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Microsoft: The Faint Smell of Rot
happycorp writes "A business reporter for ABC/Fortune
is asking whether Microsoft is poised to collapse, based on years of industry observation
(with successful calls in the past, he notes) rather than
purely technical considerations.
A short read, with this favorite quote:
"if you sniff the air, you can just make out the first hints of rot.""
This kind of "insight" can be applied to almost every company, and it's about as good as Colin Fry's cold reading ("wait, I think I smell something back there...").
It will however be interesting to see if Microsoft may one day break up voluntarily into different operating units, and thrive in different areas independantly.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
... and he might have a good sense of smell, but he certainly has problems with English -- [...]and all I managed to do was make myself persona non-gratis at HP -- even though he wrote for WSJ/Forbes/whatever.
Doomie
Yeah, and in late 2004 the Register posted that Microsoft was about to file for bankruptcy.
(FYI, no B.S.: That article is printed, laminated, and behind a case in one of Microsoft's lobbies.)
The coolest voice ever.
Wang will be around forever. Enron does so much enery business, they will never fall. Worldcom has the numbers to survive. Compaq will never collapse under its own weight. Sega makes great games and a great 32 bit console, they will be around forever....
Need more examples? Point is: ANYTHING can die.
Five years ago it was a source of pride to go to work for the Evil Empire -- now, who cares? It's just Motorola with wetter winters.
Umm... no. Definitely not.
As I went from the latter to the former, I can tell you there's a lot of difference. Motorola is bogged down, lacking excitement in teams that should be excited. The place was being "SEI/CMM Level 5"'ed and "Six Sigma"'ed to death. The personality of the employees and teams was as interesting as the endless rows of slate gray cubicles. And it was horrid to take an internal class on Perl, and see experienced software developers that couldn't finish a simple basic program in 20 minutes that I had finished before the instructor was done explaining.
At Microsoft, I'm excited about my job and the product I'm working on in ways I never was before. I'm more impressed by both the knowledge and passion of the people here than I ever was at Motorola. It's nothing like anything I saw in my 6 1/2 years at Motorola.
I don't mean to sound like a MS cheerleader here, I just want to make it clear that this is definitely not a valid comparison to anyone who has spent any significant time inside the two companies.
Oh, and the winter here is a hell of a lot better, even if it wetter. And the summers... wow.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
in those days, how long did it take news to travel from one side of the empire to the other? how about today?
in those days, how many people's loyalty was just a matter of thinking they were a good empire to invest in and could always pull out their entire investment within seconds? how many believed in the empire's principles, not just its bottom line? how about today?
in those days, how much of life was based on the empire? how many deaths would be caused by the empire's collapse? how about today?
Certainly this was written to get a bit of attention, but in a way he's just foreshadowing what happens to most businesses, especially those that grow as large as Microsoft has. A brief look through history will confirm this.
AT&T is a good example. Although they were "broken" by an anti-trust suit, they actually volunteered to spin off the Baby Bells as a concession. In their minds, networking and computers were the future. In a way, AT&T had it all going for them. They ditched the tedious Baby Bell system to jump headfirst into a sector that absolutely exploded. Tons of people thought AT&T was the unstoppable 800 lb. gorilla that once it entered the computing/networking segment, it would just dominate it. History, however, has proved us wrong and now AT&T is about to be consumed by one of its children in an odd sort of Darwinist/Oedipal freak of the market economy.
Now, I'm not saying MS will tank tomorrow or even five years from now. What I am saying is that there's always something that destabilizes the status quo. It could be something that they don't see coming; it could even be something they see coming but can't properly react to. In any case, the inevitable will happen and MS will fall. Some day.
Per Square Mile, a blog about density
As far as I can tell, "Gloom and Doom" seems to be his usual mode of operation.
... here..
... He explained that Microsoft carried on its books no value at all for its software. Assets like Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office, which might be given some book value and depreciated over time were carried on the books as valueless. This contrasted at the time with IBM, which valued its software assets at billions of dollars.
Basically discussing accounting shenanigans before the bubble burst, and I remember reading it at the time (though this comes from this weeks' article links)..
"The late Frank Gaudette was Microsoft's first-ever Chief Financial Officer. He was also Microsoft's first head of Human Resources, first head of Facilities, first at running just about every department that had to do with operations but not product development, sales, or marketing....
My question was based on the idea that nothing goes up forever and there must come a time when even Microsoft is no longer a good buy. How can we tell when that time has come?
"Watch for any changes in our accounting," said Gaudette. "If I need to I can start, depreciating the software and maintain earnings growth for years on flat revenue. Watch for the accounting changes, wait for the next uptick in the stock price, and then sell.""
Read the whole thing, very interesting stuff...
You've forgotten the reason why Microsoft existed in the first place: To *make* a lot of people a heckuva lot of money.
If Microsoft sees no future in its business, it will liquidate its assets and pay off its investors. Sure, it has billions, but if it can't find a way to turn those billions into trillions, then it will be sold and the capital invested somewhere else. This is the core of capitalism.
Companies are the sum of its investors, and nothing more. They can come and go pretty much as they wish. What do you think "corporation" means? It means something made out of many parts, those parts being actual people and their fortunes.
Companies don't collapse. They are abandoned. That is what is happening to Microsoft *right now*, and he sees it.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
As much as I, personally, do not like them or their products, I doubt that Microsoft is going away anytime soon or anytime at all. Too many people have invested too much money and time in the MSFT platform. Moreover, MSFT's biggest weakness (security) is not unique to them.
Regardless of the bad architecture decisions unique to Window's, all platforms are vulnerable. This existence of any security weakness in other platforms (even if quantitatively smaller) is used as rationale for staying with "the devil you know."
But the real core of the problem is deeper than any one exploit or architecture mistake. The core problem with security is that the "bad" guys are, in many ways, more motivated than the "good" guys. On the one hand you have the black-hat hacker/spammer/spyware creator/ crime syndicate that is sure that they can make a potload of money off any little crack in a computer's security. Thus, they are highly motivated to search for any flaw and exploit that flaw in however many millions of machines they can reach. On the other hand you have millions of users that don't think that they will have a security problem and thousands of programmers who think their code (or at least their job) is secure. Thus neither the programmers nor the users are as motivated to create security and the bad guys are motivated to defeat security. Thus, the global resources devoted to cracking computers exceeds the local resources to securing computers. Thus all computers have holes and MSFT is unlikely to die because Windows is somehow uniquely insecure.
At worst/best I see Windows slipping to 50%? marketshare before MSFT throws more programmer-hours at security than the entire OSS community could ever hope to muster. With enough of the proverbial monkeys at keyboards, MSFT will regain the security crown or at least through enough marketing dollars to claim it. Morevoer, as Windows loses marketshare, the black hats will attack other platforms. People will soon realize that the new non-Microsoft software is really not that much better than the old stuff and go back to MSFT. At best (for Microsoft's foes), the world will reach some equilibrium point of Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and other platforms.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Ronald Reagan was right, and elite wisdom was wrong. The Soviet Union was already decaying from within, and all it took was a few firm pushes (IRNMs in Europe, aid to the Mujahadeen, SDI) to help push it over the edge.
So it is with Microsoft. Besides Windows and Office, what products do they have that are profitable? Story after story comes out about how Microsoft is going to take over this or that sector of the industry (MSN, WinCE, WMP), but they never seem to turn a profit. Like the Soviet Union, they've overexpanded, they have a restive population tired of chaffing under their iron bootheel, and a few pushes (Linux, iTunes, etc.) may be enough to push them over the edge.
To put it another way: It's no accident that both the Soviet Union and Microsoft are called "the Evil Empire."p.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I think that this guy is right, up to a point.
We see lots of things that tend to loosen up MS's chokehold on the industry.
Large government clients are pushing for open office document formats. People are using more and more software that runs on multpiple platforms (ie., Firefox). New platforms, like phones, set top boxes, media centers, PDAs, and the like aren't panning out.
And many customers really want out. People complain about MS a lot now.
To me, the most significant thing is that they don't seem to be making the right moves. They're not doing anything interesting, and they're not responding to their technical challenges in a vigorous and competent way.
Gates is clearly a genius with business, but I don't think he's up to running the tech side of the company. Since he became the "chief software architect" they've been floundering.
But on the other hand, think about how much money they have. That means that there's no chance of them collapsing or going away. The cash gives them enormous staying power.
I don't think that collapse is a likely scenario. It's more likely that they'll be more like an IT industry Sears.
Sears was mismanaged for decades. Long after the retail industry had passed them by, they were still doing things in the same old dumb ways they had always done it. But they were still there, because they had gotten to be so big and strong in the days when they were on top. They owned a ton of land underneath their stores, and it was worth a lot of money. They had staying power.
I feel really good about the future. I don't think anyone's going to have their boot on our necks the way MS has in the past. Apple is making some beautiful machines, and Linux is a couple of years away, at tops, from being really competitive on the desktop. Windows will probably get cleaned up, and it will probably end up being cheaper.
Or maybe not even that something is wrong- just that something that used to be right isn't there anymore. I think I see what he means. The image used alongside the article is the Microsoft that dominated, that we feared and loathed: the Borg. I can't exactly put my finger on it now, but that's not how I see Microsoft right now. Sure, they're still enormously big, powerful, and evil, but somehow don't seem terrifyingly unstoppable, destined to destroy or eat up everything in their path. There was a time that the mere mention of Microsoft getting into a market was enough to send people scattering. Do they still have that effect? I think the guy is onto something.
After all, he's essentially correct in that the world's imagination is on Linux and Firefox rather than Windows and Explorer... at least in what I've seen in my limited scope.
But if I were to interpret what I smell, I'd say it was something along the lines of huge change rather than oncoming death. Microsoft [should] know they aren't moving the way they once did. Their code is too big to maintain backward and forward compatibility and things are breaking around the edges. I can't tell you how many places I've read that Microsoft needs to make a new product from scratch and throw out compatibility if it wants to recapture the hearts and minds of users and administrators. I think we're all very ready for something new which is why we're looking to Linux... well some of us are looking to Apple as well as the author points out.
Microsoft is a lot of things in my book but stupid isn't one of them. Their hearts are in the wrong place though. They need to shift focus away from themselves and back onto the consumer.
I come from a age where you had a choice of MS-DOS or ... Unix. AT&T SysV is where I learned myself -- the goal, of course, was always to get root. I got root.
:). There's a LOT of logic behind how Unix systems work -- and considering the concept/usage is much older than Microsoft I see it as being rather well thought out and mature. It becomes so obvious when dealing with trying to fix something on XP.
:)
If you look at all the major players in the market place today you'll note that they're _all_ getting behind one of the Un*x's or the other (I consider Linux, BSD, and OS X all to be "Unix" regardless of what SCO [or you] may think
Microsoft may be a 800 pound gorilla, but IBM is still a 8,000 pound monster that is going Linux [and still pissed off]. After recently comparing OS/2 to XP side by side I understand.
Of course there's a reason (in our organizations) that as of 2000 it was decided to REMOVE Windows from the mix and migrate all users to either Linux or OS X. I myself [IT admin] use OS X at home for a reason. Others will follow.
It's simple really -- in personal consulting I charge $35/hr for IT work if it's Linux/BSD/OS.X/QNX/Netware based. The rate changes to $70/hr for de-virus'ing your system [again]. Clients quickly learn what the Mac-mini is all about...
Yeah, Microsoft is dying -- and unfortunately (for the US) it'll be a slow death. IMHO the US had better wake up or we'll technologically have out shorts eaten by the rest of the world as they continue their migration away from Windows.
Things move much more quickly these days, it seems to me. With technology changing so rapidly, unless you're actively growing and adapting, you're dying. It took a month for Firefox to hit 10 million downloads. Or look how fast products like the iPod or Google took off. Microsoft may not be fighting for its life right now, but a bit player can become a serious challenge very, very quickly. Likewise a new technology can completely change the game. Microsoft has done very well in adapting to new technologies in the past- they successfully met the internet head on after getting hit upside the head by not anticipating that one- the question is whether Bill Gates is still sharp enough and hungry enough to adapt that way again when a new challenge emerges.
Kind of a grandiose assessment of SGI's demise.
The were doomed about the time Jim Clark realized the PC's and Windows had come far enough along that they were going to rule the world, and thanks to their economy of scale, low margins and fast product cycles proprietary workstations were doomed.
Clark then preceded to start telling everyone at SGI the bad news, it hacked off Ed McCracken among others, they forced him out and they lost their visionary. He went on to make a fortune on Netscape on the PC, SGI meanwhile had no vision and started spiraling in.
A major disruptive shift was occuring in the market, the visionary saw it, everyone else at SGI refused to see it. At the nexus was the first Windows NT release, the Pentium Pro, single chip graphics engines like Glint and Voodoo(today Nvidia and ATI), oh and Microsoft bought Softimage and made them port to the PC at which point everyone realized expensive 3D workstations were dead, everyone except the people at SGI.
If I recall correctly Pentium Pro was the first chip with some of the fruits of Intel's outright theft of Digital's Alpha architecture at which point IA32 started to not suck for the first time. If you recall Intel partnered with DEC with the idea of adopting at least part of Alpha. After they looked at all of the Alpha's inner secrets, they backed out, used all of DEC's IP anyway and it caught Intel up with RISC. DEC won a court case over it a long time later but by then the damage was done and Intel was rewarded handsomely for thievery.
At the same time SGI was rushing in to the supercomputing market which isn't a market that has ever or will ever sustain a fast growing company. Its a quirky market, where you survive on good will, whims and largesse of the U.S. government, which is pretty much the only thing keeping SGI alive today. 9/11 probably saved SGI from bankruptcy because they can live on the big surge in Defense and Intelligence spending, building high end systems that almost no one but the government will buy.
@de_machina
Actually, I've been smelling the stench of MicroSoft since 1997, but when GNU/linux didn't take over the world by 2001 I had to conclude that I had only been smelling the crap MicroSoft calls software. The borg was alive and well.
That said, the stench has definitely been turning toward rancid over the years. A data point I've noticed is that it is no longer "cool" to be a MicroSoft employee. We interviewed a potential new employee about six months ago and the general opinion was that he was a possible hire, but the fact that he was a MicroSoft employee definitely counted against him. He suffered half-serious ridicule behind his back.
We didn't hold it against him too much -- he would have been taking a pay cut and would have had to leave his newly purchased and remodeled mansion to come to work for us. In the end he stayed with MicroSoft rather than jump onboard a fun startup! 8-0 Nevertheless, I caught the faint hit of rot from his reception here.
It may be dying, but it will be a nice long death. There's plenty of time for it to thrash out its death throws.
Meanwhile... I distribute Knoppix CD's as a hobby.
Religion is poison to rationality, and we lose sight of that at our own peril. -- Lurker2288
Microsoft's total cash on hand is 34.5 billion. Their operating costs average around 6-8 billion a quarter. By my math, that means they could operate for anywhere to 1-1.5 years without taking in any revenue, unless they *seriously* scaled back their business ventures.
That is quite far from "decades"
To me the real question is why, even after so many years of being in a wide variety of markets, Microsoft's only reliably profitable divisions are still Office and Windows. The Mac division is really an extension of the Office division.
Your comments about the XBox, directory services, games, PDA, and so on are valid, but from a business point of view that really only matters if they are profitable. The Home & Entertainment division is now profitable but is expected to go red next quarter, and the Tools division is profitable. The real money earners for MS are still Office and Windows.
Add to this the fact that Microsoft maintained profitability by cutting their R&D *in half* and I can't help but wonder if Microsoft is mortaging its future in order to please the stock market today.
They do have a boatload of cash in reserve, and they won't be going away any time soon, but the famously long Microsoft quality cycle (v1 sucks, v2 sucks less, v3 is ok, v4 is good) just isn't going to cut it any more. Smaller, more nimble competitors abound, and they're getting smarter. They're attacking Microsoft at the edges and playing against Microsoft's weaknesses (user experience, security, price, reliability).
Microsoft may be going after the long-term bucks with the XBox, but they can't leverage their OS dominance in that battle, and Sony definitely isn't going to take it lying down. What happens when MS can no longer rob from the Windows and Office divisions in order to keep the Home division going?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
for all the hot air about Linux in the last 5 years, it hasn't cost MS a cent in their monopoly desktop space
Yet.
But there has certainly been some missed opportunity.
And, they are taking their eye off the ball.
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
Why don't you go straight to H&R Block? Unless your taxes are very, very, simple, even Block -- to say nothing of an independent tax perparer -- will probably do a much better job, and for less than the cost of TaxCut Pro and Windows. You did *buy* Windows, didn't you?
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
But it's not Microsoft. It smells more like the rotting of a tired journalist raising controversy to drive readership. How pathetic. *LOOK AT ME!*
As soon as someone builds a Firefox equivalent of Outlook and comes up with decent mail storage system for Linux, Exchange will have a fight on its hands.
Actually, I've been wondering for a couple years why Apple hasn't come up with groupware to take on Exchange. For one thing, they need it. Quite a few of my company's clients were interested in OS X Server in the last two or three years, but they wanted Outlook/Exchange so they went with MS Small Business Server instead.
Apple has all the pieces on the client side (iCal, Mail, Address Book), they just need to weld them all together into a single, integrated application, add a few more features, spruce up OS X Server's mailserver a bit, and add a group calendaring service (sharing iCal calendars via WebDAV doesn't cut it). If they add the ability to use Outlook on Windows as a client, they'll kick ass.
The author of the ABC article basically says that he can just "feel" that Microsoft is in bad shape- Having just finished the new book Blink, I notice there are close similarities between the book and the kind of subconscious feeling the author is describing about Microsoft (I must admit, I feel them, too...)
Microsoft is a public company. What you say is (generally) true for a private company. (Their exception is when someone gives them an offer to good to refuse, often about the time the owners want to retire)
For a public company things are different. Remember the corporate raiders of the 1980s? They basically examined companies looking for those who could be bought for less than their assets were worth. Then they bought the company (general only enough to gain control) placed their own people in as the board of directors, and sold everything the company had, distributing the cash to shareholders.
Seeing this opportunity if often hard. Many things are hidden. The $100,000 worth of property might be the price paid in 1935, and today worth millions!
You can bet that people who do this are looking closely at Microsoft. They have a lot of cash in the bank, too much to ignore. Windows and Office are worth a lot to someone (company), when you find the buyer. Not to mention the Microsoft campus buildings. (Unless they are renting) and various other things. Nintendo or Sony are likely to buy the xBox just to make sure there is no xBox2. All it takes is for the stock to slip below whatever that magical price is. It doesn't matter if Microsoft is profitable, just what their assets are worth when sold.
Note for those considering this: You borrow the money to buy the company. Part of your calculation includes interest on the money used to buy the company. You need to factor in that once you start buying stock the price will go up - it will go up more once people learn of your plans, and the SEC requires you to announce your plans before you gain control. You need to have potential buyers for things like Office in place already. (This could be a private company that you start for that purpose with more funds that you borrow) You need to have bankers and other investors behind you. (Nobody does this with their own money)
Obviously they could have weathered the storm but they would have had to jump on single chip GPU's and push them in to PC's at a critical juncture, when the Pentium Pro and NT came out. They had the engineering talent to do it, especially considering many of their engineers DID do it at Nvidia in particular.
The problem is they had a management that resisted change and failed to grasp that a major shift was coming do to both hardware and software advances. As I said originally I think Jim Clark did see the shift but rather than coping with it and forcing SGI to make a hard right turn, the stories indicated he mostly went around SGI telling everyone SGI was doomed because of the change. The CEO walking around saying SGI was doomed was a bad thing so you can see McCracken and the board pushing him out over it.
Unfortunately you had a visionary exec who did see the problem but wasn't able to fix it, and the other execs at SGI were either so technologicly ignorant they didn't see it coming or were in denial. I think McCracken was in the technologicly ignorant camp. He was a respectable suit brought in to lend SGI credibility with Wall Street, a lot like Carly. He had no clue how to run a tech company. Most of the other senior execs, outside of Clark, were apparently in denial that the shift was coming.
Another key factor in the mix was that SGI did attempt a PC graphics card at one point but it was to early and flopped. The OS, CPU and graphics technology wasn't ready to make it work. They kind of got burned on it and it made them reluctant to try it when the time was right. Again they didn't have the management with the vision to see when the right time came.
They'd also got burned on the ill fated ACE initiative. If you don't remember what that was, it was when Window NT was just about to come out. It was actually MIPS centric initially. Compaq, Microsoft and SGI came within a whisker of forming a partnership that might have turned PC's to MIPS to run NT. Don't remember who got cold feet, I think it was Compaq probably because they decided dropping IA-32, and all the legacy Windows apps, was to big a change to risk. I imagine that further put SGI off attempting another foray in to the PC space.
@de_machina
the real test is if they are going to be forced to fight the browser wars again.
if firefox forces microsoft to move the IE team out of the dungeon, and into the spotlight again, its over.
in a war, if you fight multiple battles over the same territory, you will lose.
... hi bingo
Microsoft didn't learn the lesson of the late 80's/90's when IBM tried to push us to more proprietary/expensive systems. IBM stock tanked from a high of $84 to $48. My Boss at the time said 'screw em', so did many others, we shifted to Microsoft.
Fifteen years later, Microsoft makes the same mistake. More expensive, not compatible etc.
I've already done twelve new Linux installs this year, happy people too.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
Ah but their burn rate is over 6 billion a year. And the actual amount is 35 billion this means less than 5 years to be reduced to ashes. You have to remember their stock value will crash way before that, employees start leaving for high ground. Then marketing hurts from cut backs, development hurts they go into bug fix mode only and then the inevitable death occurs.
Got Code?
Dont forget, windows and dos succeeded because it was free for home users. Not legally, of course, but windows and dos were pirated like crazy. Guess what it got them? Marketshare. They sold it in the workplace, but won it in the homes of the hobbiests.
They killed/buyed off the competition. Guess what, along comes a competitor that can't be bought or killed off. And it's take the effective part of MS's early strategy one step further. MS doesn't know how to fight it.
The market created a competitor, or put another way, a competitor evolved much like a bacteria in the presence of antibiotics. MS's traditional pills dont work anymore, they've killed off what they could, allowing what remains to have room to thrive. In a way, MS created modern OSS.
Linux began as an opensource movement to replace everything closed source, and for free. But, the number of linux distros that are actually free has shrunk lately. RedHat, they charge for everything. Yeah, it may be a fraction of what you would pay for Microsoft, or another company's product. But, at this pace, you will pay out the ass for an enterprise capable linux distrobution.
:)
Geeks beware, your wishes may come true. Your beloved Linux may become the leader in everything, replace Microsoft, and in doing so become Microsoft.
I just think that is quite amusing
As Dell continues to take over the entire market it will become the key to Microsoft's life or death.
:)
Picture this if you will. Dell ends up with 60-70% market share and it starts to stagnate. As a company it wants profits so it pesters Microsoft to lower prices so that it will get more profit. Microsoft of course says no so Dell brings out the trump, Linux. If Microsoft doesn't lower prices then Dell gains a free OS and Dell wins. If Microsoft says yes, Dell gains more money and Microsoft starts to decline but Windows moves ever closer to extinction.
You never know though, Microsoft may give away copies of Windows and start providing tech support if Dell wants them to, simply to maintain their monopoly. All the while Windows turns even more commodity as Linux gets better and the same with the Mac OS.
Michael Dell is a smart man and he will be conniving when the time comes.
My 2c if anyone wants it.
This article mentions the fact that Longhorn is slipping on its shipping schedule.
There are a number of reasons for this, perhaps most importantly is that Microsoft is trying to do a true X.0 full-rewrite release of the core operating system, with a bunch of "new" features. It is dubious that their "customers" (aka independent software developers and small businesses).
I will also say that for any major software project, when you do a genuine X.0 full code-base rewrite (cleaning out the cruft hopefully and redesigning the base archetechture) it is a major gamble. It is also a situation that tests the mettle of the management to see if the resources are properly applied and available, and if you got a small group of excellent developers or a large group of ordinary developers. This is often what makes or breaks any software company.
From my own perspective, even though I've been using Microsoft operating systems now for close to 20 years (gee.... has it been that long?) I will never personally own a copy of Longhorn willingly. I may even quit a job that forces me into using it, I feel so strongly about avoiding it. I was pushed into using XP, and I've since reverted back to Windows 2000 because I can't stand the direction XP has gone. Transitioning from Windows to Linux (or other Unix-based operating systems) is a huge jump, especially since skill sets are so much different, but it appears as though Longhorn is going to be just as big of a jump so I might as well simply ignore what Microsoft is going to do. My preference would be to go back to VMS, but that isn't an option as a major OS platform for new development.
The only projects I hear that might move onto Longhorn are from die-hard Microsoft computer development groups, and that is more because of "*Rah* *Rah* Microsoft can't do wrong" fans who have an MSDN Universal subscription and have been doing this for some time. Genuine new software development is not being planned in that direction. This situation is far worse than the relutance of moving on to Windows 95 or Windows NT (which had real slow acceptance when it first came out). Or even the fiasco that Microsoft had with Windows 3.0 that somehow they pulled out of when Windows 3.1 came out and fixed many of the 3.0 bugs.
My kids are still abuzz over the X-Box, and if Microsoft is going to have any legs, it probably will be in the electronic gaming industry... where it is largely a hegonomy anyway and difficult for small independent developers to get involved. Propritary operating systems are not a problem in that industry either, and even largely expected.
Microsoft makes money on Windows, Office, and Exchange. Most of the other stuff they do is a money loser: MSN, X-Box, Hot Mail, Windows CE, hardware. The other stuff may be strategic and it may help to prop up Windows, but still its mostly a money sink.
If Microsoft were to lose Windows and Office monopoly because of competition, Microsoft would not be a profitable company - not by any stretch. What could cause them to lose Windows and Office. Open source.
All that really has to happen is for Linux to get more usable. And a lot of that has to do with drivers. Once that happens, the big PC vendors will migrate the Linux faster than you can say "Linux Torvalds". The layoffs from Microsoft will be similar in relative magnitude to the layoffs at IBM in the late 80s. I say relative because MS has far fewer employees than IBM did.
Let me say that I would not want to own a house in or around Redmond when this happens. I also would not want to have a lot of MS stock when it happens either.
Within 5 years Linux will become the dominant desktop OS. MacOS X will have a marketshare perhaps double what it is today. Windows will have a smaller marketshare, but will still be around as Microsoft focuses on it as a "core business" for those who can't or won't migrate to Linux.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Sure they've grown rapidly, but is that sustainable? Microsoft, it seems to me, has defined itself in terms of rapid growth and leveraging their monopoly power in the marketplace. But what happens when there's nowhere left to grow to? Pretty much everybody in the US who wants and can afford a computer already has one. And as for monopolies, here's a thought that must keep Gates up at night: what happens if they no longer rule the market with an iron fist and Microsoft must make people actually want to use their products?
A final point: often, the simple fact that you have to ask answers the question. I can't imagine anyone taking this article seriously half a dozen years ago. The fact that we're discussing it now really says something about a shift in computing.
But none of this happened. Netscape was wiped out, IE dominance is settled even despite IE again looking pathetic in comparison to Mozilla's newest breed. Office still rules and there is nothing to beat it. Open Office? Well, for simple documents and spreadsheets maybe yes. And yes, it has improved a lot over last few years. But still for serious word processing, I'm sorry, but no.
Also Linux is still a great server OS but still can't be considered seriously for the desktop for non-geeks. I've installed Ubuntu three days ago. I was really amazed how little has changed since three years ago when I, sadly, abandoned Linux as my desktop. Again, a few things that can't be done in any other way but by editing config files with, say, vi. I enjoy vi and I still remember what to edit, but does a simple user? And no access to most of applications without reading manuals and adding additional repositories of .deb packages (mostly for ideological reasons). It is not "install and work", it's still "install and then tweak the things around to get anywhere". This is the part of the mix that makes OS X a success - some OS X users I know were not even aware there was a command line on their system until I showed them. Now, that's how a modern GUI OS should be designed. If there is a Linux distro to match this please let me know, but I think I'll end up buying a PB when I'll save enough money to do it.
And in the meantime Microsoft has improved a lot. XP is stable, easy to use and I'm yet to have a virus infection or anything after three years of having it on my PC (which is connected to the net 24/7 on a public address, BTW). Also Office has improved a lot in terms of stability and reliability. I remember using Office 97 which without SR-1 crashed a lot and we had lots of problems with it. Office 2003 I use now is rock stable. This is not exciting, this is nothing new but maybe in these days of computing becoming commonplace (and programming & sysadmining becoming a blue-collar commodity job) what is needed is not excitement but solid, predictable functioning? Can you think of a killer feature now missing from, say, Word that would excite the masses?
So, maybe Microsoft is just maturing with the market. They were a geeky sweatshop when computing was the new, exciting field. They are a solid, respectable, middle-aged corporation now. So, I don't think we will see them sinking anytime soon.
There are def some valid points in what is being said there. I see the biggest issue going against microsoft is interoperability. Exchange is a great product but to really use any of its features you have to use outlook. The License fees for any business are often referred to as extorsion by many small business owners. Open Source Alternatives are few and far between and there are good efforts in that direction BUT its difficult. I am about 95% confident that microsofts "rot" will not be really show its head in any big form for at least another 5-10 years maybe less if there are any bad business choices. However Microsoft is diversifying more and more so that software is not theier only business.
Got a question about UNIX ask it here : Unix/xBSD Forum
Today I was looking through the Platform SDK documentation (for Visual Studio .NET 2003) at an example purporting to show how to enumerate the files in a directory. The example's help URL is:
f il eio/base/listing_the_files_in_a_directory.htm
// directory specification
ms-help://MS.VSCC.2003/MS.MSDNQTR.2003FEB.1033/
found in the hierarchy at: MSDN Library/Windows Development/Windows Base Services/Files and I/O/SDK Documentation/Storage/Storage Overview/Directory Management/Obtaining Directory Information/Listing the Files in a Directory.
The code sample is:
#define _WIN32_WINNT 0x0501
#include "windows.h"
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
WIN32_FIND_DATA FindFileData;
HANDLE hFind = NULL;
LPCTSTR lpDirSpec[MAXPATH];
wsprintf ("Target directory is %s.\n", argv[1]);
strncpy (lpDirSpec, argv[1], sizeof(argv[1]));
strncpy (lpDirSpec, "\*", 3);
hFind = FindFirstFile(lpDirSpec, &FindFileData);
if (hFind == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) {
wsprintf ("Invalid file handle. Error is %u\n", GetLastError());
return (-1);
} else {
wsprintf ("First file name is %s\n", FindFileData.cFileName);
while (FindNextFile(hFind, &FindFileData) != 0) {
wsprintf ("Next file name is %s\n", FindFileData.cFileName);
}
DWORD dwError = GetLastError();
if (dwError == ERROR_NO_MORE_FILES) {
FindClose(hFind);
} else {
wsprintf ("FindNextFile error. Error is %u\n", dwError);
return (-1);
}
}
return (0);
}
The sample is *utterly wrong* from top to bottom. It will not remotely compile. Almost literally everything about it is screwed up, from the incorrect MAXPATH define (it should be MAX_PATH) to the 'wsprintf' function lacking a string target, to the 'LPCTSTR lpDirSpec[MAXPATH];' which is obviously meant to define a string buffer but which actually defines an array of LPCTSTRs (LPCTSTR is a pointer to a string).
In short, whoever wrote this sample was *completely* ignorant of C and could not possibly have compiled it - nor did anyone else at Microsoft catch this before it made it into the MSDN documentation.
Microsoft's core competency ought to be programming - but if the above is a sample, then I have to agree with the overall thesis of its decline.
Microsoft has enough cash to pay 50,000 employees $100,000/year for the next 10 years even if they don't bring in another dime in revenue.
Do the math...
Do you have ESP?
Sure, MS is still making a profit but they are slipping on the slope they had no problem climbing before. Microsoft has its grubby little hands in a lot of ventures. Many of those are wildly unsuccessful. MSN and Xbox have been great ways for Microsoft to lose money. Neither of those divisions has shown a profit. The deep pockets of the other divisions can fund them for some time but for how long?
Microsofts search engine in years past would have had the tech journalists creaming in their jeans but most see it for what it actually is, a rip off of Google with more ads. What has really changed over these last few years is that journalists are not giving Microsoft a "pass" on any product they release just because it comes from redmond. They are treating MS as just another software company and this is long overdue.
I do see harder days ahead for MS. They company will never disappear but they do major problems that are not being addressed.
I think this pretty much sums up Microsofts problems. A friend of mine was a die hard PC user. He was always giving me a bad time for using Macs. I use both platforms but because I had a Mac he was always harping on that. He would bring up the tired old facts, no software.....expensive...etc. I always told him that if he ever tried one for more than a week he would never touch a PC again. He would laugh and say "Yeah right". He surprised me two years ago by getting a Mac, for his kids. Problem was his kids never got it. After about a week he stopped using his PC.
He had all the software he used on the PC...better versions in fact and he did not spend time keeping Window running and healthy. Even he started laughing when he heard another Windows virus was tramping around causing damage. He just ordered his second Mac. A brand new 15 inch powerbook and he is a very happy camper. He will never go back.
Purchases 636,000 15
Sales 26,518,000 31
Net Shares Purchased
(Sold) (25,882,000) 46
Total Insider Shares Held 1.49B N/A
% Net Shares Purchased
(Sold) (1.7%)
> 8-Feb-05 GATES, WILLIAM H. III
> Chairman 3,000,000 Sale at $26.17 - $26.3 per share. $78,705,0002
> 7-Feb-05 GATES, WILLIAM H. III
> Chairman 2,000,000 Planned Sale $52,640,0001
> 7-Feb-05 GATES, WILLIAM H. III
> Chairman 2,000,000 Sale at $26.08 - $26.27 per share. $52,350,0002
> 4-Feb-05 GATES, WILLIAM H.
> Chairman 1,000,000 Planned Sale $26,180,0001
> 4-Feb-05 GATES, WILLIAM H. III
> Chairman 1,000,000 Planned Sale $26,180,0001
> 4-Feb-05 GATES, WILLIAM H. III
> Chairman 2,000,000 Sale at $26.14 - $26.36 per share. $52,500,0002
> 3-Feb-05 GATES, WILLIAM H. III
> Chairman 3,000,000 Sale at $26.17 - $26.28 per share. $78,675,0002
> 3-Feb-05 GATES, WILLIAM H. III
> Chairman 1,000,000 Planned Sale $26,460,0001
> 3-Feb-05 GATES, WILLIAM H. III
> Chairman 2,000,000 Planned Sale $52,920,0001
> 2-Feb-05 GATES, WILLIAM H.
> Chairman 1,000,000 Planned Sale $26,390,0001
> 2-Feb-05 GATES, WILLIAM H.
> Chairman 1,000,000 Planned Sale $26,390,0001
> 2-Feb-05 GATES, WILLIAM H. III
> Chairman 2,000,000 Sale at $26.30 - $26.44 per share. $52,740,0002
Re: the edu/career svcs market, consider:
One of the tools I'm best known for is Folding Table Theory of Start-Ups. It says that when you walk into a new entrepreneurial company and you see a nice lobby and expensive office furniture, that company has its priorities screwed up -- either it is more interested in comfort than success or it is over-capitalized and lazy -- and it will never make it.
This "theory" has virtually no real predictive value. I've seen plenty of glitzy start-ups that succeeded. I've also seen plenty of dirt-poor, cheap-arse start-ups that failed. Classic example of glitzy start-up that prospered: Google. It *never* spared any expense in super-expensive office furniture or expensive employee toys and perks.
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