Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) have been at war for several years now. Both top companies are leading the technology industry with their mobile technology products, but Google’s Android is currently on top.
According to a recent interview with Bloomberg, Google’s Chairman, Eric Schmidt, thinks their success will continue. This is a huge platform change; this is of the scale of 20 years ago — Microsoft versus Apple. We’re winning that war pretty clearly now.”
Their success can be attributed to the ever-growing demand for mobile technology. People are turning off their computers and making the switch over to more portable devices like tablets and smartphones. Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) has found a successful way to capitalize on this demand and shift the consumer focus on them.
Schmidt added, “The core strategy is to make a bigger pie. We will end up with a not perfectly controlled and not perfectly managed bigger pie by virtue of open systems.”
Larry Page took over Schmidt’s position as CEO in 2011. He mentioned that there has been significant economic growth in China and the United States, however he is still concerned over the future of the latter. He said, “It will be tragic for the country if the sum of the government can’t resolve this.You can think of what’s going on as one set of special interests versus another, and a big fight, and they all have to feel like they’ve been heard.”
Unfortunately, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) doesn’t expect much progress from Europe, especially over things like taxes and antitrust laws. Google has avoided $2 billion in global taxes. They sent $9.8 billion of their revenue into a tax shelter in Bermuda, but Schmidt claims that his company still pays their taxes. “We pay lots of taxes; we pay them in the legally prescribed ways. I am very proud of the structure that we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate.”
Government officials in Europe and Australia are currently looking into ways they can probe further into Google’s tax shelters.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is a smart company and Schmidt is a smart Chairman. Although it’s hard to believe that they won’t lose ground to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in the near future, I think they’ve got a strong hold on today’s technology market and I predict it will remain that way for awhile.
