October 6, 2011
http://www.history.com/news/2011/10/06/great-american-garage-entrepreneurs
Setting up shop in a garage may sound like a cliché, but did you know that a number of thriving American businesses really got their start that way? One of the most famous examples is, of course, Apple Inc., founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, who died Wednesday at age 56, and his friend Steve Wozniak. Find out about their brainchild and other major companies that trace their roots to humble birthplaces.
Apple Inc.
On April Fool’s Day in 1976, 21-year-old Steve Jobs and 25-year-old Steve Wozniak established Apple Computer, later known simply as Apple Inc. Pioneers in the burgeoning world of personal computers, the pair worked out of Jobs’ parents’ garage in Los Altos, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Jobs, a college dropout, became one of the great innovators of the digital age, transforming not just his original field but also music, animation and mobile communications. He died at 56 on October 5, 2011, after a long struggle with cancer. Apple’s notable products include the Macintosh computer line, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, iTunes, the Mac OS X operating system and Final Cut Studio.
Hewlett-Packard
Considered the first American technology business to launch behind a garage door, Hewlett-Packard was founded in 1939 by Bill Hewlett and David Packard, who had scraped together an initial capital investment of $538. At the time, Packard and his new wife Lucile lived in an apartment next door and Hewlett camped out in a shed on the property, located in Palo Alto, California. After developing a range of electronic products, the company entered the computer market in 1966 and is now one of the world’s largest technology corporations. The one-car garage where it all began is a designated California historic landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Walt Disney Company
In 1923, the Missouri-born cartoonist Walt Disney moved to Los Angeles with his brother Roy to make short films that combined animation and live action. They spent several months producing their first series, the “Alice Comedies,” out of their uncle Robert’s garage before relocating to the back of a realty office and finally to a studio. Now the world’s largest media conglomerate, the Walt Disney Company became a leader in film, television, travel, leisure, music and publishing. In 2006, it acquired Pixar Studios from another veteran of a California garage: Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer. Robert Disney’s garage was saved from demolition in 1984 and donated to the Stanley Ranch Museum.
Mattel
When Ruth and Elliot Handler, who had met in an industrial design course, started making picture frames in their California garage, they probably never thought their venture—Mattel—would grow into the world’s biggest toy manufacturer. More or less by accident, they wound up crafting dollhouse furniture and later children’s playthings out of spare wood scraps. In the late 1950s, Ruth determined there was a market for dolls that looked like “grown-ups”; ignoring her husband’s objections, she designed a prototype and named it after their daughter, Barbie. (Ken, named for their son, followed soon after.) Mattel struck gold with the new line, and in 1968 Ruth became the company’s president.
Google
Long after Hewlett-Packard and Apple Computer made their unpretentious debuts, another technology powerhouse came screeching out of a Silicon Valley garage. After developing a groundbreaking search engine for a research project, Stanford University students Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in a garage owned by Susan Wojcicki, a friend and future employee. The company, which has since branched out into numerous other areas, now runs the most visited websites on the Internet and boasts locations around the world. In 2006, Google bought Wojcicki’s house—and the garage where its vast empire began.
Yankee Candle Company
In 1969, 17-year-old Michael Kittredge of South Hadley, Massachusetts, couldn’t dig up enough cash to buy his mother a Christmas present. On a whim, he melted down some crayons in his parents’ garage and made her a scented candle. When neighbors began expressing interest, Kittredge, who needed a hobby since his rock band had just broken up, recruited some friends and began churning out candles. By the following year, the booming business had taken over the Kittredge home, so the young entrepreneurs moved into a dilapidated mill. Today, the Yankee Candle Company is the leading U.S. candle manufacturer, with hundreds of retail locations, international distribution and multiple product lines.
Showing posts with label Steve Wozniak. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steve Wozniak. Show all posts
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Steve Wozniak to the FCC: Keep the Internet Free
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/steve-wozniak-to-the-fcc-keep-the-internet-free/68294/
Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too nobel to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt somehow
Ahh, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now
-- Bob Dylan
Steve Wozniak to the FCC: Keep the Internet Free
Dec 21 2010
To whom it may concern:
I have always loved humor and laughter. As a young engineer I got an impulse to start a Dial-a-Joke in the San Jose/San Francisco area. I was aware of such humor services in other countries, such as Australia. This idea came from my belief in laughter. I could scarcely believe that I was the first person to create such a simple service in my region. Why was I the first? This was 1972 and it was illegal in the U.S. to use your own telephone. It was illegal in the U.S. to use your own answering machine. Hence it also virtually impossible to buy or own such devices. We had a monopoly phone system in our country then.
The major expense for a young engineer is the rent of an apartment. The only answering machine I could legally use, by leasing (not purchasing) it from our phone company, the Codaphone 700, was designed for businesses like theaters. It was out of the price range of creative individuals wanting to try something new like dial-a-joke. This machine leased for more than a typical car payment each month. Despite my great passion and success with Dial-a-Joke, I could not afford it and eventually had to stop after a couple of years. By then, a San Francisco radio station had also started such a service. I believe that my Dial-a-Joke was the most called single line (no extensions) number in the country at that time due to the shortness of my jokes and the high popularity of the service.
Moving ahead, I have owned four homes in my life. None of these had cable TV, even though one was a new development where the law required cable. None of these had DSL, including my current home, which is only .8 miles up a hill from the populous (constant-homes) town I live in. I pay for a T1 line, which costs many times what DSL runs for about 1/10 the bandwidth. That's as close as I can come to broadband where I live. The local phone providers don't have any obligation to serve all of their phone customers with DSL. They also have no requirement to service everyone living in the geographic area for which they have a monopoly. This is what has happened without regulatory control, despite every politician and president and CEO and PR person since the beginning of the Internet boon saying how important it was to ensure that everyone be provided broadband access.
As a side note, I once phoned the cable company in the town I lived in. I could look from my bedroom window at homes ¾ of a mile away which had cable. I told the cable company that I would be willing to pay the cost of laying cable to my home. The cable company looked into it and got back to me that they could not do this because there were not enough homes on my hill to pay for the monthly rental of running their cable on telephone poles.
In the earliest days of satellite TV to homes, you would buy a receiver and pay a fee to get all the common cable channels. I had a large family (two adults, six kids) and felt like making every room a lot easier to wire for TV. Rather than place a satellite receiver in each room, I'd provide all the common channels on a normal cable, like cable companies do. In my garage, I set up three racks of satellite receivers. I paid for one receiver to access CNN. I paid for another to access TNT. I paid for others to access HBO and other such networks. I had about 30 or 40 channels done this way. I had modulators to put each of these channels onto standard cable TV channels on one cable, which was distributed throughout my home. I could buy any TV I liked and plug it in anywhere in the home and it immediately watch everything without having to install another satellite receiver in that room. I literally had my own cable TV 'company' in the garage, which I called Woz TV, except that I even kept signals in stereo, a quality step that virtually every cable company skipped.
Then I got this idea that I could pretty easily run my signal through the wires in conduits up and down our 60-home neighborhood. The neighborhood had been partially wired for cable before the cable company went bankrupt as the neighborhood was being developed. I phoned HBO and asked how much they would charge me just to be a nice guy and share my signal with 60 neighbors. What came back was an answer that I couldn't do such a personal thing. I had to be a cable company charging my neighbors certain rates and then a percentage of what I was charging, with minimums, had to be paid for HBO. I instantly realized that you couldn't do something nice in your garage as a normal person and I gave up the idea.
The Internet has become as important as anything man has ever created. But those freedoms are being chipped away.
When young, I remember clearly how my father told me why our country was so great, mainly based on the constitution and Bill of Rights. Over my lifetime, I've seen those rights disregarded at every step. Loopholes abound. It's sad. For example, my (Eisenhower Republican) father explained the sanctity of your home and how it could not easily be entered. It was your own private abode. And you had a right to listen to any radio signals that came because the air was free and if it came into your home you had a right to listen to it. That principle went away with a ban on radios that could tune in cell phone frequencies in the days of analog cell phones. Nobody but myself seemed to treat this as a core principle that was too much to give up.
I was also taught that space, and the moon, were free and open. Nobody owned them. No country owned them. I loved this concept of the purest things in the universe being unowned.
The early Internet was so accidental, it also was free and open in this sense. The Internet has become as important as anything man has ever created. But those freedoms are being chipped away. Please, I beg you, open your senses to the will of the people to keep the Internet as free as possible. Local ISP's should provide connection to the Internet but then it should be treated as though you own those wires and can choose what to do with them when and how you want to, as long as you don't destruct them. I don't want to feel that whichever content supplier had the best government connections or paid the most money determined what I can watch and for how much. This is the monopolistic approach and not representative of a truly free market in the case of today's Internet.
Imagine that when we started Apple we set things up so that we could charge purchasers of our computers by the number of bits they use. The personal computer revolution would have been delayed a decade or more. If I had to pay for each bit I used on my 6502 microprocessor, I would not have been able to build my own computers anyway. What if we paid for our roads per mile that we drove? It would be fair and understandable to charge more for someone who drives more. But one of the most wonderful things in our current life is getting in the car and driving anywhere we feel like at this moment, and with no accounting for cost. You just get in your car and go. This is one of the most popular themes of our life and even our popular music. It's a type of freedom from some concerns that makes us happy and not complain. The roads are already paid for. You rarely hear people complain that roads are "free." The government shines when it comes to having provided us pathways to drive around our country. We don't think of the roadways as being negative like telecommunication carriers. It's a rare breath of fresh air.
I frequently speak to different types of audiences all over the country. When I'm asked my feeling on Net Neutrality I tell the open truth. When I was first asked to "sign on" with some good people interested in Net Neutrality my initial thought was that the economic system works better with tiered pricing for various customers. On the other hand, I'm a founder of the EFF and I care a lot about individuals and their own importance. Finally, the thought hit me that every time and in every way that the telecommunications careers have had power or control, we the people wind up getting screwed. Every audience that I speak this statement and phrase to bursts into applause.
That's how the people think. They don't want this to encroach on their Internet freedom.
I was brought up being told that one of the main purposes of our government is to help people who need help. When I was very young, this made me prouder than anything else of my government. I felt that way until the year that the San Jose Draft board voted 5-3 to call me not a student because I'd submitted my grades instead of the proper form, and made me 1A for service in Vietnam. As soon as I got a safe draft lottery number, they sent me a letter saying that they would grant me a 2S student deferment, because then they could get a shot at me in a later year. What was this game? Why was the government doing this sort of thing to a citizen? They aren't always about helping the people.
We have very few government agencies that the populace views as looking out for them, the people. The FCC is one of these agencies that is still wearing a white hat. Not only is current action on Net Neutrality one of the most important times ever for the FCC, it's probably the most momentous and watched action of any government agency in memorable times in terms of setting our perception of whether the government represents the wealthy powers or the average citizen, of whether the government is good or is bad. This decision is important far beyond the domain of the FCC itself.
Sincerely,
Woz
Steve Wozniak is a computer engineer who co-founded Apple Computer, Inc. with Steve Jobs. He created the Apple I and Apple II series computers in the mid-1970s. After earning the National Medal of Technology in 1985, Wozniak left Apple to work on various business and philanthropic ventures.
Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too nobel to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt somehow
Ahh, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now
-- Bob Dylan
Steve Wozniak to the FCC: Keep the Internet Free
Dec 21 2010
To whom it may concern:
I have always loved humor and laughter. As a young engineer I got an impulse to start a Dial-a-Joke in the San Jose/San Francisco area. I was aware of such humor services in other countries, such as Australia. This idea came from my belief in laughter. I could scarcely believe that I was the first person to create such a simple service in my region. Why was I the first? This was 1972 and it was illegal in the U.S. to use your own telephone. It was illegal in the U.S. to use your own answering machine. Hence it also virtually impossible to buy or own such devices. We had a monopoly phone system in our country then.
The major expense for a young engineer is the rent of an apartment. The only answering machine I could legally use, by leasing (not purchasing) it from our phone company, the Codaphone 700, was designed for businesses like theaters. It was out of the price range of creative individuals wanting to try something new like dial-a-joke. This machine leased for more than a typical car payment each month. Despite my great passion and success with Dial-a-Joke, I could not afford it and eventually had to stop after a couple of years. By then, a San Francisco radio station had also started such a service. I believe that my Dial-a-Joke was the most called single line (no extensions) number in the country at that time due to the shortness of my jokes and the high popularity of the service.
Moving ahead, I have owned four homes in my life. None of these had cable TV, even though one was a new development where the law required cable. None of these had DSL, including my current home, which is only .8 miles up a hill from the populous (constant-homes) town I live in. I pay for a T1 line, which costs many times what DSL runs for about 1/10 the bandwidth. That's as close as I can come to broadband where I live. The local phone providers don't have any obligation to serve all of their phone customers with DSL. They also have no requirement to service everyone living in the geographic area for which they have a monopoly. This is what has happened without regulatory control, despite every politician and president and CEO and PR person since the beginning of the Internet boon saying how important it was to ensure that everyone be provided broadband access.
As a side note, I once phoned the cable company in the town I lived in. I could look from my bedroom window at homes ¾ of a mile away which had cable. I told the cable company that I would be willing to pay the cost of laying cable to my home. The cable company looked into it and got back to me that they could not do this because there were not enough homes on my hill to pay for the monthly rental of running their cable on telephone poles.
In the earliest days of satellite TV to homes, you would buy a receiver and pay a fee to get all the common cable channels. I had a large family (two adults, six kids) and felt like making every room a lot easier to wire for TV. Rather than place a satellite receiver in each room, I'd provide all the common channels on a normal cable, like cable companies do. In my garage, I set up three racks of satellite receivers. I paid for one receiver to access CNN. I paid for another to access TNT. I paid for others to access HBO and other such networks. I had about 30 or 40 channels done this way. I had modulators to put each of these channels onto standard cable TV channels on one cable, which was distributed throughout my home. I could buy any TV I liked and plug it in anywhere in the home and it immediately watch everything without having to install another satellite receiver in that room. I literally had my own cable TV 'company' in the garage, which I called Woz TV, except that I even kept signals in stereo, a quality step that virtually every cable company skipped.
Then I got this idea that I could pretty easily run my signal through the wires in conduits up and down our 60-home neighborhood. The neighborhood had been partially wired for cable before the cable company went bankrupt as the neighborhood was being developed. I phoned HBO and asked how much they would charge me just to be a nice guy and share my signal with 60 neighbors. What came back was an answer that I couldn't do such a personal thing. I had to be a cable company charging my neighbors certain rates and then a percentage of what I was charging, with minimums, had to be paid for HBO. I instantly realized that you couldn't do something nice in your garage as a normal person and I gave up the idea.
The Internet has become as important as anything man has ever created. But those freedoms are being chipped away.
When young, I remember clearly how my father told me why our country was so great, mainly based on the constitution and Bill of Rights. Over my lifetime, I've seen those rights disregarded at every step. Loopholes abound. It's sad. For example, my (Eisenhower Republican) father explained the sanctity of your home and how it could not easily be entered. It was your own private abode. And you had a right to listen to any radio signals that came because the air was free and if it came into your home you had a right to listen to it. That principle went away with a ban on radios that could tune in cell phone frequencies in the days of analog cell phones. Nobody but myself seemed to treat this as a core principle that was too much to give up.
I was also taught that space, and the moon, were free and open. Nobody owned them. No country owned them. I loved this concept of the purest things in the universe being unowned.
The early Internet was so accidental, it also was free and open in this sense. The Internet has become as important as anything man has ever created. But those freedoms are being chipped away. Please, I beg you, open your senses to the will of the people to keep the Internet as free as possible. Local ISP's should provide connection to the Internet but then it should be treated as though you own those wires and can choose what to do with them when and how you want to, as long as you don't destruct them. I don't want to feel that whichever content supplier had the best government connections or paid the most money determined what I can watch and for how much. This is the monopolistic approach and not representative of a truly free market in the case of today's Internet.
Imagine that when we started Apple we set things up so that we could charge purchasers of our computers by the number of bits they use. The personal computer revolution would have been delayed a decade or more. If I had to pay for each bit I used on my 6502 microprocessor, I would not have been able to build my own computers anyway. What if we paid for our roads per mile that we drove? It would be fair and understandable to charge more for someone who drives more. But one of the most wonderful things in our current life is getting in the car and driving anywhere we feel like at this moment, and with no accounting for cost. You just get in your car and go. This is one of the most popular themes of our life and even our popular music. It's a type of freedom from some concerns that makes us happy and not complain. The roads are already paid for. You rarely hear people complain that roads are "free." The government shines when it comes to having provided us pathways to drive around our country. We don't think of the roadways as being negative like telecommunication carriers. It's a rare breath of fresh air.
I frequently speak to different types of audiences all over the country. When I'm asked my feeling on Net Neutrality I tell the open truth. When I was first asked to "sign on" with some good people interested in Net Neutrality my initial thought was that the economic system works better with tiered pricing for various customers. On the other hand, I'm a founder of the EFF and I care a lot about individuals and their own importance. Finally, the thought hit me that every time and in every way that the telecommunications careers have had power or control, we the people wind up getting screwed. Every audience that I speak this statement and phrase to bursts into applause.
That's how the people think. They don't want this to encroach on their Internet freedom.
I was brought up being told that one of the main purposes of our government is to help people who need help. When I was very young, this made me prouder than anything else of my government. I felt that way until the year that the San Jose Draft board voted 5-3 to call me not a student because I'd submitted my grades instead of the proper form, and made me 1A for service in Vietnam. As soon as I got a safe draft lottery number, they sent me a letter saying that they would grant me a 2S student deferment, because then they could get a shot at me in a later year. What was this game? Why was the government doing this sort of thing to a citizen? They aren't always about helping the people.
We have very few government agencies that the populace views as looking out for them, the people. The FCC is one of these agencies that is still wearing a white hat. Not only is current action on Net Neutrality one of the most important times ever for the FCC, it's probably the most momentous and watched action of any government agency in memorable times in terms of setting our perception of whether the government represents the wealthy powers or the average citizen, of whether the government is good or is bad. This decision is important far beyond the domain of the FCC itself.
Sincerely,
Woz
Steve Wozniak is a computer engineer who co-founded Apple Computer, Inc. with Steve Jobs. He created the Apple I and Apple II series computers in the mid-1970s. After earning the National Medal of Technology in 1985, Wozniak left Apple to work on various business and philanthropic ventures.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Woz says his Toyota Prius accelerates on its own
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-toyota-wozniak3-2010feb03,0,3057333.story
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says his Toyota Prius accelerates on its own
Apple Inc. co-founder Steve "Woz" Wozniak is famous for collecting technology he likes, including Segways, iPhones and Priuses.
Jessica Guynn
February 3, 2010
Apple Inc. co-founder Steve "Woz" Wozniak has seen his share of software glitches in the gadgets he has created and in those he collects.
But Wozniak said he was surprised several months ago when his 2010 Toyota Prius started accelerating on its own -- to as much as 97 mph -- when he used cruise control to increase the vehicle's speed. He said he had to tap the brakes to stop the car from accelerating.
Wozniak, 59, wanted to alert Toyota Motor Corp. and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to the possible safety issue, but he grew frustrated when no one would listen.
Thanks to a media blitz Tuesday -- including an appearance on CNN -- Toyota engineers are going to borrow Wozniak's car for a week to diagnose the problem, he said. A Toyota spokesman confirmed that the automaker had reached out to Wozniak.
Toyota has recalled millions of vehicles and temporarily halted sale of eight models because of reports of unintended acceleration. Toyota has not recalled Wozniak's model, which has a steering wheel-mounted radar cruise control.
Wozniak is famous for collecting technology he likes, including Segways, iPhones and Priuses. "No product is perfect," he said. "I would buy another one."
jessica.guynn@latimes.com
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says his Toyota Prius accelerates on its own
Apple Inc. co-founder Steve "Woz" Wozniak is famous for collecting technology he likes, including Segways, iPhones and Priuses.
Jessica Guynn
February 3, 2010
Apple Inc. co-founder Steve "Woz" Wozniak has seen his share of software glitches in the gadgets he has created and in those he collects.
But Wozniak said he was surprised several months ago when his 2010 Toyota Prius started accelerating on its own -- to as much as 97 mph -- when he used cruise control to increase the vehicle's speed. He said he had to tap the brakes to stop the car from accelerating.
Wozniak, 59, wanted to alert Toyota Motor Corp. and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to the possible safety issue, but he grew frustrated when no one would listen.
Thanks to a media blitz Tuesday -- including an appearance on CNN -- Toyota engineers are going to borrow Wozniak's car for a week to diagnose the problem, he said. A Toyota spokesman confirmed that the automaker had reached out to Wozniak.
Toyota has recalled millions of vehicles and temporarily halted sale of eight models because of reports of unintended acceleration. Toyota has not recalled Wozniak's model, which has a steering wheel-mounted radar cruise control.
Wozniak is famous for collecting technology he likes, including Segways, iPhones and Priuses. "No product is perfect," he said. "I would buy another one."
jessica.guynn@latimes.com
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Apple the new king of Silicon Valley
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/aug/15/apple.apple
Google pipped - Apple the new king of Silicon Valley as market value overtakes hi-tech rival· Success of iPhone fuels huge surge in share price
· Fall in online advertising hits search engine's profits
Andrew Clark in New York The Guardian, Friday August 15 2008
Apple’s corporate headquarters in Cupertino. Hi-tech rival Google is based only five miles away in Mountain View.
Photograph: Alamy
The sleek, touchscreen iPhone has proved so lucrative for Apple that the electronic gadgets manufacturer has unseated Google to become the most valuable company in America's cradle of technological innovation, Silicon Valley.
Queues outside Apple's stores are commonplace since the phone's launch a year ago as shoppers line up to get their hands on the prized device.
On Wall Street, the phenomenal popularity of the phone has fuelled a 44% surge in Apple's share price in 12 months. By the close of trading on Wednesday, Apple's market value had edged up to $158.8bn - a shade ahead of Google's $157.2bn.
Apple's predominance amounts to a shift in the balance of power in the hi-tech world. The company has repeatedly been able to eclipse rivals with its distinctive, easy-to-use designs. The iMac and the iPod continue to be firm favourites among laptop computer buyers and music fans.
Meanwhile, Google's once dazzling star has waned slightly as America's economic slowdown has eaten into online advertising and investors have wondered how the company can produce solid profits from expensive ventures such as the video-sharing website YouTube.
Scott Kessler, an equities analyst specialising in technology at Standard & Poor's in New York, said the twin fortunes of Apple and Google were central to the technological landscape: "These are the two companies most currently identified with the notion of innovation - not just in Silicon Valley or in this country but arguably in the world."
The milestone amounts to a reassertion of success by an older technological generation. Apple was founded by schoolfriends Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976 making it elderly in comparison to Google which has only existed for 10 years.
Experts say Apple's distinctive skill is its ability to reinvent itself with new products which are typically kept secret until the last possible moment.
"It's one of the few companies that has been able to internally develop a number of blockbuster products and killer applications," said Kessler.
Apple fans tend to attribute a large chunk of the company's success to the personal entrepreneurial instincts of Jobs, who is chief executive and is heavily involved in product development. When Jobs appeared to be gaunt and thinner than usual, Apple's stock briefly slumped last night before the company scotched rumours that he was ill.
While Apple and Google differ widely in their business models, they have a degree of personal overlap. Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, sits on Apple's board as a non-executive director. The companies are based barely five miles apart in a sprawling hi-tech corridor running south of San Francisco. Apple is in the town of Cupertino while Google is in neighbouring Mountain View.
Neither company offered any immediate reaction to the shift in supremacy. Apple did not return calls and a Google spokesman said: "We never comment on our stock price."
However, Apple has had few qualms about boasting of its prowess in the past. When the company's value overtook the computer maker Dell two years ago, Jobs sent out a companywide email reminding staff that Dell's founder had once predicted Apple's imminent demise.
"Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future," wrote Jobs. "Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today."
For Apple, the iPhone has provided an edge in creativity and convenience. When a 3G version of the phone came out last month, Apple sold a million of the handsets in a single weekend.
Google is comfortably the global leader in online searches but has seen slowing growth in "paid clicks" - the number of times users alight on lucrative advertisements. Google says this is because better tailored advertising has led to better quality, but less numerous, clicks.
Google's shares, which topped $700 late last year, have settled back to just over $500 - but the company's founders, Sergey Brin, 34, and Larry Page, 35, remain billionaires who travel the world on a customised Boeing 767.
The pair see conquering space as their next challenge and have put up a $20m prize to anyone who produces a privately financed spacecraft able to land on the moon.
Head-to-head
Apple
· Founded in a bedroom in Los Altos, California, by schoolfriends Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976
· Recently settled a long trademark battle with the Beatles' record company Apple Corps, over use of the word "apple" to sell music
· Began as a computer manufacturer and has diversified into iPod media players, iTunes online music sales and, most recently, iPhone touchscreen mobile phones
· Apple's iTunes website has sold more than 5bn songs
· Annual sales of $24bn and profits of $3.5bn
Google
· Established by Stanford University graduates Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998
· Based initially in a garage in Menlo Park, California
· Named after the word googol - which is the number one followed by one hundred zeros
· Has expanded from a powerful internet search engine into online applications such as word processing and spreadsheet tools, and owns the video-sharing website YouTube
· The company slogan is "don't be evil"
· Annual revenue of $16.6bn and profits of $4.2bn
Google pipped - Apple the new king of Silicon Valley as market value overtakes hi-tech rival· Success of iPhone fuels huge surge in share price
· Fall in online advertising hits search engine's profits
Andrew Clark in New York The Guardian, Friday August 15 2008
Apple’s corporate headquarters in Cupertino. Hi-tech rival Google is based only five miles away in Mountain View.Photograph: Alamy
The sleek, touchscreen iPhone has proved so lucrative for Apple that the electronic gadgets manufacturer has unseated Google to become the most valuable company in America's cradle of technological innovation, Silicon Valley.
Queues outside Apple's stores are commonplace since the phone's launch a year ago as shoppers line up to get their hands on the prized device.
On Wall Street, the phenomenal popularity of the phone has fuelled a 44% surge in Apple's share price in 12 months. By the close of trading on Wednesday, Apple's market value had edged up to $158.8bn - a shade ahead of Google's $157.2bn.
Apple's predominance amounts to a shift in the balance of power in the hi-tech world. The company has repeatedly been able to eclipse rivals with its distinctive, easy-to-use designs. The iMac and the iPod continue to be firm favourites among laptop computer buyers and music fans.
Meanwhile, Google's once dazzling star has waned slightly as America's economic slowdown has eaten into online advertising and investors have wondered how the company can produce solid profits from expensive ventures such as the video-sharing website YouTube.
Scott Kessler, an equities analyst specialising in technology at Standard & Poor's in New York, said the twin fortunes of Apple and Google were central to the technological landscape: "These are the two companies most currently identified with the notion of innovation - not just in Silicon Valley or in this country but arguably in the world."
The milestone amounts to a reassertion of success by an older technological generation. Apple was founded by schoolfriends Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976 making it elderly in comparison to Google which has only existed for 10 years.
Experts say Apple's distinctive skill is its ability to reinvent itself with new products which are typically kept secret until the last possible moment.
"It's one of the few companies that has been able to internally develop a number of blockbuster products and killer applications," said Kessler.
Apple fans tend to attribute a large chunk of the company's success to the personal entrepreneurial instincts of Jobs, who is chief executive and is heavily involved in product development. When Jobs appeared to be gaunt and thinner than usual, Apple's stock briefly slumped last night before the company scotched rumours that he was ill.
While Apple and Google differ widely in their business models, they have a degree of personal overlap. Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, sits on Apple's board as a non-executive director. The companies are based barely five miles apart in a sprawling hi-tech corridor running south of San Francisco. Apple is in the town of Cupertino while Google is in neighbouring Mountain View.
Neither company offered any immediate reaction to the shift in supremacy. Apple did not return calls and a Google spokesman said: "We never comment on our stock price."
However, Apple has had few qualms about boasting of its prowess in the past. When the company's value overtook the computer maker Dell two years ago, Jobs sent out a companywide email reminding staff that Dell's founder had once predicted Apple's imminent demise.
"Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future," wrote Jobs. "Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today."
For Apple, the iPhone has provided an edge in creativity and convenience. When a 3G version of the phone came out last month, Apple sold a million of the handsets in a single weekend.
Google is comfortably the global leader in online searches but has seen slowing growth in "paid clicks" - the number of times users alight on lucrative advertisements. Google says this is because better tailored advertising has led to better quality, but less numerous, clicks.
Google's shares, which topped $700 late last year, have settled back to just over $500 - but the company's founders, Sergey Brin, 34, and Larry Page, 35, remain billionaires who travel the world on a customised Boeing 767.
The pair see conquering space as their next challenge and have put up a $20m prize to anyone who produces a privately financed spacecraft able to land on the moon.
Head-to-head
Apple
· Founded in a bedroom in Los Altos, California, by schoolfriends Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976
· Recently settled a long trademark battle with the Beatles' record company Apple Corps, over use of the word "apple" to sell music
· Began as a computer manufacturer and has diversified into iPod media players, iTunes online music sales and, most recently, iPhone touchscreen mobile phones
· Apple's iTunes website has sold more than 5bn songs
· Annual sales of $24bn and profits of $3.5bn
· Established by Stanford University graduates Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998
· Based initially in a garage in Menlo Park, California
· Named after the word googol - which is the number one followed by one hundred zeros
· Has expanded from a powerful internet search engine into online applications such as word processing and spreadsheet tools, and owns the video-sharing website YouTube
· The company slogan is "don't be evil"
· Annual revenue of $16.6bn and profits of $4.2bn
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