The massive growth of technology in the past decade has changed the way people access and share information. With Silicon Valley always in flux, the latest gadget or upgrade tends to cause a storm, provoking a race among companies to continually raise the bar. In their quests to innovate, five of the major tech giants have found themselves in a battlefield for technology supremacy.
It used to be clear cut on which company dominated what (Google = search, Facebook = social networking, Apple = personal technology), but it seems the direction of Silicon Valley is waiting to see which company will create the most accessible cloud ecosystem for personal media.
Some fights are more obvious than others. Facebook is still king of social media, but Google + is making its efforts to change how people network and dismantle the Facebook audience. Google rules search, but Microsoft most likely has plans to improve on Bing and its search accuracy. Apple still controls the tablet race, but Amazon keeps expanding the Kindle's functionality and Google is hard at work on the Nexus 7.
Where the fights aren’t so clear lie in the recent technological advances. Google and Apple are locked in a struggle to control the smartphone market. Apple tries to win by pushing its products in new directions and revolutionizing everyday personal technology use (the iPad and the iPhone). Google is trying to win by making technology more accessible and at cheaper price to everyone else. It remains to be seen whether the public will embrace Apple’s exclusive but very well made ecosystem or if they will go with Google because the open source Android system offers various options through different manufacturers for the user.
Besides the smartphone, it also seems that the future of Silicon Valley is in personal electronics with tablets and cloud systems leading the way in distributing media, information, and communication. Google, Apple, and Amazon are leading the race in creating an ecosystem for music, movies, books, and social media apps. It remains to be seen which one will prevail, as Apple builds on its iTunes system offered through the iPhone and iPad, Amazon through its digital media push, and Google in incorporating its media catalog through Google search. This cut-throat battle could favor Microsoft, who is waiting to see if it can strike should either Google or Apple or both suffer from the warfare they are conducting on each other. Facebook, meanwhile, looks set to benefit from all this, as it works to be the ultimate social network where its users can share and comment on everything in whichever media ecosystem (Apple, Google, or Amazon).
