Even Apple, notorious for keeping a tight grip on its products, allows fierce competitors like Google, Amazon, Spotify, and Microsoft to offer their apps on its phones and tablets.
Amazon doesn't want to give Apple a cut of its media sales, so Apple won't let Amazon sell products in its apps.
Google's competitors argue that Google designs its search display to promote Google 'products' like Google Maps, Google Places, and Google Shopping, ahead of competitors like MapQuest, Yelp, and product-search sites.
Apple isn't the next Microsoft, you see. Apple is not the next anything because the role it aspires to transcends anything imaginable by Microsoft, ever. Google is the next Microsoft, so Google is seen by Ballmer as the immediate threat - the one he has a hope in hell of actually doing something about.
Microsoft makes numerous apps for both Android and iOS, as do Google, Amazon and Facebook. You can run iTunes and iCloud on Windows and Office on the Mac.
Though the S8, like all premium Samsung phones, runs Android with the basic Google suite of apps, Samsung keeps trying to duplicate Android functions with its own software. It wants to be a software platform like its rival Apple, but it uses someone else's operating system and core apps. Awkward.
Facebook is in a very different place than Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, and Microsoft. We are trying to build a community.
The United States ran the table on Internet innovations, creating companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Cisco, Twitter, Amazon, eBay, YouTube, and others. Europe and Japan scarcely contributed.
Think of everything in Seattle - Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks. Then you go down to Silicon Valley - Intel, Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter. What does New York produce?
Today, we have our own concentrations of economic power. Instead of Standard Oil, U.S. Steel, the Union Pacific Railroad, and J. P. Morgan and Company, we have Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft.
Competitors argue that Google rigs its search algorithms to demote listings for competing search engines. Many of the allegations of demotion come generally from sites of pretty questionable quality, such as Nextag and Foundem. Some of Google's primary competitors in 'specialized search' clearly place well in search results - Amazon and Yelp.
The futures of Crackle and Hulu and so forth become more and more important as we connect to more and more devices. We need our content to make our services as attractive as Apple's or Amazon's or Microsoft's. We're in a brave new world of fierce competition.
Xiaomi looks a bit like Apple but is really more like Amazon with some elements of Google.
Google has placed its faith in data, while Apple worships the power of design. This dichotomy made the two companies complementary. Apple would ship the phones and computers, while Google would provide Maps, Search, YouTube, and other web tools that made the devices more useful.
Amazon is now the definitive source for data about whole sets of products - fungible consumer products. EBay is the authoritative source for the secondary market of those products. Google is the authority for information about facts, but they're relatively undifferentiated.
We'll get a chance to go through this [Apple versus Microsoft debate] again in phones and music players. There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.
My Safari bookmarks only sync intermittently across my Apple devices. Unlike Amazon's Kindle app for Apple products, the company's iBooks doesn't remember where I left off unless I set a bookmark.