A fact slightly overlooked in last week’s news that Google overtook Apple to become the most valuable company in the world is the revenue of each of these giants.Apple earned $234-billion in 2015, compared with Google’s modest $74-billion. Compare that to other behemoths in their fields such as Exxon Mobil and Walmart, both of which earned more than $300-billion, and it doesn’t seem possible that Google should have top dog status.After all these years of Apple’s stratospheric share price increases, it’s easy to give up trying to predict (or understand) why the iDevice maker defies gravity on the stock market.Google’s sudden leapfrog of its competitor in the smartphone space is no different. As Apple has tried to extricate itself from a reliance on Google for its maps and other services (with the abortive Apple Maps saga), it emerged Google paid it $1-billion in 2015 to remain the preferred search engine on iPhones and iPads.It’s a remarkable feat that Apple was able to extract that...
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