Just Because You Think Something Doesn't Mean You Are Right

A few years ago I read a book: How to Win Friends and Influence People. From which I learned that it is never in the best interest of a friendship to blatantly correct someone you don't know very well.Yet, somehow I still find myself trying to convince people of what's actually right even though I know I shouldn't. So... I've been meeting lots of Microsoft Interns lately and I have come to the following conclusions about the ones I've met so far:

1. College students near graduation tend to claim facts they know nothing about.
   
2. Microsoft Interns know little about business but act like they are the authority when it comes to conversations about the computer business.
3. Microsoft Interns like to talk about Microsoft and Google A LOT.
   
4. Canadians think Canada is way superior to the United States and like to obnoxiously take jobs across the border to let United States citizens be reminded of the fact.

Now this wouldn't be very interesting if I did not give some explanations. Keep in mind, I am not naive enough to actually believe that this applies to all or even most Interns at Microsoft but rather only two specific encounters:

Microsoft Can not afford to Buy Google
Outspoken Intern #1: "Why doesn't Microsoft just buy Google instead of Yahoo?"

Outspoken Intern #2: "I don't know, it's strange... it hasn't even come up."

Me: "Microsoft can't afford Google"

Outspoken Intern #1: :"Yes they do, they have A LOT of money saved up.

Me: "You would have to compare the Market Cap between the two companies or how much their stock is worth. Google, being the number one internet company is valued a lot higher than the declining Yahoo and Microsoft would likely have to pay a premium for these shares."

Outspoken Intern #1: "Google only does search but Yahoo does so much more, if they can afford Yahoo they can afford Google."

Outspoken Intern #2: "They can't buy Google, because then they would have a monopoly over internet search"

Me: "That could be true but Microsoft only has like 10% of the search market"

Outspoken Intern #2: "Yeah and if they bought Google then they would have like 60%, that would never fly"

Outspoken Intern #1: "Microsoft has lots of money"

The facts:














Microsoft's total assets add up to: 70.747 Billion (as of March 31, 2008) which is significantly less then Google's market value of 167.6 Billion.


Google is Not Worth More Than Microsoft

Somehow I met the exact opposite opinion of the previous scenario at a different occasion.

Wise Canadian: "So I read this article about how Google is the most powerful companies in the world. (Now I tried to research this, and the closest I found was Google being the most powerful brand by Millward Brown which I hope is not what he is referring to). Isn't that crazy that with all the products like Windows and Office a company like Google can make more money with just adds. How are we messing up so badly?"

Me: "Google's revenue is like a third of Microsoft's (I was actually really close, I thought it would have been less, Microsoft made 51.122 billion in 2007 and Google made 16.593 billion)."

Wise Canadian: "No, Google makes more money, and they don't even sell anything."

[I give up, because the guy was actually really cool and funny so there was some more talk, followed by this]

Wise Canadian: "I wouldn't want to work for Microsoft, unless I could live in Canada."

Me: "Yeah, Canada must be cool, you can Snowboard year round and I hear it's beautiful."

Wise Canadian: "yeah, that's true but Canada is safer than the US"

Me: "ok, how so?"

Wise Canadian: "It's just safer, it just really safe there."

And there you have it, my rant and rave about people who speak based on speculation rather than facts. For some reason I have experienced this a lot more here then at my school, a good hypothesis is yet to come.