Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
sumers. The Almanac was listed as one of the more useful websites available as of
2005.
Not every aspect of Intuit's business operations receives favorable comments.
For years, banks had downloaded consumer financial data in a format called QIF,
which stands for Quicken Interface Format. This was available free of charge.
Quicken developed another proprietary format called QFX that was fee-based, and
it then dropped support for the older QIF format. In fact, Intuit has received bad
reviews for dropping support for older versions and requiring customers to buy
new versions of software and services.
Intuit also spends quite a bit of money lobbying, and some of the things it lob-
bies for are not necessarily good for consumers. It lobbied to eliminate free online
tax filing for low-income residents of California, and it lobbied to keep consumers
from filing income tax returns directly with the IRS.
Microsoft competed with Intuit in the personal financial space, but in June
2009, Microsoft began to withdraw from that market. Microsoft stated that the
market for personal financial software had declined, but Intuit with Quicken is still
successful in that market.
Intuit is still the major vendor of personal financial software and also of ac-
counting packages such as QuickBooks for various kinds of companies, including
nonprofits. However, it is not usually beneficial for consumers to have only one
major source for fairly important applications such as personal finance.
KPMG
The early history of KPMG dates back to 1870 and the early days of accounting
and auditing companies. Because computers and software were applied to ac-
counting and finance almost as soon as they were invented, accounting companies
became computer experts before most other industries. This expertise soon led to
accounting companies forming separate management consulting groups to aid cli-
ents in dealing with their own computers and software.
KPMG is the result of a complex set of mergers and acquisitions that are too
baroque for discussion in this topic. The company is cited in this chapter because
two accounting and financial firms (KMG Group and Peat Marwick) merged to
create KPMG during the 1980s. The combination was then called KPMG in the
United States. This company has had a lot of name changes: over half a dozen,
in fact. Without doing an exhaustive check, KPMG has probably had more name
changes than any other company cited in this topic.
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