Microsoft vs Yahoo

Assessment One: Analysis on Financial Statements

Comparing Microsoft and Yahoo! By Zih-Hao Lin

Introduction

Microsoft is one of the biggest software and IT companies in the world. It industry touches every region of Technology. For the 2010 annual report, Microsoft has total five product divisions. They cover Operation System (Vista and Windows 7), Server and Tools Division (Windows server 2008, VB and SQL), Online Services Business division (MSN and the search engine Bing), Microsoft Business Division (MICROSOFT OFFICE), and Entertainment and Devices Division (smart phones OS, XBOX and MSN TV). Microsoft mission is to enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential. It develops software, hardware, service and solution to achieve this goal since it established at 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. With a real big range of service IT service, we can say the client of Microsoft is unlimited, from OEM, business, and individuals. And the competition is all over from every division, such as Apple in PC Market and Google in Online Service Market.

Yahoo, unlike Microsoft explore in different division, is focus on Online Internet Service. It provides the popular portal website “Yahoo!”(which may name different in different countries) with many kinds of application software, such as search engine, directory, Web Mail, News, auction, online shopping, advertising, Finance, and social media websites and services. To extend their market share, Yahoo portal page also customize to local region by acquisition. For example, Yahoo! purchases Kimo and Wretch, which were the biggest portal website and social network website in Taiwan before, and merge it to Yahoo! Taiwan Web site. As a portal website, the biggest part of Yahoo! revenue is come from advertising. Yahoo's advertising targeting has focused on customer demographics or geographic location in the past, but now Yahoo is trying to focus on users surfing behavior to raise its...