Google Edges Ahead of Microsoft in Market Cap

Apple (AAPL 1.18%) may have overtaken Microsoft (MSFT 0.29%) in market cap in 2010, but now it's Google's (GOOGL 0.20%) turn. The search giant has now narrowly edged past the software maker, with both sitting just under $250 billion. After passing Microsoft two years ago, Apple has continued to march higher unabated.

GOOG Market Cap data by YCharts.

Among those three heavyweights, Apple leads in the market cap category by far, and Google's recent rally to fresh all-time highs has allowed it to pass Microsoft by. But if you were to look at other fundamental metrics, the differences among them stand out.

Sources: Morningstar and Reuters. TTM = trailing 12 months.

While Microsoft boasts higher sales and profits than Google, even after its embarrassing $6.2 billion writedown and net loss last quarter for trying to compete in online advertising, Google can now brag about its higher valuation thanks to its promising growth prospects.

Microsoft is hoping that Windows 8 will reinvigorate sluggish PC sales and its Windows and Windows Live division along with it, but Google's continued dominance of search advertising continues to pay off nicely. Microsoft's online services division remains highly unprofitable. Last quarter was a whopper due to the goodwill impairment, but excluding the most recent one, Microsoft has lost an average of nearly $600 million per quarter over the past three years.

Speaking of unprofitable divisions, remember that Google's new Motorola subsidiary was losing money long before Big G swallowed it. The handset maker lost $233 million of the search giant's dollars last quarter alone, only giving back a fraction of the $3.4 billion in operating income Google itself generated.

With the cloud and mobile set to lead the future of computing, Google looks to be in a much better position, while Microsoft's mobile future is far from certain.