Microsoft had a weasel word response denying it. The gist of the response was that Microsoft "watched" what it's users searched for, and the pages they went to and from that, gleaned what their search results should be to a particular query. That means Microsoft had to keep track of billions of search queries continually, and the pages users clicked on to that query, and then recall it when the same query came up again. I'm not sure I believe this. It's much easier to just copy Google. That all happen in February.

Fast forward to two weeks ago, and we have Microsoft, through a "security update," inserting the Bing search bar into every new browser page in Firefox. It was annoying, and a pain to remove.

This week, we had yet another more serious Microsoft intrusion into our computers, again, through a "security update," they "inadvertently" removed Google's Chrome web browser from user's computers. Not only did they remove it, but you could not re-install it because Microsoft called it a virus.

Microsoft said that about 3000 users had Chrome removed from their computers. They issued a patch to fix the problem, but users would have to manually reload Chrome. Come on, Microsoft, why was it just Chrome.

It's a good thing, we can trust Microsoft, that Microsoft always has good intentions, that they always have just our best interest at heart, and that they would not blow away another competitors software intentionally. We can trust Microsoft, can't we?

When Microsoft issued Service Pack 3 for Window's XP, they started actively communicating back and forth to your computer, unbeknownst to most users. They got more blatant about this when they released Vista, in that, if you didn't verify your license on-line within 30 days, your computer would gradually degrade. You also had to maintain an Internet connection for them to verify periodically that your license was valid.

Now, you can't download any Microsoft software until they check your computer, with their "Microsoft Genuine Advantage" license checker software, to see that all their software on your computer has a valid license .

I love the names they use to intrude into your computer and your life, "Microsoft Genuine Advantage" and "security update."

Why is Microsoft doing this? Well, back in April, Chrome passed Microsoft Internet Explorer in browser usage, and is now the second most used browser behind Firefox.

Apple has passed Microsoft in total revenue. It's quarterly revenue was $28B, Microsoft's was $20B, and Google's was $9B. These three giants are at war.

It seems, war brings out the worse in people and companies. Microsoft, however, is in a unique position, in that, it controls your computer. I have said before Microsoft's power resides in its security updates. They have brainwashed user's to believe that they have to load the security updates, even though the user has no clue as to what is in the update.

It seems to me that the real malware going into your computer comes from Microsoft, not from hacker's. Hacker's for the most part have been gradually neutralized with sustained vigilance, and international computer laws.

Both Microsoft and Apple have architected a proprietary cocoon around their products. If you use their products, they force you to do it their way to exclude competitors, and keep you locked into only using their products. You can see from the above that Microsoft is far worse, than Apple.

For the life of me though, I don't understand why people stay with these two companies. What's the alternative?

The alternative is you can have a free operating system, Linux, that runs better than Microsoft's operating system, with a nice desktop, just like the Window's desktop, with all the applications you're use to, that are just as good and sometimes better than Microsoft's applications, for free. And there is no need for anti-virus, or anti-malware software, or for security updates.

You can try out the operating system by loading a DVD, without altering your Windows system, in case you don't like it. I don't understand why people don't give one of the Linux distros a try.

People are creatures of habit. They would rather put up with Chrome being removed from their computer, then try something new. They like Microsoft's tit. They like that Microsoft, with its security updates, takes care of them. They like being forced to use the Internet Explorer browser, the worse browser on the planet. In the end, Window's user's get just the milk that Microsoft wants to give them.

I am about to start a new job. I carefully documented the process of finding a job, and I thought it might be helpful to review some of the things I found, in the hopes that there might be some useful information for others.

My new job starts on September 6th. The entire process took seven weeks. Considering that most companies leave you with a pitiful two weeks severance. Two weeks is not enough, your former company is not doing you any favors with two weeks severance.

If two weeks severance happens to you, one of the first things you should do after you get your last paycheck is apply for unemployment.  You should not wait.  You don't get any unemployment compensation from the day you are let go, it starts from day you apply for unemployment. Since you don't know how long your going to be out of work, apply for unemployment immediately.

Ok, let's go through the process. I was notified on July 18th. The first thing you need to do is get your resume together. This is an advertisement of your job skill to the world. You should have a resume for each job type you are applying for, specifically tailored to the type of job you want. This is your chance to "toot your horn," talk about everything you have accomplished, whether alone, or in a team. Talk about any bonuses or awards you have won, and any educational courses you have taken. Take out everything on your resume, including past jobs, that don't have anything to do with the type of job you want. Keep time to recent time, like the last five or six years, and compress everything before that. Have a section on your job skills you bring to the job. Check for grammar and spelling, and put it in a word document format.  The purpose of the resume is to get an interview, and for you to have something to talk about in the interview.

You want to decide where you want to work. The last job I ended up 40 miles from my house, and as time went by, and gas prices went up, it started to take a toll on me both financially and weariness from driving to and from work. I looked for a job in an area that had little traffic and easy access from my home. I had jobs pop up that were in other cities, or were a traffic nightmare to get to the job site. I would recommend, at least for the first month or two, you concentrate on close to home areas.

It took me until Thursday, July 21st to finish the resumes. I was now ready to get my advertisement out into to world and look for work.

My first stop was Craigslist for the city where I wanted to work. If you go to craigslist, and look under jobs, you'll find jobs listed by specific geographic location. Find one you like, and send them a resume. I would also visit the web site of specific companies where you might want to work, and see if they have any job openings.

The week of 7/26, I started visiting all the job sites looking for jobs in my area.  I did this daily until I got an offer letter.  You'll find new jobs are posted every day.  Here, are some of the job sites I used:

• Craigslist
• Dice
• CareerBuilder
• Monster
• itjobs
• jobs for programmers

Your local paper also has a jobs section you should look at that you can find on their web site.  There are more sites out there, and if readers would like to point them out in comments, I'm sure others will appreciate.

If you want a lot of phone calls, I recommend you post your resume for public viewing on Dice, number one. I had every headhunter in the area calling me; they all use it.

You'll end up doing a lot of pre-qualification phone interviews. The people you'll talk with are headhunters, third party contracting companies, and directly with a Human Resource person at the companies with jobs.  If you sound good to the person on the phone, you'll get an interview.  Have a good story of your past experience, and say it with warmth and enthusiasm. It comes across over the phone.

Headhunters make their money from companies needing workers. The game is to find as many people as they can that are qualified for a job. Headhunters frequent Dice, because they see your entire resume and can match you to a job.  If your hired, the headhunter gets a commission, and the company is out some money that they normally don't have to spend.  Some headhunters want to meet with you, and promise to work with you.  That's a crock.  Your wasting your time meeting with them, unless you have nothing better to do, don't bother.  There's nothing exclusive about you to them.  They  would rather send two or three people for a job, to better insure they will make money.

Third party companies have a contract with their client companies to provide workers. They hire workers and pay them. They make their money by charging, usually twice as much, for your services to the client company.  Nice for them.  They will put you through programming tests to prove your the perfect fit for the client's job. There OK, the trouble here is usually as soon as the job is complete, you're let go, and since your contract with the third party company is contingent on the job, you lose your job with the third party company also.  There's no loyalty here, and don't expect it.  If your talking to a third party company, an alarm bell should go off in your head to check the job's longevity.

The same goes for contract-to-hire jobs. If they don't like you, you don't have a job, only quicker than with other jobs. Don't take contract-to-hire jobs if you want a full time job.

Who you really want to hear from is the Human Resource people from the company with the job.  The good HR people are looking on line, on Dice, and posting jobs on craigslist, for quality people they need. This saves their company third-party and headhunter fees and makes hiring you a plus for them. The company has an opening, a need for your services, and usually it makes for a good interview, and job offer.

On interviewing, I would be prepared to feel euphoric about your first, and maybe, second interview, like you knocked it out of the park, and not get hired. Why? You'll have "puke" mouth. You'll tell them about all your weaknesses, and what you don't know, just to be "honest."  Chalk the first couple of interviews up to re-learning how to interview. Your going to blow them, just accept it. Go to these interviews, and try for the job, then go back home, and figure out what you said that you shouldn't have said. That's what you eliminate on your next interview.

Interviewing is a process, the first couple, you trip all over yourself, after the fifth or sixth, your more polished, you don't tell them anything negative, and rave about what you've done, and your experience, all the while jumping around in your seat showing them how excited and interested you are in the job. You get the idea. Do some homework, when interviewing with companies, but just enough to understand the job they've posted, and nothing more.

I've done extensive research on a company, only to be let down when they didn't offer me a job. Don't fall in love with a company before you get a job offer.  Don't do that to your emotions and well being.  Purposely wait to do your in depth research on a company until after you get the job offer to decide if you want the job.

One more thing for you IT guys, wear a coat and tie. Even though you wear jeans and a T-shirt normally, the employer wants to know you care enough about their job to dress up. I had a hiring manager dress up for the interview and tell me that, they expected the same from applicants.  It was one of the reasons, I believe, I got a job offer. Do it. Better dress well, then not.

Around the fourth week you should have three or four interviews lined up in one week, and you'll be in flow. One or two of these companies will, hopefully, make you an offer.  It's a numbers game, the more interviews, the higher chance that you'll get an offer.   Don't stop until you get an offer letter.  I've had companies imply in the interview that they want to hire you, and never get back to you.  Stop when you get an offer letter for a job that you want, until then keep interviewing.

It took me seven weeks, and I didn't waste a lot of time. I would say that that's the minimum amount of time it takes to get a job. I don't see how it could be done in two weeks. It's just not going to happen.

A few years ago Borders was my absolute favorite bookstore for technical books. I loved their large selection. I loved being able to pick up the book in my hand, skim through the book to decide if I liked the font, the pictures, the code. I wanted an author I understood. I'd look at the table of contents and see if it was laid out in an organized manner. I'd feel the heft of the book. I didn't like those 1000 page colossal universal references. Who wanted to plow through trying to read 1000 pages, or even holding it in your hand while you were trying to read it. I hated those floppy paperbacks that flopped around like a fish. I wanted a paperback, but with a little stiffness.

As I evaluated and read a multitude of technical books, I gradually began to form an opinion on the technical book publishers. Who I could trust, who just slopped books together to make a quick buck, what series had a poor concept, and who did a good job of making the writing readable. Out of that came my article reviewing technical book publishers.

As I would thumb through Border's collection, I would sometimes have a difficult decision between a couple of books. Which to buy?

In the past, say three years ago, I would eventually pick one of the books, and buy it. That was the Border hay day. Then they were the number one book store in America.

What happened?

Well, Amazon happened.  Amazon, after years of undercutting the prices of books, and not recording a profit, gradually won people over. I remember, with a little nervousness, purchasing my first book from Amazon, got their free shipping, it came in a week, and since I tend to have a couple of books I read at a time, I realized the delay was no big deal. The books arrived in good condition, I got a bargain price, and I was happy. I already knew I liked the book, I saw it at Borders.

Thus started Borders downfall. Once I purchased a few books from Amazon, I started going to Borders, like I always had, and like always, picked out the technical book I wanted, but instead of buying it right then and there, my curiosity got me. I wanted to read the Amazon reviews, and I wanted to see if I could get a lower price from Amazon.

In a way, I feel guilty about this. I used Borders to evaluate a book, and then went home and bought it from Amazon. This is the part of me that feels partly responsible for Borders demise, and makes me sorry to see Borders go away.

Then Amazon one upped itself and introduced the Kindle, followed by Barnes and Nobles Nook. The two eReaders took off, and where was Borders, not anywhere in the market. This accelerated Borders demise.

Now, we have Borders going out of business sale. They, like all companies, going out of business are gradually increasing their percentage discount to off load their inventory. I was there today, and they were giving 30% off on their technical books. That was good, I couldn't resist.

As usual, I hefted the books, went through the remaining inventory, found two books I liked, and I did what Amazon had taught me to do. I put them back on the shelf, and went home to look at Amazon's prices.  Unbelievable, Amazon was still lower by quite a bit, and they had the books in an eReader format, which means Borders was probably raising its prices on its books, as it increased their discount. Good old Borders right to the end.

Unfortunately, Borders going out of business hurts us all. Who now is Amazon's competition? We will be ordering books we haven't seen. At prices we can't compare. How would you know if you got a good price or not? You wont.

We lost are check and balance, we lost our ability to look at the books before we buy, and yes, in the end we'll pay for it.

This article is in memoriam to Borders. I will truly miss spending many enjoyable hours thumbing through their books, and having a cup of coffee, while looking at my selections.

With Microsoft's move into the cloud computing, this seems like a smart move on their part, and will enhance Microsoft's cloud products. This should help their Lync enterprise instant messaging, which has experienced a 30% growth in revenue over last year.

One of Microsoft's games seems to be to expand their office offering to instantly communicate with anyone else in a company, with video, messaging, and voice over the Internet. They will have cloud computing office applications, so that anyone will be able to get to their work from anywhere in the world, and instantly communicate with their colleagues. Ah yes, let's sailboat around the world with a Netbook.

Microsoft revenue stars lately has been their Office products and their Xbox 360 with their motion sensor technology. The big loser has been their Windows 7 offering, because of the sudden surge in tablet sales, and a corresponding falling off of PC sales. Intel announced this week that PC sales would not be as strong as expected next year. Netbook sales are also off as tablet sales increase.

Bear in mind that 39.7% of Windows user are still running XP, while 37.8% have moved to Windows 7. Microsoft's latest strategy has their new Internet Explorer 9 browser not running on XP, to boost Windows 7 sales. And there is a gradual move toward Windows 7, maybe because of this, with a corresponding decline in XP.

The tablet market does not use the Microsoft operating system. Tablet computers are based either on Apple's iPad IOS4.3 operating system, or the Android operating system. Both of these are Linux based operating system. So every tablet sale is one less PC sale, and one less sale for Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system.

Apple iPad

As to tablets, Apple nearly tripled its iPad sales from the same quarter a year ago. Apple, initially, had complete dominance in the tablet market, now Android is coming on strong, and making major in roads. A year ago, Apple had 94% of the market, now they only own 61%. The beauty of Android is that you're not locked into the product's manufacturer, like you are with Apple and Microsoft.

Android Samsung Galaxy

Windows is also under attack from both Apple and Linux for the PC operating system space with each gaining gradually in their market share. Let's not get too excited yet, according to W3Schools stats, Microsoft still owns about 86% of the market, Apple about 8.1%, and Linux about 5.2%. The point is the numbers for Apple and Linux are gradually increasing, while Microsoft's are declining.

The rest of the market is owned by mobile technology. According to the Gartner Group, Microsoft is a big loser in this market, even though they have a mobile solution, no one's using it. They occupy a measly 3.6% of the market and declining. The rest of the market is Symbian, 27.4%, and the Rim, 21.9%, operating systems declining rapidly; Apple's iPad and iPhone are steady at 16.8%; while the Android market is at 36% and rising rapidly. This market is starting to emerge, both the mobile and tablet market now account for 8% of Internet browsing in the US.

Despite the lagging Windows sales, Microsoft had a good quarter and beat estimates. They posted a profit of $5.87B up from $4.52B in the previous quarter a year ago. This came from Office sales and XBox sales, and an unusually low tax rate of 7%, which cut its taxes over $1B from the previous quarter a year ago. The tax break was from an increase in sales done through its offices outside the US.

As an aside, wake up Congress and start giving these corporations some tax breaks to stay in country. It's better to have some revenue, than none at all.

Given that most of Microsoft profits came from the tax breaks gotten from overseas sales, one has to look at Microsoft as a giant who is struggling to find areas to increase their revenue. One of Microsoft's bets is that the acquisition of Skype will increase their revenue by giving them new products to add to their Office portfolio.

One has to wonder if the ultimate computing product that everyone will want is an Android-based, eReader, Internet browsing, color, touch-sensitive, visible-in-sunlight tablet. If that's the case, Microsoft may end up like IBM, a has-been that has passed its prime.

The list may surprise you, first who's the biggest in terms of Total Revenue.

Next let's take a look at profits, the money left over after the companies pay their employees and all their expenses. A slightly different order emerges and something we can talk a little more about.

In talking about the Gross Profits,Verizon and IBM now are almost entirely service oriented businesses, so they should be more profitable then businesses that also sell hardware. Verizon spent a lot of money putting in their FIOS optical network together. Now that its built, they can sit back and take in the money with very little expenses.

The percent of profits compared to total revenue is a more interesting number. You could say that companies with a high profit margin are either mostly service oriented, as opossed to hardware companies, or there just gouging their customers. Which are the best businesses for profit margin?

Oracle is unbelievable. Oracle has always been service oriented supporting their database products. They have basically the same software database product since the late 1970's. Their pricing model is one of leasing their software at high rates, and charging high for services. They have very little overhead, but a 79% profit is really gouging in my mind.

Google gets its revenue from advertising. Google should have high margins, their revenue comes from ads, and there is very little overhead. Yes, they had to build their distributed search network, to support their search engine, but that's pretty much built now and everything else is profit.

Cisco, the folks that make the hardware that powers the Internet, are more and more service oriented as folks need technical support to make sure their servers are configured properly and secured. Cisco provides services, but they also provide hardware, which should make for lower profit margins. Their profit margin is high, because they charge high prices, and they can, because they almost have a monopoly in their industry.

Microsoft sells more software than hardware thus their profit percent is higher than Apples which gets a lot of their revenues from hardware.

HP has been known to charge more than their competitors for their hardware products and their profits show it.

Poor Dell, just builds computers, so their profit margins are slim.

Who's growing the fastest? This table shows the percent increase or decrease in total revenue from the previous FY2009 year.

Which brings me to the title of this article. Has Apple passed Microsoft? This would have been thought impossible a couple of years ago.

Let's make a comparison table, and I'm going to include Google, who may be the next 700lb gorilla to step forward, you be the judge.