Microsoft the advertising company aQuantive, which had been acquired for $6.2 billion back in 2007. As of January 2014, Microsoft's market capitalization stood at $314B, making it the 8th largest company in the world by market capitalization. On November 14, 2014, Microsoft overtook Exxon Mobil to become the 2nd most valuable company by market capitalization, behind only Apple Inc. Its total market value was over $410B — with the stock price hitting $50.04 a share, the highest since early 2000. In 2015, Reuters reported that Microsoft Corp had earnings abroad of $76.4 billion which were untaxed by the IRS. Under U.S.
Google Text-to-Speech provide voice-reply functionality. Cloud Text-to-Speech is powered by WaveNet, software created by Google’s UK-based AI subsidiary DeepMind. Since Google bought DeepMind in 2014, it’s been exploring ways to turn the company’s AI talent into tangible products. Integrating WaveNet into its cloud service is significant as Google tries to win cloud business away from Amazon and Microsoft, presenting its AI skills as its differentiating factor. DeepMind’s AI voice synthesis tech is notably advanced and realistic. Most voice synthesizers (including Apple’s Siri) use concatenative synthesis, in which a program stores individual syllables — sounds such as “ba,” “sht,” and “oo” — and