San Francisco, May 30: Microsoft has surpassed Alphabet, the parent company of Google, in the market capitalisation for the first time in three years, becoming the third most valuable firm after Apple and Amazon globally.

According to a report in Investor's Business Daily late Tuesday, Microsoft had a market cap of $753 billion at the close of trading, almost $14 billion ahead of Alphabet.

Apple leads with a market cap of nearly $924 billion and Amazon is at distant second, with nearly $783 billion.

The credit for Microsoft's rise goes to its CEO Satya Nadella who has been strategically restructuring the company towards Cloud and Office offerings.

Driven by consistent growth in its Office and Cloud solutions, Microsoft posted a revenue of $26.8 billion and net income of $7.4 billion in its third quarter that ended on March 31.

"We are innovating across key growth categories of infrastructure, AI, productivity and business applications to deliver differentiated value to customers," Nadella said.

Office commercial products and Cloud services revenue increased 14 per cent -- driven by Office 365 commercial revenue growth of 42 per cent.

The Azure cloud offering had 93 per cent revenue growth. Revenue in Productivity and Business Processes was $9 billion and increased 17 per cent in the quarter.

Microsoft now has over 135 million active Office 365 business users, with 30.6 million Office 365 consumer users.

Revenue in Intelligent Cloud was $7.9 billion and increased 17 per cent.

 

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New Delhi: The Union Ministry of Culture allegedly spent Rs 76.13 lakh on print advertisements marking the 100-year celebrations of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), according to a Right to Information (RTI) reply.

The information was sought by RTI activist Ajay Basudev Bose, who filed an application seeking details on expenditure incurred by the ministry for advertisements commemorating the RSS centenary.

Bose shared a picture of the reply from the ministry on his official ‘X’ handle.

“It is informed that an amount of Rs 76,13,129 has been spent on advertisement given in various print media by the Ministry of Culture on the occasion of the completion of 100 years of RSS,” the government’s reply stated.

Bose questioned the expenditure in the post X, “when Everyone knows RSS is Not Registered & Does not Pay any Tax is it justified to spend Tax Payers Money on such Private event??”

Reacting to the development, Karnataka’s IT-BT and Panchayat Raj Minister Priyank Kharge also criticised the spending.

In a post on X, he asked why public money was being used for what he described as a “private ideological project.”

"Modi Sarkar spent Rs 76,13,129 of public money on newspaper advertisements to celebrate 100 years of the RSS. Why is Government spending taxpayers money on an unregistered, non-tax-paying organisation to celebrate their centenary?," he added. 

According to reports, the RSS describes itself as a volunteer-based organisation and has stated that it functions as a body of individuals rather than a registered entity.

Founded by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar in 1925, the organisation is marking its centenary year beginning from Vijaydashami in 2025, with the milestone observed on October 2.