siegler stating that Apple has $34 Billon in cash. Now just have to find out how much the big G and Microsoft have in cash.
http://www.tech...ping-anomalies/
Well yeah, $34 Billion, I tend to round roughly. :p
I think MG’s post may be wrong??
Microsoft has $36.7B in cash and short-term securities.
http://www.micr...10.mspx#Balance
Apple has $23.5B in same.
http://www.appl.../19results.html
Ah, sorry, MG is right. $33.992B including “long-term marketable securities”. I’m not sure why this is more than Microsoft’s $36.7B though, maybe he is subtracting debt for MSFT.
Market cap is just one part of the story – the full value of a company is market cap and debt. If a company chooses to finance itself with lots of debt, its market cap will be lower, but it’s overall value is roughly unchanged (except for some tax distortions). So I’m always surprised when in the media two companies get compared on market cap, because that is essentially meaningless. I’d be interested – what’s Google and what is Apple’s debt?
Exactly. Using market cap – which is dependent on stock price which is in turn dependent on perceived future growth is a bit silly.
As for debt, I think they’re both debt free. In terms of future opportunities Google’s are way better than Apple’s.
In other words, Apple is overvalued (at least relative to Google). Go long google, short apple?
Tipping over the apple cart!
i just love this two companies…
I haven’t payed much attention to market cap lately, but am surprised Apple is this big. Thus, short Apple and use the money to buy Google. No, I’m just kidding. These are about the only two companies I would buy these days as the market is gonna retest lows by Spring unfortunetly I think.
The stock price or value has nothing to do with market caps considering that Google is trading way over Apple doesn’t warrant Google is better than Apple. Look at Microsoft’s market cap, its way over both of them and doesn’t move like it used to!
The difference between the two is that Google’s revenue stream comes through a byzantine system of roundabout self-dealing that makes Enron look transparent, while Apple makes its money on hardware. Which would you rather have your money in?
Google… by far.
Send your contact info, I’ve got some mortgage-backed securities I’d like to sell you on.
I use products/services from both of these excellent companies everyday, and I invest in both. Between the two, it would be FAR more difficult to do without Apple. There are other “decent” search engines out there, but Apple’s the only company I know that makes computers worth buying with one’s own cash. Same with MP3 players.
Apple sells replacable products by definition, so that’s a non-argument (and a worthless comparison).
Lemme guess, your PC is not replaceable? Your Zune? It’s an extremely valid comparison. Apple is moving a tangible product, Google could be eliminated much more easily, or replaced by better products. No company makes a better OS than Apple, IMHO.
thats in your shitty opinion. 9 times out of 10 people choose to buy a Windows pc.
This only works if you include Google’s Class B shares, which aren’t publicly traded. GOOG’s Shares x Price is actually more like $130bil.
Educate me: question for you all (or for whoever knows). I had heard AAPL was unusual for being so *far* out of debt. Yet someone above mentioned GOOG is, too. True?
(Mi esposa gets on my case because so many years ago I discouraged her from buying into GOOG: now we have some AAPL and it seems to go up and down but “mainly” up…)
Both Apple and Google have $0.00000000 debt. They make huge pile of money each quarter and I would be mad to bet against these two.
I think I would take google over apple for the monopoly element, but its very close. Both are one of the best economic empires ever built.
This is interesting, I would think Google would be worht more
google is way too overpriced. 40 p/e ratio vs apple’s 29. google has 15 billion less revenue
More relevant stats:
Apple –
Profit Margin: 15.61%
Operating Margin: 20.96%
Trailing P/E: 30.08
Google –
Profit Margin: 21.73%
Operating Margin: 33.92%
Trailing P/E: 34.43
So can people post their predictions as to when (not if
) they will exceed MS’s market cap?>
Didn’t pets.com once meet/beat the market cap of GE?
Apple’s profits are spread across many Hardware and Software Products and Services, whilst Google’s profits are mainly all in one basket – its Search and Advertising Web Platform.
Of course Google is trying to break Apple’s mojo in its iTunes and iPhones Markets by releasing Google Music Onebox and numerous Android Smartphones.
But I don’t believe either of those Services will become an Apple killer.
On the other hand if Apple were interested in pursing a Web project that I am working on, then they may have a potential Google killer – one that can change the Web Search & Advertising business model that gives Google its mojo.
Hi,
And just wait until the positioning of Apple is revealed around it’s cross-platform software (iTunes, Safari, etc.), it’s various r&d/patents and end-to-end touch-points………
Google started as a search-engine; it’s paid various partners to be bundled with their services and is building out new expensively created technologies and services out in the open, top-down.
Apple has a core controlled hugely profitable business that it can develop features and technologies for where it controls the environment and which it can use to fund and promulgate the back-room stuff. A 10+% market-share in mobile phones and 70% in paid content-distribution, primary developments in location-based commerce/advertising, etc.
Google allows its employees to spend 20% of their paid time to work on non-google/search-related development. Imagine if Apple is explicitly investing 20% of it’s collective development on projects to ultimately undermine and take down google.
Once upon a time Microsoft invested in Apple, and Steve Jobs continued developing Mac OS/Next OS for the x86 chip-set even when apple was only available with PowerPC chips. What’s to say that Apple worked with Google on the iPhone’s launch simply to let it carry most of the LBS-related development?
A flip of the switch in Safari to Pippin-Search, then integrating itunes-search and spotlight (within pc/mobile), et al…………………..
And then who’d be worth more???
Yours kindly,
Shakir Razak
How long before Microsoft, Google and Apple are all in the same territory?
I love Chrome, but i think if it supports more plug in (add on) like firefox, it’ll be much more better.
I’ve heard of Chromium, is it the open source version that are open for developed?
I’d rather be holding a thousand shares of Google than a 1000 shares of Apple. They’d be worth a hell of a lot more now. Google stands a better chance going higher than Apple. Who the heck can even measure ad clicks? Besides, the industry is positively in love with Android now and pundits are already screaming the demise of the iPhone. Apple stock has hit a stiff headwind over the past couple of weeks no matter how many iPhones or Macs are being sold.
I always get a kick that investors would rather buy 1 share of Google rather than 1 share of Apple. Apple is claimed to be already priced too high and Google is considered to be cheap.
One week (or so) later…
GOOG 178.47B
AAPL 181.45B
(…even after the launch of “iDon’t” Droid). Go figure.