Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. (formerly Apple Computer, Inc.) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. Devices include the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Vision Pro, and Apple TV; operating systems include iOS, iPadOS, and macOS; and software applications and services include iTunes, iCloud, Apple Music, and Apple TV+.
As of March 2023, Apple was the world's largest company by market capitalization, but it lost this position to Microsoft in January 2024. In 2022, it was the largest technology company by revenue, with US$394.3 billion. As of June 2022, Apple was the fourth-largest personal computer vendor by unit sales, the largest manufacturing company by revenue, and the second-largest manufacturer of mobile phones in the world. It is one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon, Meta (the parent company of Facebook), and Microsoft.
Apple was founded as Apple Computer Company on April 1, 1976, to produce and market Steve Wozniak's Apple I personal computer. The company was incorporated by Wozniak and Steve Jobs in 1977. Its second computer, the Apple II, became a best seller as one of the first mass-produced microcomputers. Apple introduced the Lisa in 1983 and the Macintosh in 1984, as some of the first computers to use a graphical user interface and a mouse. By 1985, the company's internal problems included the high cost of its products and power struggles between executives. That year Jobs left Apple to form NeXT, Inc., and Wozniak withdrew to other ventures. The market for personal computers expanded and evolved throughout the 1990s, and Apple lost considerable market share to the lower-priced duopoly of the Microsoft Windows operating system on Intel-powered PC clones (also known as "Wintel").
In 1997, Apple was weeks away from bankruptcy. To resolve its failed operating system strategy and entice Jobs's return, it bought NeXT. Over the next decade, Jobs guided Apple back to profitability through several tactics including introducing the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad to critical acclaim, launching the "Think different" campaign and other memorable advertising campaigns, opening the Apple Store retail chain, and acquiring numerous companies to broaden its product portfolio. Jobs resigned in 2011 for health reasons, and died two months later. He was succeeded as CEO by Tim Cook.
Apple has received criticism regarding its contractors' labor practices, its environmental practices, and its business ethics, including anti-competitive practices and materials sourcing. Nevertheless, it has a large following and a high level of brand loyalty. It has been consistently ranked as one of the world's most valuable brands.
Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to be valued at over $1 trillion in August 2018, then at $2 trillion in August 2020, and at $3 trillion in January 2022. In June 2023, it was valued at just over $3 trillion
Apple adjusts App Store policy in EU
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Apple's iPhone sales drop 24% in China
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Amazon (company)
Amazon.com, Inc., doing business as Amazon (/ˈæməzɒn/, AM-ə-zon; UK also /ˈæməzən/, AM-ə-zən), is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It is considered one of the Big Five American technology companies; the other four are Alphabet (parent company of Google), Apple, Meta (parent company of Facebook), and Microsoft.
Amazon was founded on July 5, 1994, by Jeff Bezos from his garage in Bellevue, Washington.[6] The company initially was an online marketplace for books, but incrementally expanded into a multitude of product categories, a strategy that has earned it the moniker "The Everything Store".
The company has multiple subsidiaries, including Amazon Web Services, providing cloud computing, Zoox, a self-driving car division, Kuiper Systems, a satellite Internet provider, and Amazon Lab126, a computer hardware R&D provider. Other subsidiaries include Ring, Twitch, IMDb, and Whole Foods Market. Its acquisition of Whole Foods in August 2017 for US$13.4 billion substantially increased its market share and presence as a physical retailer.
Amazon has a reputation as a disruptor of industries through technological innovation and aggressive reinvestment of profits into capital expenditures. As of 2023, it is the world's largest online retailer and marketplace, smart speaker provider, cloud computing service through AWS, live-streaming service through Twitch, and Internet company as measured by revenue and market share. In 2021, it surpassed Walmart as the world's largest retailer outside of China, driven in large part by its paid subscription plan, Amazon Prime, which has close to 200 million subscribers worldwide. It is the second-largest private employer in the United States.
As of October 2023, Amazon is the 12th-most visited website in the world and 82% of its traffic comes from the United States.
Amazon also distributes a variety of downloadable and streaming content through its Amazon Prime Video, MGM+, Amazon Music, Twitch, and Audible units. It publishes books through its publishing arm, Amazon Publishing, film and television content through Amazon MGM Studios, including the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio which acquired in March 2022. It also produces consumer electronics—most notably, Kindle e-readers, Echo devices, Fire tablets, and Fire TVs.
Amazon has been criticized for customer data collection practices, a toxic work culture, censorship, tax avoidance, and anti-competitive behavior.
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Then Chairman and CEO
Eric Schmidt
(left) with co-founders
Sergey Brin
(center) and
Larry Page
(right) in 2008
Google LLC (/ˈɡuːɡəl/ ⓘ, GOO-ghəl) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence (AI). It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in the world" and as one of the world's most valuable brands due to its market dominance, data collection, and technological advantages in the field of AI. Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. is one of the five Big Tech companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.
Google was founded on September 4, 1998, by American computer scientists Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were PhD students at Stanford University in California. Together they own about 14% of its publicly listed shares and control 56% of its stockholder voting power through super-voting stock. The company went public via an initial public offering (IPO) in 2004. In 2015, Google was reorganized as a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Google is Alphabet's largest subsidiary and is a holding company for Alphabet's internet properties and interests. Sundar Pichai was appointed CEO of Google on October 24, 2015, replacing Larry Page, who became the CEO of Alphabet. On December 3, 2019, Pichai also became the CEO of Alphabet.
The company has since rapidly grown to offer a multitude of products and services beyond Google Search, many of which hold dominant market positions. These products address a wide range of use cases, including email (Gmail), navigation (Waze & Maps), cloud computing (Cloud), web browsing (Chrome), video sharing (YouTube), productivity (Workspace), operating systems (Android), cloud storage (Drive), language translation (Translate), photo storage (Photos), video calling (Meet), smart home (Nest), smartphones (Pixel), wearable technology (Pixel Watch & Fitbit), music streaming (YouTube Music), video on demand (YouTube TV), AI (Google Assistant & Gemini), machine learning APIs (TensorFlow), AI chips (TPU), and more. Discontinued Google products include gaming (Stadia), Glass, Google+, Reader, Play Music, Nexus, Hangouts, and Inbox by Gmail.[15][16]
Google's other ventures outside of Internet services and consumer electronics include quantum computing (Sycamore), self-driving cars (Waymo, formerly the Google Self-Driving Car Project), smart cities (Sidewalk Labs), and transformer models (Google Deepmind).
Google and YouTube are the two most visited websites worldwide followed by Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter). Google is also the largest search engine, mapping and navigation application, email provider, office suite, video sharing platform, photo and cloud storage provider, mobile operating system, web browser, ML framework, and AI virtual assistant provider in the world as measured by market share. On the list of most valuable brands, Google is ranked second by Forbes and fourth by Interbrand. It has received significant criticism involving issues such as privacy concerns, tax avoidance, censorship, search neutrality, antitrust and abuse of its monopoly position.
Google Doodle on flat white coffee beverage
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GOOG and GOOGL, see Alphabet Inc.
Google LLC
 The Google logo used since 2015 | |
| Google's headquarters, the Googleplex | |
| Formerly | Google Inc. (1998–2017) |
|---|---|
| Company type | Subsidiary |
| NASDAQ: GOOGL, GOOG | |
| Industry | |
| Founded | September 4, 1998; 25 years ago[a] in Menlo Park, California, United States |
| Founders | |
| Headquarters | Googleplex, , U.S. |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | |
| Products | |
Number of employees | 139,995 (2021) |
| Parent | Alphabet Inc. |
| Subsidiaries | |
| ASN | |
| Website | about.google  |
| Footnotes / references https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google |
