May
May was a busy month for Google, especially in the mobile space. While it geared up for a response to Apple's popular iPad tablet, got approval for the acquisition of AdMob, and pulled the plug on a direct sales channel experiment it never seemed to put its heart into, it became clear that Android was fast becoming one of the most popular smartphone operating systems.
To further stoke this momentum, Google unveiled the latest version of Android - 2.2/Froyo - which introduced tethering and Adobe Flash support to the platform. At the same time it unveiled its ambitious new TV initiative - Google TV - in partnership with Intel, Sony and Logitech. The idea was to bring the Internet to the TV, but so far the market has taken some convincing that Google has done this well.
Talking about Intel, the chip giant took another step towards producing a chip that is low-power enough to be used in mobile devices with the launch of the Atom Z6xx series processor, better known as Moorestown.
While Intel remains ubiquitous in the PC market, it identified the growing importance of the smartphone market - and its convergence with PCs - some time ago, and vowed to adapt its normally quite power-hungry chip architecture to the mobile platform. Moorestown represented the next increment in that journey, but Intel isn't there yet.
While the growing importance of Facebook was illustrated by the strength of reaction to a change in the way users control the privacy of their data, it was once of the oldest tech companies that finally toppled Microsoft from its position the world's biggest tech company, by market cap.
By the end of May Apple's public shares were worth more, in total, than Microsoft's. This was just one more milestone for Apple, which had seen its share price triple since early 2009. This is almost entirely down to the iPhone, with the iPad making a significant contribution this year. Apple's market cap was around $220 billion when it overtook Microsoft. It was more like $300 billion by the end of the year.
