1. Compare the business models and areas of strength of Apple, Google, and Microsoft.
2. Why is mobile computing so important to these three firms? Evaluate the mobile platform offerings of each firm.
3. What is the significance of mobile applications, app stores, and closed vs. open app standards to the success or failure of mobile computing?
4. Which company and business model do you think will prevail in this epic struggle? Explain your answer.
5. What difference would it make to a business or to an individual consumer if Apple, Google, or Microsoft dominated the Internet experience? Explain your answer.

The three Internet titans— Google, Microsoft, and Apple— are in an epic struggle to dominate your Internet experience. They are competing on several fronts: digital con-tent, from music to videos and books for sale in their online stores; physical devices, from Apple’s iPhone to Google’s Android phones, to Microsoft’s Windows 8 phones. And let’s not forget they all offer tablets as well. The prize is a projected $ 400 billion e- commerce marketplace by 2015 where the major access device will be a smartphone or tablet computer. Each firm generates extraordinary amounts of cash based on different business models and is using that cash in hopes of being the top dog on the Internet. In this triangular fight, at one point or another, each firm has allied with one of their two major foes to team up on the third. Two of the firms— Google and Apple— are determined to prevent Microsoft from expanding its dominance beyond the PC desktop and onto the new mobile plat-form. So Google and Apple are friends.