In the PC era, the big rivalry was between #Microsoft and #Apple. Apple’s products were considered to be better, but Microsoft’s ability to leverage its operating system across a number of manufacturers proved to be the stronger model. By 1997, Apple was in such bad shape it needed an investment from Microsoft to keep the lights on.
Yet Apple came back with a vengeance in the post-PC era, in which its ability to seamlessly integrate across devices was decisive. Apple products became more than just productivity tools, but fashion icons and soon Apple took Microsoft’s former place as the most valuable company in the world.
That rivalry is mostly over now, but a new one is brewing between #Google and #IBM. Its an unusual business rivalry because the two rarely compete in the same markets or for the same customers. In truth, it is a rivalry for technological rather than market dominance. Yet much like Apple vs. Microsoft, it’s likely to determine much about how technology shapes our world.
The Cognitive Era
On February 10th, 1996, IBM’s #supercomputer, #DeepBlue first beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a head-to-head match, something many thought a computer would never do. Fifteen years later, in 2011, IBM’s Watson beat human champions on the game show Jeopardy!, which ushered in the new era of cognitive computing.
More recently, Google has made headlines of its own. In March of this year, the company’s Alpha Go system bested world champion Lee Sedol in the massively complex game of Go, a feat eerily similar, although far more impressive, to Deep Blue’s win 20 years earlier.
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