Eric Schmidt’s “Gang Of Four” Doesn’t Have Room for Microsoft

Google chairman Eric Schmidt says there are four companies dominating consumer technology today: His own, Apple, Amazon and Facebook. “It seems to me that there are four companies that are exploiting platform strategies really well.”

What about Microsoft? Not a player, Schmidt tells Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at D9: “Microsoft is not driving the consumer revolution in the minds of the consumers.”

What about Xbox? That’s a big consumer success, right? Yes, Schmidt says. But “it’s not a platform at the computational level.” Microsoft is still fundamentally about Office and Windows.

Problem is that all these companies have smaller compete-overlap and the only company which competes with all of these companies with nearly 90% overlap is Microsoft (most with Google and least with Amazon), which gets omitted by Eric. Or is it that Schimdt wanted to name the common enemy.