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Microsoft's Worst Enemy: Themselves

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the food-for-the-machine dept.

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."

30 of 556 comments (clear)

  1. Control by deanj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This all comes down to control. What Bill wants, Bill gets, at least within his own company. You can bet your life that if Gates wanted to do something within the company, they'd turn on a dime, just the way they did back in 1995 to support Internet stuff

    1. Re:Control by Jason+Earl · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Microsoft's problems do not stem from some sort of corporate culture clash, and I can guarantee you that when Bill speaks people working at Microsoft still jump.

      The problem at Microsoft is that the people running the show (and that includes most Microsoft developers) are more concerned about Microsoft's stock price than the long term survival of the company. Microsoft stock is still priced for rapid growth, and so Microsoft has to come up with a way to provide that growth or Microsoft shares will eventually lose a significant portion of their present value. 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.

      The question then becomes where does Microsoft hope to gain its future growth. Linux is cutting deeply into Microsoft on the server side, and there is fierce competition (and very low margins) on the embedded front. That leaves Windows and MS Office, as all of Microsoft's other business units are actually losing money. The XBox is Microsoft's best bet for a new significant revenue stream, but Sony appears to be taking Microsof to lunch on this front.

      That's not all of Microsoft's problems either. The PC market continues to be soft, and MS Office is being replaced on the low-end models of nearly every major manufacturer with Corel's PerfectOffice.

      So what does Microsoft do to keep growing their revenue? They raise prices, that's what. Microsoft knows that their existing customers have large investments in their Microsoft software. Replacing this software would be very difficult, and so Microsoft is making these customers pay the price of their misplaced loyalty.

    2. Re:Control by sheldon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Linux is cutting deeply into Microsoft on the server side

      Not really, Microsoft marketshare is still growing. In 2001 it grew by 3%.

      The PC market continues to be soft, and MS Office is being replaced on the low-end models of nearly every major manufacturer with Corel's PerfectOffice.

      Again, this isn't all that critical either.

      Like you said, the problem is that in order for Microsoft to show rapid growth they need to be able to expand markets. That's difficult to do, Linux isn't cutting into Microsoft's server market, it's cutting into Microsoft's server growth potential markets by replacing Unix. If not for Linux, those Unix servers would be replaced by Win2k servers.

      Similarly with the low priced machines. If not for Corel, chances are those machines would sell with no bundled software in order to keep prices down. It just cuts into the potential sales.

      This isn't just a problem for Microsoft, it's a problem for many companies. One of the challenges the stock market gives is that there is an expectation for growth. Companies that hit a plataeu usually get hammered in the markets.

    3. Re:Control by acroyear · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Well, Cringley always said (he repeats it with at least 3 examples throughout his book) that M$ is one of those companies that always tries to do things the way IBM does, unless it can do it better. IBM, according to him, isn't (or wasn't in 1992) in the business of making computers or software, it was mostly in the business of making managers -- personal empires meant everything, regardless of how much or who did the work. The designer of the PC was kicked out of his own division and moved to some "safe" place, because his job wasn't really to build the PC, it was to build the infrastructure (the "empire") needed to actually build a PC.

      So now, M$ is in the same position -- it happens when you have divisions compared to and fighting themselves, which always happens when you run out of serious outside competition. Office competes internally for resources with Windows, competing with XBox, competing with the languages and Visual Studio, competing with .NET (until .NET gets eaten up by libraries, which results in it being divided up between Windows, Office, and VS). You aren't really judged within M$ by how well you do against the competition (outside of XBox, there really still isn't any -- M$'s press department, marketting, and legal teams and the board take care of that issue which isn't a technical issue to them, its a PR issue, and their PR is again IBM's -- nobody got fired for buying IBM, so now nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft).

      Yes, M$ is competing within itself, because to them there's no other competition. And its been like that within the company for almost a decade now. And like IBM in the 70s and 80s, each division is in that tricky position of competing with other divisions in size, market share, and profit share, while at the same time doing nothing that potentially damages another core business (e.g., the Visual Studio team can't do anything that might break .NET or .NET integration, or come up with a better .NET than .NET does). Just like IBM crippled their PCs with no networking or terminal emulation, because doing so would have hurt their cash cow of a mainframe terminal business.

      --
      "But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
      -- Joe
  2. Reminds me of another company by TWX_the_Linux_Zealot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft's biggest threat isn't Linux, OpenOffice, or any piece of software at all--its themselves

    When a Time Warner executive stated that using PVR technology was stealing, right as AOL Time Warner dumped tons of money into Tivo, should indicate a lot about corporate culture these days.

    That Time Warner executive should have been fired. He could have even faced lawsuits by AOL Time Warner stockholders, for directly going against (and possibly reducing value) of the parent company.

    --

    IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
    And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
    1. Re:Reminds me of another company by rlowe69 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That Time Warner executive should have been fired ... for directly going against (and possibly reducing value) of the parent company.

      Let's be rhetorical for a minute:

      What's more valuable to AOL/Time Warner and its shareholders? A billion dollar entertainment industry or a million dollar PVR industry that may be dead in a few years?

      --
      ----- rL
  3. Mac vs Apple ][ by zanderredux · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Sounds like the Mac vs Apple ][ fights that took place at Apple.

    Creative destruction anyone?

  4. Excellent article by billmaly · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It puts into words my own feelings about MS that I have not been able to articulate so eloquently. I like Windows 2000, it works and works well (for me). I totally agree that the marketing dweebs will ruin MS's dominance, and drive users to Linux. Linux is still not ready for everyone's PC.....but the day is coming, maybe in Red Hat 10 or Mandrake 11....MS needs to wake up and realize that we don't like being spied on.

  5. So open source isn't good enough... by anarchima · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's basically what the author of that article is saying. As of yet, the open source community is not putting out software, or indeed an operating system, that can compete with Microsoft Windows. Until it can do this, it shouldn't expect more users to come flocking to their programs. End of discussion?

    --
    The Welkin: Online Music Reviews
    1. Re:So open source isn't good enough... by Bilbo · · Score: 5, Insightful
      > Wow, such insight. No wonder this got posted on the front page of $la$hdot.

      Ummmm.... yea. The other point of the article, interestingly enough, is that Microsoft doesn't seem to get it. In fact, it seems to be a pretty common trait among large corporations that a large fraction of their top level executives seem to get so wrapped up in themselves that they don't seem to be able to comprehend simple relationships like this. They have been so successful wringing every last cent out of their customers that they don't even notice when they start to flee in droves, and when they do notice, they respond by simply turning up the pressure, which in turn, accelerates the hemoraging

      --
      Your Servant, B. Baggins
  6. preach to the choir by kin_korn_karn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    articles about Microsoft = Bad mean nothing when they're posted on OSS/Linux advocacy sites. When the Wall Street Journal has an editorial from the editor in chief saying that Microsoft is going to destroy the world, that'll mean something

    1. Re:preach to the choir by mark_lybarger · · Score: 3, Insightful

      like this one? http://zdnet.com.com/2100-11-519911.html?legacy=zd nn

      there's been plenty of bad press about Microsoft all over all the news palces. and it keeps coming on over and over and over again. somehow their stock continues to prevail and is extremely strong even in these economicly weak times. i think it works something like this:

      1) write extremely buggy and non-origional Operating System.
      2) force all hardware manufactures into exclusive contracts. our OS or no OS!
      3) ?????
      4) Profit!!!

    2. Re:preach to the choir by kin_korn_karn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      See, that's just it. #2 makes #1 irrelevant to everyone but us.

      When will you all get it? WE (meaning the tech/IT industry and community) are the ONLY people that care about our OS being buggy. The fact that #2 has happened makes it irrelevant to complain about the lack of reliability in Windows. And we are DEFINITELY the only people that care about it not being original (don't bring up the Apple/Xerox lawsuits, those have been settled now meaning that we are the only people that ever bring it up). My mom doesn't give a shit if the concept Windows was stolen from a Xerox PARC prototype or a mac or from Bill Gates' college roommate or whoever, she cares about whether her email works or not, and guess what? it does. Not the way you'd like it to, but it's email and it works. Who gives a fuck. The world is not made up of sysadmins.

      The way you beat microsoft is to make a superior product, and market it better. The government has shown that they won't help level the playing field for any competitors to MS, so that's the world anyone taking them on has to work in.

      Linux is not superior to Windows yet. It's more reliable, on the right hardware. It's got that cool CLI geek cred going for it. So does OSX. The GUIs for Linux plainly suck.

      The legal remedy in the DOJ case should have involved abolishing all copyrights MS has to their interface so that KDE or (god forbid) the GNOME folks could clone the Chicago GUI. People would be comfortable with using Linux if it looked just like Windows.

      This is around the point in this discussion where someone whines that "we can't take on microsoft, they have [insert ridiculously huge corporate asset here]!!!" If you feel that way, then stop bitching about what you've got. The glory is in the fight, anyway.

      Which brings me to my next point. Once the fight is won, then you have to manage what you win. The OSS community couldn't handle being in control of the #1 OS in the world. It's too fragmented and too immature. To handle something with the market share and pervasiveness of Windows would take an infrastructure the size of Microsoft. So, build one. Stop whining about losing and go make yourself into a winner.

    3. Re:preach to the choir by wind · · Score: 5, Insightful

      WE (meaning the tech/IT industry and community) are the ONLY people that care about our OS being buggy.

      This is simply untrue. Anybody who has ever lost a half-hour's work on a project, has had their system hosed by a virus, or worse - had porn spam sent out to their coworkers in their name, they care, believe me. The list goes on and on.

      The problem is that the people I talk to don't understand that it can be different. They think it's the computer in some vague, "all computers need to be rebooted every few hours" sort of way. They don't seem to really believe me when I tell them to use a different operating system with different programs that aren't so buggy or virus prone.

      I think anyone who uses a computer to do something that they either care about or are paid by someone else who cares, DO care about buggy code. They just don't know it. They think computers are just like that.

    4. Re:preach to the choir by po8 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To handle something with the market share and pervasiveness of Windows would take an infrastructure the size of Microsoft.

      By many measures, the OSS infrastructure is already far larger than Microsoft. Number of developers, or developer FTEs? Not even close. Number of lines of source? Again, not close.

      The fair comparison, of course, isn't Microsoft and OSS: it's OSS and the Microsoft community. What even MS seems not to understand is that their monopoly-producing asset is the result of maybe the largest first-mover advantage in the history of the world. The biggest advantage of the first mover is that the community tends to form around them. As someone who bought one of the first IBM PCs off the line, I recall perfectly well the reasons why I bought PC-DOS for it rather than the obviously technically superior CPM/86: one of them was that it was clear that PC-DOS would win, and I wanted to be part of the PC community.

      (The other was price. folks forget that while both CPM/86 and PC-DOS were available for PCs in retail computer stores, CPM/86 was a lot more expensive. If DR hadn't priced themselves out of the market, they still might have won.)

      In short, OSS vs MS is first and foremost a contest in community building and maintenance. The MS community began with an enormous headstart, but so far seem to have done a good job of squandering it. It will be interesting to see whether this trend continues to hold.

  7. perspectives by neildogg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What I find terribly funny, as a non-American, is that similar things are taking place in American society as a whole, the Patriot Act for example, denying people civil rights in order to exercise freedom. I don't understand the complaint that a company is doing things that impose on privacy when it's a common thread in the entire society around it. Linux is counter-culture; I don't think many people would deny that. Once I see America embracing the freedom it so adamantly preaches, I'll understand complaints such as this one.

    1. Re:perspectives by jackbox · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Indeed, switch a few words around on page 2:

      Add it all up and what you have is a company (country) that, at the least, displays a profound level of arrogance coupled with the unshakable belief that they have not only the ability, but the right to dictate to the rest of the world, from charities to corporations, (to governments) how the world should look....

      Guess Microsoft is succeeding in the American Way. (sigh)

    2. Re:perspectives by canadian_right · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Lets pretend you are serious:
      1] You preach freedom, but practice intolerance of any economic system other than capitalism. You are so free, that you made it illegal to vote communist. (As a Canadian, I enjoy federal and provincial elections featuring "commies" who get just slightly fewer votes than the lunatic right wing). You are also so "free" that you think its ok to tell other countries how much they should spend on their military.
      2] You are not a democracy, you are a representative republic. There have been very few direct democracies since the times of the Ancient Athens.
      3] CNN, Time mag, etc... tell me what is going on. In fact, it takes abit of effort to get good local news as we are swamped by USA news.
      The most annoying things about the USA is its complete inability to understand why anyone would not want to instantly make their country over in the image of the USA.

      --
      Anarchists never rule
  8. Straddling the Fence by Flamesplash · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem is that MS is trying to give different customers what they want in the same package. People want security, bam there you go, oh but wait we want flexibility, bam there you go, but oh wait we had to remove some of the security so you could be flexible. vice versa and repeat

    While ppl will argue linux gives you both, if you are a computer geek, this isn't a valid solution for the average home user. While linux may be secure enough for them, if purely because linux isn't a target platform for widescale hackers and virus writters, the average person will never make use of the flexibility in linux.

    "And you can make kernel modifications as you want them"

    "What's a kernel?"

    "err well you can download other peoples kernel mods off the internet, compile them and add them to your kernel"

    "Uhh What's a compile"?

    MS is in the unfortunate position of catering to a large diverse market, and I don't really think there is a unified theory of doing so. I run w2k because it is stable. It may not be as flexible as say XP, but it suffices for me and what I want to do. And I have a win98 parition if a game won't work under 2k.

    --
    "Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
  9. This guy has no point by bmetz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This guy's arguments, listed at the bottom of the article, are asinine. To quickly address some of them:

    - Microsoft put little more than a CDDB lookup into their player. Since everyone freaked out they've made it very very obvious during the install what gets sent. Take a look at everyone else's player and you'll see they are not trying to take over the world in some sinister plot. And product activation sucks but so does having perhaps the most pirated piece of software in the world so you really can't blame them.

    - Microsoft lobbies. Welcome to the united states of america.

    - 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. Don't forget Gates does some serious giving-back. Funny how he forgets to mention this..

    I'm tired of reading this poorly thought out crap. People will find any excuse to rag on Microsoft. News flash: it's 2002, not 1992. Microsoft-bashing is getting a little old.

    --
    What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
    1. Re:This guy has no point by pod · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Look, the argument that you have nothing to hide == you have nothing to fear has long been established as bullshit. It's just like library records. Your parents or loan officer or insurance agent should not be able to find out you've been looking up books on cancer or aids or syphilis, or bomb making for that matter. What you do is by default private (unless done in public) and no amount of disclaimers and click-through licenses change this situation and expectation.

      --
      "Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
  10. Greek Saying by Shadow+Wrought · · Score: 3, Insightful
    One of my history teachers taught us that the Greeks used to have a phrase something along the lines of "Those whom the God's would destroy, they first make proud."

    My own $0.02 is that M$'s hubris will eventually provide the catalyst for their decline and eventual demise.

    --
    If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
  11. Garbage editorialism. by Konster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "What I am, however, is concerned about how Redmond intends to safeguard my privacy, my right to use an operating system as I see fit, and my rights of fair use. I am, in fact, very concerned."

    Then he goes on to say, a paragrah later, "Right now, Linux has yet to offer me any reason why I should go to the monumental hassle of switching and re-training myself to the new OS..."

    You must NOT be all that concerned about your privacy, the right to use the OS as you see fit (Click on Agree or Decline after reading the EULA? A thought), or your rights of fair use if you blindly click through the EULA and install their product.

    RTFEULA. Worried about all that and still agreeing to MS's EULA and being too lazy to learn an OS that's free from all that just befuddles me.

    And since when did learning Linux become a monumental effort? Rocketing into space is a monumental effort. Learning Linux is akin to Bellybutton Lint Removal 101.

    How does this crap make the news, anyhow?

    1. Re:Garbage editorialism. by pavera · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Unfortunately your logic fails in that Using windows for that many years does not give you purely *windows-centric* knowledge, much of that knowledge is general computer knowledge.

      I have been using Linux for only 1 year after using windows very heavily since windows 3.1, and I would say I am more proficient at linux admin than windows after just that year.

      Why? Because alot of windows admin stuff is really just knowledge about computers and how they work, applying that knowledge to linux/unix/macos/any platform is simple and trivial. Sure there are things that are different about Linux, or MacOS or whatever, and it takes a little while to learn it, but switching from Windows to Linux is not switching from being a programmer to being a nude model. In other words, you don't throw out an entire toolset and start over fresh (I would have to do alot of working out if I wanted to make that switch, not to mention some plastic surgery, and other enhancements, and all my programming languages would be useless), you can take alot of things from windows and they translate directly into linux, and the things that don't I've found generally are easier to do in linux... So, no you don't have to throw away thousands of hours to switch to linux, just the hundreds you spent saying "Why the hell did they do it like this??!!"

  12. Parallels by Tall+Rob+Mc · · Score: 4, Insightful
    It is most likely that I'm not the first person to draw this parallel, but I've noticed it more and more recently...

    Microsoft and the US government are in very similar situations.

    Here, we have two extremely powerful entities that are very prone to extend beyond their reasonable range of influence to make everything go exactly the way they want it to.

    Both are facing enemies (the US against terrorists, and Microsoft against Linux) that have emerged as a decentralized and nearly attack-proof.

    Both have earned a good deal of resentment from the communities which they supposedly serve (MS has people like us constantly bitching while President Bush's approval rating has dropped below 50% this December: and both rightfully so).

    Both, despite the great amount of disapproval, appear to be doing nothing to change their situation (except for Bush's recent decision to back down on threats of attacking North Korea, though he intends to push for isolating them economically).

    Could a few good leaders in Washington clear this whole mess up? I think so. Now if only such people existed... -sigh-

  13. Re:Court order not needed by Soko · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As funny as that statement is, I'd rather it be modded as insightful, rather than funny.

    Imagine, if you will, that CmdrTaco's little icon joke about the Borg is indeed correct. OK, now, imagine that we manage to insert a little bit of autonomy (by college education, for example) into one of the drones. Remember Hugh? Seems OSS has hurt Microsoft in ways that can't be measured quite yet on the balance sheet.

    I've always thought that the best way to dismantle a machine is from the inside. Here's more credence to that thought, IMHO. Actually, my first thought when I read the article was "Merry Christmas, Soko - there really is a Windows user with a clue."

    Soko

    --
    "Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
  14. Um. by runderwo · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From the article:
    I'm no Linux user. I've never booted a distro of the OS in any of its flavors, and save for playing with it on a friend's machine, I've never spent much time in it. I am not an open source maverick, nor am I anti-business or anti-profit.
    You know, if someone has to qualify their editorial claims by saying that they aren't part of those "open source mavericks" over there, or that they are not "anti-business or anti-profit", what does that say about us open-source mavericks as a desirable group of people to identify with?

    I think the very idea that someone in the mainstream has gotten the idea that we are anti-business/anti-profit is very BAD, as it constitutes a fundamental misunderstanding of the movement behind free software and the open source development model.

    Who in the mainstream is going to align themselves with us, if we give them the impression that we're anarchists and commies?

    --
    LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
  15. Re:Perhaps you should too. by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    they make their cash off of services and support for overpriced hardware.

    Overpriced? With respect to what measure? Most of the people who use IBM hardware do so because they can't find alternatives that provide the stability and service provided with an IBM solution. When you get me a PC platform where I can hot swap memory modules and CPUs we can talk. Plus make sure that the OS that it's running supports such usage. Self monitoring so that I don't have 75% of my scheduled jobs crashing before I found out CPU 3 has crashed would be nice, too. People who use these machines might find them overpriced if you want to talk MIPS, but most have other, very rational reasons to use these machines.

    --
    That is all.
  16. Know your history by mabu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    First off, all this talk about "Microsoft Technology" is a farce. From the very beginning when Bill Gates weaseled his earliest software licenses from real coders, Microsoft was more a marketing machine than a development company. It amuses me that anyone ever thought of them differently. The company's modus operandi hasn't changed one bit since day one: take other peoples' technology and leverage it for your own gain and garner as much control over the environment as possible.

    The saddest part of all this is the new generation of "programmers" who don't really seem to understand that stability and performance have NEVER been platform or hardware dependent. The new breed of developers as well as users has been conditioned to accept failure and mediocre performance as the status quo. Microsoft, Oracle, and other companies have shifted their business model to exploit the instability of their own products to create entirely new (support) industries from which to profit. It's like they're selling you tainted food and offering health insurance at the same time.

    With few exceptions, Microsoft puts out crap. They don't even spray it with perfume any more.. The computing public has learned to enjoy the taste of crap, and they'll serve you a bigger pile of crap each season and you'll love it. What else are you going to do?

    I would really like to see OSS take over, and I do my part, but I see an increasingly lazy, uneducated and unmotivated public that is becoming more and more difficult to reason with. I am at a loss how to knock some sense into the public without an ad budget of less than many millions of dollars. Welcome to the new millennium. It looks like it will have to get much worse before it gets better.

  17. The Greatest Gamble by m1a1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is a little offtopic, but it is at the bottom, so nobody will read it anyways.

    I look at the tech industry, that I am preparing to enter, and I see my life ahead of me as a great gamble. I have to pick what platform to develop for, who to develop for, and where to develop at. All of these choices will seriously affect my life, my earning value, and the future of my family. This is scary! Five years ago, I was still in high school. If someone asked me then what platform I would develop on I would say, "The newest Win32 of course!" In a perfect world I would have wanted to work for my MS. Now though, there is no guarantee. I honestly believe linux is the future of computing, but I have no idea what business model is best to use with it! OSS is new territory in the business world. The GPL is a big question mark! I am pretty damn good at poker, but I don't enjoy the prospect of gambling with my life. Oh well, here it comes.