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John Dvorak's Eight Signs MS is Dead in the Water
j79 writes "John Dvorak has written an opinion piece on why he believes Microsoft is dead in the water. He discusses Vista, Office 2007, MSN and MSN search, the Xbox 360, Pad-based computing, .Net, and Microsoft's obsession with Google. "
...and he almost never is.
Is where Microsoft stopped innovating. Whenever you get into a "one-up" cold war, your thinking becomes limited to finding features that are just over what the competitor is doing and not necessarily related to what makes the life of the user easier.
MS has taken their eye off of the ball and has been concentrating on everything but the user.
Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/ -- A workout plan that doesn't feel like homework.
With a 90% installbase and billions and billions of dollars... Microsoft isn't going anywhere. People are still addicted to their software and will keep coming back for more. They can sustain a lack of creativity for many many years.
http://religiousfreaks.com/My #1 sign that Microsoft is going over the water at 100MPH in a speedboat while her competitors drown: 38B USD in profit.
I wish I could write something that is as 'dead' as .NET is. I'd be a billionaire.
Oh, yeah, he's always an idiot. One of the few examples of where Slashdot hypocricy doesn't happen. We can all agree a monkey with a blackboard and chalk could do a better job.
of Slashdrones denouncing Dvorak as a troll. Well, that might be right, but he's a successful troll. You can only accomplish that if you put enough truth and insight, wacky and wrongheaded though it may eventually turn out to be, into your communications as to make for interesting reading. Dvorak does that.
Take this article. I don't know about all the reasons. For example, I'm not a gamer so I don't know crap about the 360. But there's something here for everyone. He says that Vista OS and Office 2007 will be problematic letdowns. He says MSN and the MSN Search Engine are essentially useless. He points out an abandoned former focus, pad-based computing. Is there anything there that's really all that nuts?
No, there isn't. But then, like a good troll who has thrown out a couple of interesting statements to which nearly everyone can say "He's got a point," he then moves on to the provocation - Preoccupation with Google. He calls it a distraction. He tosses out opinions like they're facts. No matter how you view the relationship between Google and MS, there's something in that paragraph to disagree with.
Thus, conversation ensues. Slashdot stories get posted. Traffic gets created.
The man is a damn good troll and he deserves far more props (for that) than he gets around here.
Can we please have a 6 month moratorium on NOT posting Dvorak's trolls on the front page of slashdot?
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Six years ago I had a heated debate with a friend about what should be done about Microsoft. I was (and still am) adamant Microsoft needs legal throttling. Microsoft escaped by the hair of their chin with a fortuitous changing of the guard shortly after losing their DOJ battle (Clinton and Democrats to Bush and the big-money-friendly Republicans). Clearly the new regime had no appetite for any meaningful punishment for Microsoft.
My friend waved his hands and said, "Let the market forces settle it", to which I pointed out Microsoft had gained so much power and momentum that market forces may have become irrelevant.
While better late than never, I think Dvorak makes some good points, but would focus on one I think he misses the mark:
I think Microsoft is right to worry about Google. Google has blind-sided Microsoft on yet another "it's the internet" facet they either glibly ignored, or just didn't see. Google has planted the seed that maybe, just maybe, the OS isn't going to be relevant in the future, thus allowing more free choice, and less dependence on Microsoft. Google's "proof" that XMLHTTPREQUEST can provide responsive web apps as stopgap technology (I can't believe that there eventually will be some better replacement) has spawned many other interesting companies and application.
Some of these "AJAX" apps are downright useful, and for the casual user, can completely replace their office suites in functionality (for their purposes), and then some (remote, network accessible from anywhere).
The amazing irony in all of this is Microsoft invented what may end up being the Silver Bullet that defeats them (XMLHTTPREQUEST). And, finally, maybe market forces will level the playing field.
There are more than 8 signs that Dvorak is a gasbag. I site his numerous rambling predictions in the past that have turned out to be wrong more often than not. He just likes trying to raise a stink to maintain his dwindling readership.
C'mon. He is supposed to be an "expert" but doesn't know what Groove is? Lotus Notes? Gee, John. What did Ray Ozzie do at the time he was recruited?
MS is headed for diminshed expectation land - but Dvorak is like the IT version of Limbaugh. What a maroon.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
For better or worse, Microsoft will be around for a long, long time. Look how long Western Union lasted after the telephone replaced the telegraph. However, what Dvorak may be saying is that the days of Microsoft being a driving, innovative, vibrant force in the computer industry have long since passed. Microsoft's stock price illustrates this nicely.
Dvorak almost had it. People here almost had it.
Microsoft is starting to look lost because it is focusing so much attention at so many businesses that are not its core: software development. Things like MSN, search, xbox are cash sinkholes that are not what makes Microsoft the powerful and respected (well, maybe not at Slashdot) company that it is. Up to here, everybody is getting.
But what Dvorak and most of everybody here on Slashdot is missing is that this is not a choice Microsoft has. Microsoft sees 5, 10, 15 years ahead and knows that the days of its packaged software dominance are going to end. With computers reaching the power and speed of "good enough for daily tasks," consumers are less and less likely to want to pay to upgrade to a new operating system. With the emergence of browser applications and the gradual (albiet not full) maturation of free open source alternatives to Office and Windows, Microsoft has serious looming threats in the near future.
Microsoft is smart. It is trying to reinvent itself BEFORE the trends of technology FORCE it to. By finding a new cash cow to rely on, it can sit comfortable the day a new version of Windows *doesn't* gain wide adoption (thinking - of course - two or three versions from now). Traditionally, that cash cow was and is Office. Let's not forget many people are perfectly content with Office 97 and see no need to upgrade to the newest version. This will only become more common as the Office product matures further. And as I stated above, and with the news that ODF is now an ISO standard, even Office is no longer a safe bet *in the long term.* Microsoft execs realize this threat is not yet mature as everybody here on Slashdot wishes, but DOES realize that given enough time, their Office revenue stream will dwindle as well.
So what happens? Microsoft looks at the current fastest growing technical market and tries to enter that race: search (Google), online ads (Google), online content deliver (iTunes). Microsoft is banking on online content distribution and services. If they're smart, they will tie their Office products with various online services to create the next generation online desktop Office applications. They will then charge a subscription fee and serve ads. THAT is where Microsoft is going. And they've got 40 billion dollars to ensure it happens.
And what about the xbox? It's got NOTHING to do with anything. It is Bill Gate's life long dream to make Microsoft an entertainment hub. But if all the threats mentioned above come around in full force as they probably will in 10 years, this dream will probably never fully materialize. It's just the world's richest man making his company invest in his pet project.
Those nifty AJAXified updating stock quotes are using an XmlHTTPRequest.
The XmlHTTPRequest was developed by Microsoft and later implemented in other browsers.
Its been around a long time, and MS never really did much with it.
It took a bunch of open source coders to make anything cool or useful with it.
But MS should get the props for inventing it.
It is the one example of innovation I can think of from them that has ever amounted to something.
I think the fact that Microsoft avoids innovation like the plague is actually one of their secrets to profit and success.
Let others waste their time and money innovating. Innovation is for the losers. Wait, stall, and make empty vaporware promises, then buy someone else's finished product at the last minute and rebrand it as yours.
It has always made them the most profitable software vendor in the past, why should they change now?
History is littered with many examples of sudden changes in power structure causing a lot of pain all around (Roman Empire, break up of USSR,...). Far better would be shift so that MS no longer abuses its power and instead becomes a contributory member of the industry.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
For the developers and consumers, the coolest features are Aero Glass, Indigo, Avalon, Net 2.0 and the rest of the WinFX framework. They were ultra cool but now they are just "gussied-up" XP upgrade? Get your facts straight.
For consumers? Really? Try Aero, but that's about it. Most users don't know what .Net 1 is, much less .Net 2.0.
Almost anything in Vista was rebuilt/enhanced: the framework, the interface, the IP stack, the color profiles, there's actually a new advanced printing standard, the audio system, EVERYTHING.
All under the hood... What's visible to users? More pop-up alerts for security stuff, and eye candy that looks like what Macs have had for several years. That's why Dvorak says MS is fading.
So they dropped WinFS and a few other features for a later update, and suddenly the rest is "boring"? Gimme a break!
No, just non-innovative. They also dropped Monad.
"3. MSN."
You were whining when Microsoft was slow to discover the Internet, now whining they are discovering it.
They're "discovering it" a decade late. MSN was built to compete with AOL. Remember AOL? Yeah, they're still out there... but technically, so are Compuserve and Delphi. Why waste money on something that has already been obsoleted?
"4. MSN Search Engine."
Yea shit, selling ads and pocketing the money. Totally pointless, why would anyone care about this thing called uhmm, revenew... uhmm reveneu, revenue, what was it anyway? Totally pointless.
Maybe you missed that line in the article about MS making gobs of money for years to come... but not innovating, and as a result fading in the public's mind. That's the point, not that they're going to declare bankruptcy next week.
"5. Xbox360."
And right now Microsoft is making and selling enough units to meet the demand. So where is the damn issue?
The issue is that XBox is still a horrible money-loser for Microsoft, and they're not gaining marketshare fast enough for when the PS3 comes out. If Sony sells 1 million units in the opening weekend or 510k in the first 24 hours, like they did with the PS2, that's going to really hurt the XBox360. In all of 2005, MS sold a total of 1.5 million units... while Sony easily topped that in three days in 2000 with the PS2. If Sony launches the PS3 the same way, or better, the XBox360 will be left in the dust.
Also, there are 100 million PS2s out there... and all of their games are compatible with the PS3. That's 100 million people that won't mind upgrading.
I mean, they are just the largest software/IT company in the world, what were they thinking?
IBM was the largest software/IT company in the world.
Was.