“Business is the instrument that mankind has settled on to propagate change. Take a long step back and what do you see? A world of invention and unintended consequences,” Fortune Editors write.
“Other things make the world go round as well—love, principally, and coffee—but there is nothing quite like the study of business to illuminate where we have been and where we are going,” Fortune writes. “The poet Archibald MacLeish, when he was a staff writer at Fortune, described his job as to ‘report the world of business as an expression — a peculiarly enlightening expression — of the Republic, of the changing world.'”
Fortune writes, “It has become a bit of a catchphrase among tech people to say that one’s company is going to ‘change the world.’ Many companies do, in small ways. But disrupting, say, the taxi business is not going to set future historians atwitter (though Twitter conceivably might). We surveyed Fortune’s brain trust to come up with a ranking of the 27 companies that have done the most to alter the way we live.”
The Top 3, in order are: Standard Oil, AT&T, and McCormick Harvesting Machine Co.
Tech companies that made Fortune’s list:
10. Google
16. Apple
19. Sony
21. Facebook
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Placing Google 6 places ahead of Apple on list of companies that changed the world, tells you all you need to know about how much Fortune understands world-changing companies.
From Fortune’s Google description: “Think of Google as a factory for major innovations, from self-driving cars to wearable computers to technology for extending the lifespan of humans.”
Our Lady of Perpetual Beta’s experiments vs. Apple, a company that changed the world in myriad, profound, lasting ways, including: Popularized and defined the personal computer (three times! (Apple II, Mac, iPad), invented the PDA with Newton (and killed it with iPhone), popularized and defined the portable media player (iPod), created the digital music industry (iTunes Store), created the modern pocketable computer (iPhone), created the touch-based personal computer (iPad), and created the modern software distribution model (App Store). These are things have changed billions of people’s lives. Not things that roughly fourteen people have tested (self-driving cars) and pie-in-the-sky projects (extending the lifespan of humans) that have so far changed bupkis. How much credit does Fortune give Google for creating $1,500 glasses for assholes?
It’s ludicrous. So ludicrous, in fact, that – if we had to guess – it was done by Fortune on purpose in order to generate “controversy” and page views.
Ranking Goggle above Apple on such a list is the equivalent of giving Barack H. Obama the Nobel Peace Prize based on hope for future success (which, of course, as anyone with a brain knew would happen, turned out exactly the opposite).
Whenever I see someone put a political slant on something not related to politics, I puke a little. 🙁
So, is ranking Google above Apple on such a list not the equivalent of giving Barack H. Obama the Nobel Peace Prize based on hope for future success?
😳
No it’s not, the Nobel Prize is a prize, a singular winner. Fortune’s list includes a number of companies. For your political slant and analogy to be more appropriate one would consider, say a list of the best presidents and then ranking George “Warmonger” Bush higher than Obummer. Actually ranking any president better than Bush would and should raise eyebrows on most people with double digit IQs.
I hope you get a doctor before you puke too much, but given events of late, probably not.
Fortune should “Take a long step back and what do you see? A world of destruction and unintended consequences due to government actions (worldwide).”
Consider this. The US Gov’t (same one that runs the VA Hospitals so well) has decided they will start with Obamacare and spend probably a couple trillion of taxpayer money in the first decade (both gov’t and company required spending: which comes out of taxpayers income), so the US Gov’t should be listed as a technological innovator in healthcare, even if it was poor innovation.
If that was not bad enough, we have many democrats and democrat advisors (including Obama before election on tape) saying they want a “single payer” system where the government has ALL citizens in a VA like system.
Hence, Obama ought to receive another prize for being the great instrument of change against its citizens.
Usually I agree, but quite an apt metaphor!!!
Interesting article but having Google and Facebook on that list at all calls the entire list into question. If that is their perspective of Google then why not Xerox and IBM?
Agreed! IBM and Xerox would be at the top of the list with AT&T. Google, Facebook are not even in the same universe. This list is absolutely ridiculous as well as stupid
Placing Google on this list because it has umpteen unfinished projects it spouts off about is absolutely ridiculous. I can understand having Google on the list for its search engine and the advancements made in internet search because of Google, but to have it over Apple which revolutionized both the personal computer and mobile phone industries is ludicrous.
To quote botvijerk — zzzzz
And so now you’re going to be the a-sshat troll who starts flame wars on MDN?!?
Yup.
Being a “major” sponsor of Fortune Magazine sure has its inherent benefits (Google). Thank goodness there is and always be a high ethical standard within Apple Inc.
Google above apple?…..
BOGUS ! As in HUGE BOGUS.
One trick pony company ! What is all this bs talk about google inovation? Where other than googles labs are these inovations? How many prople get to use them? Next to none!!
This kind of obvious bs talk tells me one thing:
Someone paid some one under the table !
This is an interesting article, if you can get passed the placement of Apple behind Google. It would have been better to call the article “27 companies that changed the world.” Oh, the article is called that already… The “ranking” is of secondary importance.
The “interesting” thing is that I don’t recognize (by name), most of these companies. But I recognize their contributions to civilization, and day-to-day life. Let’s hope “Apple” lives on in name AND achievement, 100+ years from now.
And FaceBook? I can live without FaceBook. Maybe the author is addicted, so can’t imagine life without social media, so it made the list.
Also, it says something about the fading (current day) influence of Microsoft, that it could not make it onto this list, although if FaceBook and Google are on the list, Microsoft should be there too. I would say Microsoft DID change the world, by standardizing and turning ALL personal computers (that are not Macs) into imitation Macs, and thereby causing those “PCs” to become commoditized and readily available. We don’t need to like how Microsoft operates to acknowledge its (past) impact on the world.
Not to mention Microsoft changed the world by developing Word and then Office.
They were on contract to Apple when they made Word and Excel.
Scanned this bogus list again and again; no Hostess!
Twinkie: that’s true innovation.
Best MDN Take of all time. I have nothing to add.
As I kept harping on Apple’s P.R and Marketing has sucked the last few years.
This is another indication of it.
Sitting around while others (NYT, Mike Daisey, analysts like Doug Kass etc etc etc ) kick you around like a rusted tin can in a barrio isn’t P.R : it’s incompetence and stupidity.
Goog glasses is a flop, self driving cars more than BETA ( list of problems with it will fill pages, suffice to say currently the finicky malfunctioning beasts cost more than Ferraris and Goog failed building PHONES with motorola and recently one of it’s project LOON balloons crashed into power lines … ) — Goog is ranked six times higher than Apple?
Goog P.R should be ranked 600 times higher than Apple’s , that i agree (even Guy Kawasaki long time Apple evangelist joined Google for a few years ) but innovation?
Both Apple P.R chief and USA Marketing chief left apple (were asked to leave?) recently within a few days of each other. Let’s hope that Apple P.R and image will improve.
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For those that argued that P.R is useless and a waste…
When Tim cook issued a brief P.R statement that the (garbage tome) Haunted Empire was nonsense and Eddy Cue stated in an email Jobs did not throw pencils at him etc : IT STOPPED THE BOOK IN ITS TRACKS. otherwise like Mike Daisey the author will STILL be going around giving talks at CNBC, NPR etc, and the ‘facts’ will be quoted by Fortune etc. for YEARS until it becomes engrained in popular consciousness (like Apple has lost it’s innovation).
ENJOY FIGHTING BACK Tim IT WORKS . And it’s CHEAP (one good P.R statement can be equal to a hundred million bucks in buybacks for the stock).
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I’m an ex Ad PR person.
Tim Cook should speak up more often. Why aren’t other voices raised against the publication of such errant nonsense? Oh, wait, I forgot. People tend to act not from moral principles but from petty self-interest—and clearly, that includes journalists. How deluded was I, to think they were exempt from crass motives. Into the rubbish bin go my tapes of All the President’s Men and all the rest of the fairy tales about human nobility.
Interestingly spoke to a pilot today about why even though the capability to land a plane automatically has been around for decades they still only do it during poor visibility. It showed why we will not have self drive cars any time soon on normal roads. The reason is that if something goes wrong the pilot has to define what the problem is before he can respond to it whereas when you are in control you have much more control and I ate knowledge of the process and can react accordingly much quicker. Computers do the predictable better than a human but respond very poorly to unexpected events and pilots do to if only in surveillance mode.
Totally right!
Plus hoe god damn boring would it be to travel in a driverless car.
Jeez that would do my head in!
For creating a new category of users/people called “GLASSHOLES” Google gets credit.
BONUS POINTS for the actual morons that are willing to pay $1,500 dollars to look like a GlassHole and for wanting to irritate and offend peoples privacy and personal space.
Smoke, mirrors, and Barnum & Bailey hype get you on widely publicised ‘best of’ lists. That plus a lot of behind-the-scenes palm-greasing, if you get my drift. It also helps if readership are functionally brain-dead.
Agreed.
And that those people are working for google or their marketing agency.
But the palm greasing is so true in every aspect of business.
I’ve seen it everywhere, play golf with so and so and you get the deal, take mr x to a posh restaurant and you get the deal, pay backhanders to people running best of lists and you go up the rankings.
People who happen to sit in the republic of reporting front-row with the pen are sold to copiers – in fact patent theft and shameless mimicking are the life changing events….
Makes me laugh (and cry) that google is above apple considering that they are just sucking personal information from everyone to turn it into money.
When will the world wake up to this company?
When we are all controlled by google drones that watch and record everything about us?
Google tops apple for doing nothing but spending cash on other companies who are developing this stuff that will amount to nothing.
Google is like the child’s nursery of ideas, fun to play around in but create nothing worthwhile.
Come on now everybody — the internet used to be free, now Google has plastered it with Ads. /s
“it was done by Fortune on purpose in order to generate “controversy” and page views.”
No, it was done to secure a hire ranking in Google search.
The article following it had an interesting quote:
“Apple is moving innovation down the stack into hardware/software integration, where it’s hard for Google to follow,” Evans wrote. “And Google is moving innovation up the stack into cloud-based AI and machine learning services, where it’s hard for Apple to follow. This isn’t a tactical ‘this’ll screw those guys’ approach — it reflects the fundamental characters of the two companies. Google thinks about improving user experience by reducing page load times, Apple thinks about user experience by making it easier to scroll that page.”