Top 4 Information Technology and Software Companies, their Products, and Net Worth 

 There are many great information technology and software companies out there, but here are just a few of the top ones. These companies make billions of dollars in revenue and profit each year, and they continue to grow and innovate with new products. Let us take a detailed look at the big four companies, their products, and net worth.

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology company with headquarters in Redmond, Washington. It develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft Office suite, and the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers.

Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers. Microsoft was ranked No. 21 in the 2018 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS–DOS in the mid–1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows.

The company‘s 1986 initial public offering (IPO), and subsequent rise in its share price, created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions.

In May 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion in its largest acquisition to date. As of 2015, Microsoft is market–dominant in the IBM PC–compatible operating system market and the office software suite market, although it has lost the majority of the overall operating system market to Android. The company also produces a wide range of other consumer and enterprise software for desktops and servers, including Internet search (with Bing), the digital services market (through MSN), mixed reality (HoloLens), cloud computing (Azure), and software development (Visual Studio). In 2016, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for $26.2 billion, its largest acquisition to date. The net worth of company is $1.3 trillion.

Apple Inc.

Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. The company‘s hardware products include the iPhone smartphone, the iPad tablet computer, the Mac personal computer, the iPod portable media player, the Apple Watch smartwatch, the Apple TV digital media player, and the HomePod smart speaker.

Apple‘s software includes the macOS and iOS operating systems, the iTunes media player, the Safari web browser, and the iLife and iWork creativity and productivity suites. Its online services include the iTunes Store, the iOS App Store and Mac App Store, Apple Music, and iCloud. Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in April 1976 to develop and sell Wozniak‘s Apple I personal computer kit.

The Apple I kits were computers first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard (with CPU, RAM, and basic textual–video chips)—a base kit concept which would be expanded in the Apple II.

The company incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. in January 1977, and sales of its computers, including the Apple II, grew quickly. Within a few years, Jobs and Wozniak had hired a staff of computer designers and had a production line. Apple went public in 1980 to instant financial success. Over the next few years, Apple shipped new computers featuring innovative graphical user interfaces, such as the original Macintosh in 1984, and Apple‘s marketing advertisements for its products received widespread critical acclaim. However, the high price of its products and limited software titles caused problems, as did power struggles between executives.

In 1985, Wozniak departed Apple amicably and remained an honorary employee, while Jobs and others resigned to found NeXT. As the market for personal computers increased, Apple‘s computers saw declining sales due to lower–priced products from competitors, in particular those offered with the Microsoft Windows operating system. The board recruited CEO Gil Amelio in 1996 to what would be a tumultuous tenure for the company. Amelio made many changes at Apple, including large layoffs at the company. He also oversaw the development of the successful Power Macintosh line in 1997, but was criticized for his focus on open standards rather than Apple‘s proprietary technologies.

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In addition, Amelio oversaw the acquisition of several unsuccessful companies, such as NeXT, which brought Jobs back to Apple, and Pippin, which was a flop. Amelio was ousted in a boardroom coup in 1997 led by Jobs and several other Apple executives. Jobs became the new CEO and immediately discontinued the Macintosh clone program which had been initiated by Amelio. He also introduced the original iMac in 1998, which proved to be a commercial success. In 2001, Apple opened its first retail stores in Virginia and California. Currently, the net worth of company is $2 trillion.

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Google LLC

Google LLC is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet–related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware. It is considered one of the Big Four technology companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, and Facebook. Google was founded in September 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University in California. Together they own about 14 percent of its shares and control 56 percent of the stockholder voting power through supervoting stock. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. An initial public offering (IPO) took place on August 19, 2004, and Google moved to its headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex.

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In August 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as a conglomerate called Alphabet Inc. Google is Alphabet‘s leading subsidiary and will continue to be the umbrella company for Alphabet‘s Internet interests. Sundar Pichai was appointed CEO of Google, replacing Larry Page who became the CEO of Alphabet. The company‘s rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond Google‘s core search engine (Google Search). It offers services designed for work and productivity (Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides), email (Gmail/Inbox), cloud storage (Google Drive), social networking (Google+), instant messaging (Hangouts), language translation (Google Translate), mapping and navigation (Google Maps), video sharing (YouTube), note-taking (Google Keep), and photo organizing and editing (Google Photos).

The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system, the Google Chrome web browser, and Chrome OS, a lightweight operating system based on the Chrome browser. Google has moved increasingly into hardware; from 2010 to 2015, it partnered with major electronics manufacturers in the production of its Nexus devices, and it released multiple hardware products in October 2016, including the Google Pixel smartphone, Google Home smart speaker, Google Wifi mesh wireless router, and Google Daydream virtual reality headset.

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Google has also experimented with becoming an Internet carrier (Google Fiber, Project Fi, and Google Station). In October 2016, Google announced plans to restructure the company moving less profitable products (such as Google Compare) into Alphabet, to allow Google to focus on Google Search and Android. The net worth of company is around 1 trillion dollars.

Amazon

Amazon.com, Inc., doing business as Amazon, is an American electronic commerce and cloud computing company based in Seattle, Washington, that was founded by Jeff Bezos on July 5, 1994. The tech giant is the largest Internet–based retailer in the world by total sales and market capitalization. Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified, selling DVDs, Blu–rays, CDs, video downloads/streaming, MP3 downloads/streaming, audiobook downloads/streaming, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewellery.

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The company also produces consumer electronics—Kindle e–readers, Fire tablets, Fire TV, and Echo—and is the world‘s largest provider of cloud infrastructure services (IaaS and PaaS). Amazon also sells certain low–end products under its in–house brand AmazonBasics. The net worth of company is around $ 1.6 trillion.

So that’s all about the big 4. Stay tuned for more interesting tech related articles.