Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's Worst Enemy: Themselves
KobyBoy writes "Saw this story posted on OSnews this morning. "Microsoft's biggest threat isn't Linux, OpenOffice, or any piece of software at all--its themselves. Over the last eighteen months two distinctly different Microsoft cultures have emerged, often in opposition to each other." You can get the full article at Sudhian Media."
Did you read the same article as I did???
The point of the article had very little to do with the merits of OS software. He was merely stating the fact that he himself had very little experience with Linux.
The point of the article was that, no matter how good or bad your product is, or how firmly entrenched you monopoly may be, if you piss off your customers long enough, you will eventually strangle yourself to death.
Or, to put it another way, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall..."
Your Servant, B. Baggins
What if this type of thinking begins to really penetrate MS's customer base? If Joe User (think of all of your friends and family who use you as their technical support hotline) starts to believe that Microsoft is taking them to the cleaners - not just believe it, but become convinced of the fact - and is willing to make the jump to an alternative OS, what then? What if the tools to make the switch are easy enough for anyone's grandparents to freely obtain and use? (Today, most of these kinds of users don't even know how to locate an ISO, let alone download & burn it! I'm also assuming they don't want to pay for the software from a vendor or store)
What would MS do if their customer base starts to erode noticeably? Will we see more "Satanic" actions to lock in their customers, or will MS respond in a way that will benefit the overall user community?
Perhaps this would be a good followup "Ask Slashdot", but I'd love to see people's thoughts on this.
-Lokatana
Too bad you have no idea what you're talking about.
You should read more about what media player really does:
Media Player sends a unique id number along with the info about what you're watching.
Are you an astroturfer or something or are you just clueless/insane? I don't need to even get into your other points as they're just ridiculous.
News flash: MS is worse now than they've even been.
Why exactly should I pretend they aren't?
Life is too short to proofread.
Attacking microsoft because the PCs it donates aren't good enough? Come on! Donations are voluntary and should be welcomed no matter what they are.
No, because the donations were proposed as a settlement for a case in which MS was being sued for monopilistic practices (which was left out of the article). The judge rejected the settlement.
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
As *soon* as Linux give him a reason to go through the hassle of installing and learning a new OS environment
When was the last time you installed a major distro? They all are easy to do now. A few require more input that say, installing Windows 2000, but then again it is easy.
Please stop spreading the FUD that it is hard to install/setup a linux machine. It just isn't true anymore.
And your reference of "learning a new OS environment" is weak also. Gnome/KDE are very close copies of Windows 98. Instead of it being the "Start" button it is called something else. It still acts the same, producing the same results (more or less).
Whether they should emulate win98 some much or not is for a different discussion...
Also, you can find information on "safe" donations of computers (and why it is dangerous to donate computers running old copies of Windows) on the SchoolForge site.
Saying "thousands of computers" is an overstatement for this particular incident, but if you count the number of "illegally" donated computers (i.e., ones donated to schools where they have not paid the $100 to $200 each for new licenses), then the number probably pretty close. Microsoft has shown repeatedly that they are ready, willing and able to drag school systems through the courts to prevent them from using these systems.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
If you think that Microsoft's $40 Billion is an impressive number calculate what Bill Gates would lose personally if Microsoft's stock lost half of its value.
His fortune is less tied to MS than you might think. Gates has diversified his holdings over the past several years and as of Sept. 9th of this year only held 11.6% of the company's stock. I believe his current net holdings are worth $43 billion. MSFT has 5,346,449,872 shares as of Sept. 30th, and it closed on that day at $43.74. On that day, MS stock was worth $223 billion, and he held only $27 billion in MS stock. If he lost half that, he'd go from $43 billion to $29.5 billion (ignoring the fact that an MS crash would take down the whole market). Boo hoo. He'd still have over 100 times what he was worth back in 1986.
Of course, this in no way invalidates your argument which is 100% correct. MS is a very stock price-obsessed company, and a lot of mutual funds invest so much money into it because it's preceived as a stable growth company. A major Enron-like shake-up like Bill Parish has been hoping for would devistate the market as badly as Enron's did. MS's business personnel are wholy obsessed with keeping this growth stable, and it's been well documented that MS uses tricky accounting to smooth losses from one quarter to the next by storing up money from good quarters and counting it as "earnings" later.
Incidentally, the Bill Gates Net Worth Page is an amusing collection of statistics and extrapolations about his wealth, though its data is a little out of date. It shows things like how long he could buy off every major official in the government (if he stopped earning money), how fast you'd have to go picking up dollar bills from end to end to earn money as fast as he has since MS went public (35+ MPH), and how if he can maintain his current rate of growth per year (over 35%!), he'll be a trillionaire by 2014.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Oh no! Windows Media Player sends a GUID that uniquely identifies the bundle of requests, but is in no way able to link back to your machine.
Oh no! Oh my God!
I don't need to even get into your other points as they're just ridiculous.
Uh huh.
News flash: MS is worse now than they've even been.
No, you've just proven the anything-but-Microsoft astroturfers are more insane than they've ever been.
Christ, next you'll be claiming the government puts flouride in our water supply for mind control.
If I may summarize, MS faces enormous problems in the not-so-distant future in transforming themselves from a hot-shot growth company into a mature firm. Their share price will not continue to double, so they won't be able to use options as currency (how would you like to be a relatively new hire with MS options at $120?). Some of their newer ventures may end up being profitable -- I would bet on MSN, particularly if AOL continues to screw up -- but the profit margins will not be nearly as good as those for Windows or Office. They have been unsuccessful, so far, in finding the next big thing in software that everyone wants.
MS is not the only firm with this problem. I would also add Intel and Cisco to the list of large successful tech companies whose share price is way too high for their realistic growth prospects. I have a friend at Intel who reported a rumor that Intel's upper management was shocked at a recent meeting with investment bankers who told them that they were a mature firm, not a growth company, and their share price would adjust downwards drastically as the stock market realized that fact.