It's Wrong to Compare Tech Companies

2015-10-23

Alright, everyone calm down, it's not always true but read on to see my reasoning.

Recently I was talking to my friend and fellow web developer Sam Bunting. We set on to the topic of Google being evil after me asking why he chose a Windows Phone over something like an Android phone or an iPhone. His reasoning was simply that

Because in all honesty, I like Microsoft and dislike Google, The phones for a fairly powerful spec is quite cheap compared to things like iPhones, I really like flat design and personalisation of my stuff (Which I can do really easily on Windows Phones) and it is fast, not just out of the box, but [after a lot of use] it appears to have not lost any performance at all.

He pointed out that he feels google is an 'evil company', and that they get everything they -- and what they don't get they bully out of existence. We went on to compare Google vs. Microsoft (a friendly sparring match if you will) and I left with the conclusion that we really should not be comparing those two companies -- just like how we shouldn't compare apple to oranges.

Tech companies try to innovate (at least, most of them). They find new ways to do things and earn some revenue off that. They do things the way they want to. The way they see is the 'right way'. It's not really fair to compare Android to Windows Phone because they're aiming for two different things. Android is going for customizability and aiming for all markets, whereas Windows Phone seems to be aiming more for the low-to-medium end business-oriented smartphones for people who want to get stuff done and don't care about changing their launcher or flashing custom ROMs. It's like that for iOS too. iOS is more focused on Apple's closed garden, and people who invest in their (rather pricey compared to the competition) technology want to be enclosed in Apple's walled garden of safety, where maybe the ability to change their icons isn't there but the safety and speed (although with iOS 9 that's debatable) are present.

Obviously, some companies could be easy to compare, like Intel and AMD, or Nvidia and AMD, but that's because they're in the same sort of business -- they make processors and graphics cards for PCs, among other endeavours. But for the most part I don't think it's fair to compare Microsoft vs. Google vs. Apple. They're all going their own directions.