Which company is bigger - Google or Microsoft? Despite Google's profile, in financial terms it's still dwarfed by the Redmond giant.
By most people's standards, Google is a massive company. It dominates the world of online advertising and search in a way which has its rivals scrabbling to catch up. The fact that Microsoft would want to spend billions on buying Yahoo in an attempt to catch up gives you an indication of how highly-rated the company is.
But Google's profile can actually lead people into having the wrong impression about its size, compared with other companies in the industry. For all its apparent issues, Microsoft dwarfs Google, with over $51 billion in revenue compared to just $16 billion last year. Neither is Google more profitable - in fact, Microsoft made more in operating income last year ($18 billion) than Google's entire revenue.
So don't expect, as I've heard people state recently, that Google will "overtake Microsoft soon". To do so, it would need to triple in size, and although there's no doubt that the markets it excels in are growth areas, that would be an impressive rise.