Perception is interesting here. I have worked with startups in Silicon Valley since 1984 and remember the ever-increasing dismay throughout the period extending right up to the early-to-mid-90s of the "UNIX guys" (that is how I saw them) as they were almost ready to explode watching Microsoft apparently taking over first the consumer desktop and then the enterprise with what they saw as crappy products relative to the far more robust systems they worked with and developed. All they could do was shake their heads in dismay and bemoan the fact that consumers and enterprise customers could be so forced to conform to the lowest common denominator that DOS/Windows and their progeny begat - all the while complaining of Bill Gates's "evil empire."
I mention this only to emphasize, for those who are younger, how all-pervasive this dispirited mindset was back then. Of course, this all changed with the Internet and the rest is history.
I think this piece reflects that mindset perfectly: Microsoft sucks? Of course, it always has!
I don't even know that this is fair characterization of what Microsoft did or did not achieve back in the day (I am not a techie guy) but I do know that it was how Microsoft was overwhelmingly perceived by many of the tech-savvy people even as it was crushing all competitors.
The hold Microsoft, Oracle (Sun) have over enterprise software comes from marketing. An entire generation of programmers has been trained and certified to use and develop with their products and knows of nothing more. These programmers careers are so dependent on identification with these companies that they defend them with a surprising close minded intensity.
The hold Microsoft, Oracle (Sun) have over enterprise software comes from marketing.
You say that like it is a bad thing. Let's hypothetically say you can duplicate all of the Excel macros and VB apps which, ahem, run the world with a sufficient quantity of (e.g.) Perl scripts. That doesn't by itself help anybody -- you still have to teach them "Hey guys, Perl: it solves boring business problems in addition to enabling golf games." Microsoft has done an awful, awful lot of teaching over the years.
Microsoft et. al have very effectively used training and certification as a marketing tool. I guess I do see it as a bad thing because I have to deal with it and this came through in my comment. A decade or two ago these companies did provide the best solutions available to some problems faced by companies but I do not think this is the case any longer. Most of their products have become free or inexpensive commodities and professionals trained by these companies have become more of an obstacle to be worked around than an asset.
it's also interesting to note that Microsoft, a company that many software experts agree makes inferior products, is also a huge market leader. This hints at something a lot of technically minded people oversee: Sales and marketing is what drives a company. Microsoft is probably the most savvy tech company out there when it comes to sales. Yes, they are stuffing things down people's throat, abusing their monopoly, and generally being a nuisance. But it works, and it works well.
This steve Ballmer quote sums it up pretty well "well, we've been accused of a lot of things, but not being able to make money isn't one of them"
Microsoft excels at a vary specific type of marketing.
While they suck at the traditional approaches, (Jerry Seinfeld / Bill Gates etc) they are willing to spend insane amounts of money so they can leverage what works. Buying Halo / Bungie sacrificing all that cross platform money so they could "buy" hype. Buying Hotmail for far more than it was ever going to be worth so they could change the backend to use MS server. The problem for MS is they don't know how to scale back to less profitable industries.
Edit: It could be argued that MS simply understands the value of creating a monopoly and is willing to spend to create new ones. They seem to make money selling MS branded mice without those tactics just fine, but I don't know how profitable that is.
This was true for a long time, but I think a case can be made that today Apple sells better than Microsoft.
Of course, Apple sells to consumers, Microsoft to businesses. Again, for a long time it looked like selling to business was the better market to be in, but now it is not as clear.
This is a minor point, but rumors of IBM's demise are greatly exaggerated. Last I checked it had a market cap of more than $160B.
One could argue that IBM's PC business is what died, but I'd say Dell did more to kill that than Microsoft (my guess is MS doesn't care whose hardware they run on.) The other companies the author described, Xerox and Bell Labs and Apple, only one is still kicking around in the consumer technology space, and it almost died along the way too.
The "MS is managed into the toilet" comments seem like the other side of the "Apple is destroying openness/hobbies" or "Google kills privacy" memes. I read it as people wishing a particular company was different, more like how the authors want them to be... open, friendly, innovative and awesome. Like a digital Santa Claus. Fact is, all of these companies are successful, with weaknesses and strengths. I'd like a more level-headed comparison of those, personally, rather than nostalgia.
All of these companies are shifting, like IBM did. Google is really going after mobile, MS is really going after businesses (with a side quest into the living room), and Apple is doing it all. It's just interesting to see who's big bets will pay off.
I'd give Microsoft credit for killing IBM's OS/2.
What really created the PC-compatible market was the creation of "clone" BIOS. I'd give Phoenix credit for that.
Dell gets credit for being a pretty efficient if not innovative box builder, first with a major online store (ironically it ran on NeXT software) to sell over that thing called the World Wide Web which was developed on NeXT computers.
IBM deserves some blame, if not credit, for allowing Microsoft the foot in the door with licensing which led to their excessive enrichment. If IBM has insisted on buying an OS outright, or developed their own, we probably wouldn't have had the widescale mess known as DOS and Windows. Microsoft basically bought DOS outright from someone else, so they didn't even innovate that.
DOS/Window success wasn't based on quality, but on licensing and taking away consumer choice (through dealing with manufacturers and bundling) as the article points out.
IBM was on the precipice of destruction in the 90s; it nearly broke up into several smaller companies in an act of desperation. I think this is what the author is referring to. It was only through an awkward shift from software/hardware development to services that they kept their neck above water.
I think "IBM's demise" is refering to when they were the in place monopolist, and ruling the computer field completely. Which was way before Dell selling PCs
From the headline I had assumed this was going to be another garden variety "in defense of MS" kind of article. I do think that MS has done some innovative things here and there, but I agree it's hard to really call them a "leader". They are an exceptionally good "fast follower".
Microsoft research is very good though not all of it makes it into production. I would certainly call them a leader in research compared to other companies. http://research.microsoft.com/apps/dp/areas.aspx
This is true, but for all intents and purposes MSR is a separate company. For a research lab, where the metric for success is not how much makes it to production, they are quite good indeed.
I think Microsoft tosses too much research money around in the hope of finding something rather than focusing more on what matters.
I don't know why they can't innovate like other companies with all those projects and all that money they spend in R&D. Maybe it's because of all that internal competition outlined in the Dick Brass' "creative destruction" piece. This could be one explanation, but I think it's not the only one.
It was not long ago that MS investors complained that Apple invests one tenth of what Microsoft invests in research, obtaining far better results.
Microsoft lost its way quite a long time ago. In the 1990s it was pretty much invincible, but after that things began to unravel. For me the lowlights were:
Windows ME - it self-destructed on me after a few months of usage
Internet Explorer 6 - gave me the best possible incentive to move to Firefox
Windows Genuine (Dis)Advantage - for me was really the final straw
Windows XP was highly successful though, although again they really failed to do anything very innovative with that OS other than keep it stable. By the end of 2006 I'd stopped using most of their products, having been a MS stalwart since Windows 3.1, and I havn't looked back since.
"Windows XP was highly successful though, although again they really failed to do anything very innovative with that OS other than keep it stable."
Just as some seem to look back on Microsoft and portray it as having been so good, there seem to be some rose colored glasses looking at XP too. Yes it was hugely better than earlier consumer versions of Windows, but between it's inferiority to OS X, and massive number of security holes, and the various ways people were locked into it, it was pretty sick.
I think it was some of the disappointments of Vista that somehow made XP seem better in retrospect
Sure XP was popular in the sense of it being widespread, but the same could be said of herpes.
It's sort of like Bush making Reagan and Nixon seem better.
Nixon, the criminal, sure looks saintly now.
And as much as some may have disagreed with Reaganomics, he still came across as honest about his intentions, and likable with a sense of humor.
You had me until: "Nixon, the criminal, sure looks saintly now." I adjusted for hyperbole, but still.
Maybe it's only because my generation's closest ties to Nixon are via Hunter S. Thompson's popular invectives, but I don't know of anybody who thinks that Dicky M. deserves any more veneration than a kidney stone. But then, I suppose I never have had a very keen eye, when it comes to finding the inner beauty of politicians...
IE 6 - gave me the best possible incentive to move from netscape.
Let's remember - IE6 was better than anything else (except maybe IE5/Mac) at the time it came out. Opera might be an exception, but you had to pay for it so no thanks.
Whatever else they may be doing, Microsoft is sure digging in its heels when it comes to innovating on the web. Internet Explorer is the primary reason that web devs can't make wide use of standards like CSS3, <canvas>, and WebSockets. Even their recent backing of SVG is nearly worthless, given that most features of SVG are already usable via Raphael and VML.
Also, I love this author's "Microsoft could be the right place for me, but then I decided it wasn't". I am pretty sure it was the other way around. It would be nice to know where such a genius works these days and what are his great contributions arising from his great wisdom.
Actually, I never applied for a job there. A good friend of mine who works for Microsoft scheduled an appointment in my behalf for a job opening he thought I would be interested, but I guess that, by that time, I was not as enthusiastic about the job as my interviewer expected and as other candidates were. I was contacted a couple times in the following years (the last one was about 2001 or 2002) but I have declined interviews since then.
I use to joke that my friend is jeopardizing his own job there every time he recommends me for job openings.
Whenever any of guy guys assemble a multi-billion dollar company just by selling software you let me know. Or at least get a job with one of the companies you seem so keen to analyze in depth (Google, MS, Apple, IBM). Then maybe your opinions would count something.
While you sit at your desk analyzing this and that, thousands of business flourish and make money, thanks to the privacy killers (Google), the imperial monopolists (Microsoft) or the vertical Nazis (Apple) or the old Nazis (IBM). What have YOU been doing to change the world like that, huh?
And don't come all "I have been doing Linux!" on me, because the largest amount of contributors to Linux are the very companies you pathetically try to bash from your fantastic jobs as code monkeys at ACME International Ltd.
"Hacker" folks need to understand that software is just a tool for business and consumers to use to get shit done; it's not an end on itself. The massive success of all these companies, MS included, shows that shit is getting done, lives are improving, people are making money and being happy.
In the end, that's all that matters. "Experts" have been killing IBM, then Microsoft, then Oracle, even Apple, for years. These people grow old, retire, and these companies continue (and will continue) to be successful for a simple reason: they provide value.
> "Hacker" folks need to understand that software is just a tool for business and consumers to use to get shit done; it's not an end on itself.
You're saying it like "hacker folks" are the only ones with this "misconception".
When Graham Bell invented the telephone, or when Thomas Edison invented the radio, or when Einstein developed the relativity theory, or when Benjamin Franklin did research on electricity ... guess these guys where all thinking ... "what tools to make for businesses and consumers to get shit done".
I mention this only to emphasize, for those who are younger, how all-pervasive this dispirited mindset was back then. Of course, this all changed with the Internet and the rest is history.
I think this piece reflects that mindset perfectly: Microsoft sucks? Of course, it always has!
I don't even know that this is fair characterization of what Microsoft did or did not achieve back in the day (I am not a techie guy) but I do know that it was how Microsoft was overwhelmingly perceived by many of the tech-savvy people even as it was crushing all competitors.