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Leaked Memo Gives Microsoft New Direction?
daria42 writes "An e-mail memo sent from Microsoft chairman Bill Gates to top execs at Microsoft has been leaked, revealing the executive wants his company to hurriedly change its focus and start to tap online advertising and services as new revenue sources. In the e-mail, Gates cites another, earlier memo, sent from MS exec Ray Ozzie, in which Ozzie also warns MS of the importance of focusing on the online medium. 'It's clear that if we fail to do so, our business as we know it is at risk,' Ozzie wrote. 'We must respond quickly and decisively. We should've been leaders with all our web properties in harnessing the potential of Ajax, following our pioneering work in OWA (Outlook Web Access),' he continued. 'We knew search would be important, but through Google's focus they've gained a tremendously strong position.'"
Wasn't this supposed to be leaked on Halloween?
Sure, it's great and all, but it'll never change the way the web works. Improve it, yes. Change it? No. You can build as large js-applications as you wish (and yes, spend exponentially as much time debugging them) - you will never escape the fact that you're just building hacks around a stateless technology from pre 90's.
"Leaked."
investor: "Wow, Microsoft is really going to push that online stuff. Let me call my broker."
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
...It must be true. Everyone knows that you can't fake an email.
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
Slashdotters will be in pure state of joy when the next leaked memo says something like "...as I read in Slashdot, said by SilverspurG, we need to do this, this and this..."
Unix: Do one thing, and do it well
Mac: Do a few things, but be simple, and secure about it
Windows: Do lots of things, some well, most not, but get them into production fast
That's a great strategy for a 100-million dollar company. Problem is, Microsoft is too HUGE to work with such simplifying strategies. Their business model relies on completely dominating ALL aspects of business desktop computing because that's where the biggest bang-for-the-buck is and they can still make billions there. Yeah, they may still be a lumbering monster making foolish mistakes, but they're going to continue to make billions because they are THE lumbering monster. This memo simply tells the lumbering monster to take the next left at the fork in the road instead of the next right. Nothing will change except what area of computing gets stomped next.
TDz.
In a nutshell: "We missed the boat again. Smaller companies are beating us. Let's crush them. Go Microsoft!"
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
When Microsoft decides to kick ass in an area, here's what they do, in a nutshell (according to Charles Ferguson):
In all of Microsoft's successful battles, it has used the same strategies. It undercuts its competitors in pricing, unifies previously separate markets, provides open but proprietary APIs, and bundles new functions into platforms it already dominates. Once it has acquired control over an industry standard, it invades neighboring markets.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Gates, Ballmer, Ozzie, et al: I'm going to give you a hint which will help you. I'm not supposed to do this because I'm a Linux fanatic but I'm going to do it anyway because you seem to be retarded and it makes me feel good inside to help those who are less fortunate than I am.
It is amazing how all the brilliant people are living in their mom's basement, posting on slashdot, while all the retards start and grow multi-billion dollar companies. if only the man wouldn't keep us down...
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Fact is ... And ... (hope all the Slashdotter's are sitting down) ... they don't care about OS security or a few bugs...
Fact is.. this is Slashdot. For the rare Joe ServicePack reading these pages, he ought to be better informed. Not mis-informed.
Bill knows this and knows what sells, "wasting" time on fixing security holes and the like does not deliver more profit to the shareholders.
If enough developers got informed about the real Directions at Microsoft and stayed away from the Windows platform, the shareholders would turn a pck of hungry wolves. Ordinary users would have few, if any worthwhile apps to run on their Windows boxes.
Once they start using Firefox and Opera and get comfy with the interface, they'd rapidly change the engine as well.
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If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I guess when you are worth $40 billion you can tell Bill how to run his business.
Yes, because no rich people are stupid.
Bill knows this and knows what sells
No, he doesn't. That's exactly the point of all of this. If he knew what sells, he wouldn't have been blindsided by the success of Google's business model, and start yet another round of frantic catch-up to superior emergent technology from another company. He didn't know what Apple knew when he ripped off their graphical interface, he didn't know what Novell knew when he foisted AD snake oil in the face of Novell's (real) directory, and he doesn't know what the Linux community knows about the importance of a development and user community. He's hoping to get this with a marketing campaign with catch words like "passion" and hiring a few key open source people specifically to work on a Microsoft version of a Linux user community. Do you see a pattern here?
If he comes up with another couple of billion at the end of the day, it will be because he successfully stole other people's ideas, cheated, or broke the law - the same way he got the first 40.
Seriously folks, how is Google competitively threatening Microsoft?
How many people here have written checks to Google that they would have otherwise written to Microsoft?
Put another way, in what product categories could you purchase a Google offering instead of a Microsoft offering? Google doesn't offer an operating system product and doesn't offer an office productivity suite.
Recently, I purchased an Apple PowerBook instead of a Wintel laptop. And recently I purchased an Apple iPod instead of a Microsoft-backed MP3 player. Then and now, Google did not offer any competitive products in either of those categories. In other words, Apple was a competitor to Microsoft for my money, but Google was not.
While it may be true that Google is the most sophisticated billboard company on the planet, selling advertising has never been one of Microsoft's core lines of business. So, even if Google had 100% of the Internet billboard revenues and Microsoft had 0%, how would Google be threatening Microsoft?
There are those who believe that Google will someday undermine Microsoft's operating system and office productivity suite lines of business by offering subscription-based versions of each or even free versions of each. Well, how many people here want to pay subscription fees for software that is currently available in product form? Not many, I'd bet. Especially if using that subscription software also required storing your sensitive data on Google's servers. And as far as free software goes, Linux and OpenOffice are available for free now, yet at least within the U.S. neither is threatening Windows and MS Office today.
And regarding all of this talk about AJAX-based offerings, let's get real folks. Who here would really like to trade in their desktop apps for AJAX-based apps?
In my opinion, Microsoft has a locked in customer base and currently has Google trapped in a browser. As things stand now, Google is not a genuine competitive threat to Microsoft. The only way that Google will be able to become a genuine competitive threat is if Microsoft makes a serious mistake by heading down its proposed path of competing with Google on Google's browser-based terms.
A not too well-known feature of Acrobat Reader is that when you press shift during loading it skips all the plugins, reducing loading time by about 100 %.
-- Cheers!