Satya Nadella chats about the market for AI, search engines and operating systems. He also sees competition with Google as an opportunity.
How can Google earn more from Windows than Microsoft? Satya Nadella is the CEO of Microsoft and is a guest on the BG2 podcast on YouTube. There he explains something interesting: “Google makes more money with Windows than [wir] himself”.
He refers to the fact that Google’s market power in search engines remains unbroken. According to data from the Federal Statistical Office (Statista), Google accounted for 80 percent of all pages accessed through web searches on desktop PCs in November 2024. Windows’ market share on PCs remains gigantic: around 73 percent of all desktop PCs were running some version of Windows in November 2024, as can be found on statcounter.
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Windows as a platform
So people use Windows, but they search with Google and the money from advertising of course ends up there and not in Redmond at Nadella’s company. Microsoft’s own search engine Bing came in at just under 12 percent. It has only been catching up marginally in terms of market share for years.
The situation is similar with browsers: Google Chrome clearly dominates. In November 2024, Microsoft’s Edge served as a toolbox for the Internet on around 11 percent of all devices (PC, tablet and cell phone) (via Statista).
“This is the best news for Microsoft shareholders”
Isn’t this a disaster for Microsoft? No, at least the head of the IT giant is relaxed about the situation: “This is the best news for Microsoft’s shareholders,” he says, almost happy about the situation. Because Microsoft could work on winning back customers.
The area of artificial intelligence is particularly crucial for this. He no longer uses Bing (the classic search engine) for many searches, but instead uses Microsoft Co-Pilot. This is an AI agent, similar to ChatGPT.
The shareholders apparently really like it: the share price has been climbing almost continuously since the 2010s (via stock exchange).
How does Microsoft make its money today? The truth is that Microsoft no longer makes money from selling software like Windows or Office. The advertising revenue from Bing is also not crucial.
In 2024, around 2⁄5 of the approximately 230 billion in annual sales came into the cash register through the so-called intelligent cloud alone. These include, for example, the online storage service OneDrive or AI services such as Co-Pilot or servers that the group provides to companies worldwide (via the Federal Statistical Office (Statista) and Microsoft).
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