I think Google will be Apple very soon and back in the lime light. Google has invested a fortune in R&D to develop the next big thing. While Microsoft spends its money catching up and Apple spends its money maintaining its current product line. Google is working hard at developing something new. They have hundreds of products in R&D some will never be made but others could be the next smart phone.

Project Glass is the perfect example. It could kill off the smart phone or at least take 40% market share or greater. Augmented glasses have thousands of applications. Google can sell it to law enforcement agencies, militaries, Governments and of course corporations. Let alone the civilian population who would die for it. Glasses that can translate signs in real time, produce sub titles while talking to someone from a different language, give augmented directions right infringement of your eyes. Enable you to use facial and voice recognition to identify friends. Say you have this friend long ago and is on your Google+ you bump into them and cant remember their name. The glasses display their info infringement of you. Heck even augmented reality video games like an FPS to play with your friends in the forest or an abandoned building or else where.

Those glasses if Google can prevent competitors from replicating them could land Google a massive hit. They already said it could be connected with other Google devices likely your Android phone and Chrome computer. So your wanting to watch a movie or access a file on your PC do it in real time with your glasses anywhere.

The glasses aren't the only thing Google has in the works. Google is aggressively trying to get ahead of their competitors rather then follow. Microsoft is playing catch up and Apple is to busy trying to hold onto its power with Jobs gone.

It would not surprise me in the least if Google over took Microsoft within 5 years and Apple within ten. The computer industry could be shaken up and Google could hit MS and Apple hard enough to secure a 5-10% share especially if they have the Google glasses and Android phones working together.

Though I still don't think Google+ can over take Facebook and that's my big fear. Now if every future Google device required a Google+ account then Google might be able to take on Facebook within ten years but they couldn't over take Facebook much easier. Google devices would also need to do things to give Google+ an advantage over Facebook something that would be difficult for Google to do!

Actually all three of the companies you mention spend huge amounts of money on R&D. There are probably hundreds of items they are working on between them; some of them are probably very similar.

MS is not just playing catch up, they have their hands in many different things. They entered a few markets late but they are also ahead in others.  Late doesn't mean anything. They were unable to compete with the ipod, but they succeeded with the Xbox. There are many things in the works that the public have little to no knowledge of.

Apple set themselves up as some sort of cultural icon and people eat it up. They are not busy trying to hold onto their "power" with Jobs gone. Jobs was the face of Apple, but it continues to move full speed ahead with it products; they continue to make record profits. How long this will last? Well, I guess it could be as long as they can keep up their iconic image in the eyes of their customers.

I wouldn't describe it as hitting one out of the ballpark. 25% growth is quite good, but its also in line with Google's growth rate for a number of years now. It's strong, steady growth, not a dramatic spike. Call it an RBI rather than a home run. ;)

RBI is just as good as a home run if that home run was just a solo shot.

It's better than msfts revenue growth, which is mabey 10% for the last couple anyway.  As I mentioned, google will be catching up financially speaking, and that will bode some trouble for msft wanting to get into the tablet market and smartphones (if it hasn't already lost this) 

it's easier to grow if you have still place to grow. some mini companies grow hundreds of percent every year but this won't be the case forever. same with apple or google. apple won't sell more than 10 billion iphones a year^^ if they will reach that number (as example, i'm not serious) they will stop to grow in that segment.

microsoft can't grow a lot anymore with windows for home computers. same with office and so on. but they could grow a lot in markets they just started to invest a lot, which can happen or not from one to the next year.

it's not like google will be 10x as big as microsoft in 15 years even if the actual numbers would mean exactly that extrapolated.

but sure, google is a big player like microsoft is nowadays.

Nah, I don't really see it that way. Both companies have very deep pockets. Either one has the financial resources to execute whatever strategy they think best in mobile. The bigger issue is which one has better strategic resources and a better strategy, period.

Both companies have billions and are spending billions on mobile. Google has an advantage in having a huge, established user base. Microsoft has an advantage in intellectual property. Which is the better move, Microsoft's spending billions to fund Nokia, developers and Windows Phone marketing, or Google spending billions to acquire Motorola and move into hardware?

I'll say this, Microsoft's strategy outsources a lot of risk onto Nokia, Google's incurs a lot of risk on itself.

Actually, I'm leaving something out. Microsoft is trying to leverage its desktop dominance into tablets, and it's taking a pretty big risk to do it. Windows 8 is the most radical departure in the history of the desktop GUI, and it risks pissing off a lot of desktop users if MS doesn't get it right.

Walks in, leaves this on board, walks out....

MS owns an obscene amount of patents in comparison to google, with that said, google uses patents owned by MS, & vice/versa

The more money Google makes, the more money MS makes.

Shit, MS made more money off Android then WP7 over the past 12months.

MS broke the 'not going anywhere' in the early 90's when they owned more patents then people living in New York.

Things change in the tech industry every day. Who knows where we will be in 10 years.

The only point I would like to speak on was your last one: "Quite simply, google is growing at more than twice as fast as msft, so expect google to start to really pour some money into marketing and put the last nails in theWinPho coffin as msft will probably decide to find an easier market to go after."

That's a strange comment to make when there hasn't been much of a Windows Phone presence until recently. We will really see more with this now that Nokia is fully supporting WP. I don't know if you have had the chance to check out the Lumia yet, but you should. I was amazed how smooth the OS is and it's ease to navigate. I love my HTC Evo, but the WP7.5 OS is a lot cooler to use than the HTC Sense UI on Android OS. I also love the layout of the apps on WP. The biggest complaints I would have is the app library is still relatively small and, like iOS, WP is not supporting Flash.

With Nokia's full support, I don't think that the WP is going to die in the next couple of years.

No, google corporate (not just the android division) has been growing twice as fast as the entire company of msft, I think that u misunderstood me.