Strategic Decision Analysis..I'm loving it !

Rivalry of Technology giants: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Apple - Importance of strategies and strategic moves.

The Big 4 have battled for long and employed different strategies, made a mix of sequential and simultaneous strategic moves against each other to excel in the industry.

Microsoft had the first mover advantage with "Hotmail" but couldn't keep up. "Yahoo mail" and eventually "Gmail" overtook.

Yahoo, with the launch of its search engine, became the most popular website. It's strategy was to identify what people wanted and then build upon the requirement. Google made the strategic move by thinking ahead in time what people might want, what would be beneficial for future users. It used this concept to launch the most successful search engine, as we all know: www.google.com
Microsoft is trying to catch up and it recently launched "Bing". It's strategic move was to differentiate by providing an active engine for searching low air fares, electronics etc. If latest talks are to be believed, Microsoft and other media companies are thinking of ways to block Google from indexing their content and make it available exclusively by Bing.
Now, Yahoo has recently launched BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service), a customizable search engine by user itself.

In terms of OS (Operating System), who can forget the launch of MAC from Apple, amidst the monopoly ( and hence huge success) of Microsoft Windows. Apple played it on user experience, security and innovation and took a pie from Microsoft. It was important for Apple to launch Mac OS as Apple was going through a rough phase. Now, Google has joined the race and launched "Google Chrome OS", just a few days ago. It takes the step into the future by utilizing "Cloud Computing". The success of Chrome OS is yet to be observed.

Music industry couldn't remain unaffected. When Apple launched iPod, Microsoft responded with Zune.

There are numerous examples, from past, present and will continue in the future. Strategically, it's better for all of them to work together ( somehow ! ) and continue to enhance user-experience. ( this is at least I want as a user myself)

Microsoft's bid to acquire Yahoo, although an unsuccessful attempt, does indicate the strategic moves that companies are willing to make in order to gain competitive advantage.

Sources (Live links):
http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle/articleid/3207435
http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14955213&fsrc=rss
http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/