PPC Blog by Gordon Choi

Google has been voted the number one company in 2006 by Wired Magazine. The criteria in selecting the top 40 companies include strategic vision, global reach, killer technology, and hunger for new ideas. Other well-known web companies that made the top 20 include Yahoo!, Amazon, eBay, Microsoft, and InfoSpace.

• Google (#1 in 2006, #2 in 2005)
• Yahoo! (#5 in 2006, #5 in 2005)
• Amazon (#6 in 2006, #4 in 2005)
• eBay (#19 in 2006, #10 in 2005)
• InfoSpace (#20 in 2006, out of the top 40 in 2005)
• Microsoft (#36 in 2006, #28 in 2005)

Google is more profitable than ever, who has rivals but no peers in term of search. Yahoo!, the web portal, serves up 3.5 billion web pages per day. Its relentlessly expanding feature stack gives even Google a touch of envy. Amazon has been pumping cash into projects like A9 search engine and Amazon Fishbowl webcast. eBay, with 1.2 billion dollar profits in 2005, can afford to buy Skype’s global phone system. Social networks like My Space can add buy & sell as another feature. Infospace is a dot-bust survivor who packages content like mobile games, news, sports and maps for cell phones. Microsoft’s golden era with its desktop operating systems won’t last forever. The latest to-do list includes VoIP, security and, software-as service.

Posted in: Google, Research