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Scoble Bites The Hand That Fed Him
An anonymous reader writes "The Times Online points out a post that Robert Scoble, former Microsoft blogger, put up on his site recently. In essence, Scoble has moved 180 degrees from his former blogging tone, saying that 'Microsoft Sucks'. More specifically, he is highly critical of Microsoft's online policy. In Scoble's words: 'Microsoft's Internet execution sucks (on whole). Its search sucks. Its advertising sucks (look at that last post again). If that's in it to win then I don't get it. ... Microsoft isn't going away. Don't get me wrong. They have record profits, record sales, all that. But on the Internet? Come on. This isn't winning. Microsoft: stop the talk. Ship a better search, a better advertising system than Google, a better hosting service than Amazon, a better cross-platform Web development ecosystem than Adobe, and get some services out there that are innovative (where's the video RSS reader? Blog search? Something like Yahoo's Pipes? A real blog service? A way to look up people?) That's how you win.'"
...former MS blogger... How obviuos must it be?
When you have the microsoft fanboys and employees complaining or pointing out problems, you have to wonder exactly WHO does microsoft ask for opinions and ideas of why their products aren't doing well?
Monkeys on typewriters?
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
It appears you are angry and agitated. Here, take this chair!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Frankly, I think the average consumer is intimidated by a perceived need for serious technical know-how to be able use just about anything other than MS (with the exception of Mac). Others probably aren't even aware of anything other than Microsoft and Mac.
I'll try anything once. Twice if it's DRM free.
Its the kind of thing people promise themselves and their co-workers they are going to say after they leave. Its good for the people still there, and its good in the long term for any stock you own in your previous employer.
Yes, he is bad mouthing them, but its not like he is posting their private bug database on bittorrent. And Microsoft might be better for it.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Looks like he's spitting the dummy now that he is out of the loop. MS are not a search company, MS dont want to be a search company but as is the way when you are a perceived are the dominant IT player you must be seen to 'compete' with all the 'upstarts' to keep the share holders happy, so your business heads gob off about how stupid the opposition business heads are. I think most people are going to be very surprised when they realise where MS see their future and while they are currently getting slaughtered in many sections of the press over Vista they are quietly laying the ground work for the next phase, which is largely why there has been so little reaction from Redmond to the adverse press.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I know this is absolutely begging to be modded Troll, but let's get real for a minute.
The web's been around a few years now. While they were late in recognising it, Microsoft have been taking the Internet seriously since before Google left Stanford University.
IMO, if Microsoft were able to develop "better search than Google.... better hosting than Amazon..." - they'd have done so long ago. As it stands, they can't even implement searching in their own OS (certainly not in XP - even with the Search addon, it's trivially easy to dig out something which returns zero results when it patently shouldn't) - and they've got far more control over that than Google has over the Internet.
Fact is, Microsoft's business plan has never been "build a better OS/office suite/mousetrap". It's been "build one that's good enough and market it as being better". But such marketing doesn't work so well in the Internet age because it's much easier to find out how much truth there is behind it, and AFAICT Microsoft still haven't worked that one out.
MS time to market sucks. They are too late, they slept during the bigest internet ekspansion. Its all invented. There last option is to buy there competitors or change focus to operating system development. Even VISTA is late and feels not as smooth as OS X.
There only advantage is the huge amount of customer base, who are using there current platform. I think its over. The MS ship is going down, slowly.
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
He's not biting. He cares.
Dunno about trap, or it's just that MS no longer pays him to do PR.
It's funny how a lot of people previously were taking it as the truth, _whole_ truth, and nothing but the truth, just because he's such a hip blogger. I even remember getting modded down and getting some annoyed responses before, when I pointed out that it was his paid job to show the good parts only. "Noo, it must be all spontaneous and 100% the complete uncensored, unbiased picture, because he says so! He's so hip and irreverent that he even bravely told Ballmer to write a memo that's good for PR! He said that MS lets him write whatever he wants, good or bad, so if he doesn't show anything bad, surely nothing bad exists at MS." Not an exact quote, because I'm too lazy to search for the thread right now, but that was the general gist of it.
Now it turns out that when his paycheck no longer depends on MS, he suddenly discovers some bad things about MS too. Who would have imagined that?
So let me just say again, to everoyne: Look folks, do exercise some healthy skepticism when a conflict of interest is _that_ blatant. When people's paychecks depend on the King (or CEO, or whatever) liking what they write, there's rarely even a need to put an explicit "thou shalt present me as the Messiah" clause in their contract. Either they figure it out on their own (like this guy seems to), or natural selection takes care of it.
You can see that from ancient times to the present day. From the Pharaoh's scribes in the Old Kingdom to Pravda (or Faux News) journalists in the 20'th century to paid corporate PR/astroturfing/whatever, the same theme is there: the Pharaoh/Emperor/King/Beloved President/CEO/whatever is nothing short of perfect, and the enemy/competition/etc are a bunch of vampires or sloped-forehead orcs. And that those who didn't figure out that that's what's expected from them, found themselves "restructured" out. (Though, depending on the time and place, that could mean more fun HR personnel management methods, like beaheading, feeding someone to the crocodiles, or putting them at the top of a sharp stake. How's that for upwards mobility in the organization?;)
And that when you're interviewed by the CEO's/president's/etc personal pet PR guy, you put on your best smiling face and proclaim yourself happier than a dog in a cat show. When the guys from Pravda came to Ivan Ivanovich's door, what do you think Ivan said? "Oh, I'm so unhappy under the communist party's rule"? Heh. Most of those interviews weren't scripted either, just everyone knew that it's not like it would even make it to print if they don't say what's expected of them. So what makes anyone think that when Ballmer's personal blogger entered someone's office anything fundamentally different happened?
Briefly, take your infos from less biased sources.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Well done Mr, you've just said what the rest of the IT industry has been saying for years!
ilovegeorgebush
That's the problem with Microsoft, they are so obsessed with winning that they forgot that in the end, they are a service company, and in a service company you serve your customers, not yourself! Stop wanting to take over existing markets on the Internet and start creating yourselves new Internet markets. About any Internet company I think of that has been successful has brought a new experience to it's customers: eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, Google, Youtube, ... they all had a compelling reason for customers to use their service.
On Internet you need 2 things to be successful, and Idea and money for development/marketing. They definitely have the money, all they need is NEW ideas to use their money on.
Microsoft don't do innovation. They'll clone competitors products as soon as these emerging markets are making returns. Once they have a handle on a market segment, they use every dirty trick to dominate with complete disregard for antitrust law.
Scoble's in denial if he puts it any other way.
So what? M$ has realized that not many are willling to read only glorified blog posts about MS products. You have to have some so-called 'rebels'. At the same time, despite all the criticism, it looks that the author still sucks up to M$. In which case the whole thing is nothing more than yet another PR stunt.
What I don't understand in this case is what the hell this post is doing on /. ? You'd better give us some more about how much better Ubuntu is comparing to SuSe and we can have our holy war ourselves. Forget M$, this dying dinosaur...
Release better products? Compete on product quality? That's not the Microsoft way...
Do you really think they will spend all that money and effort to produce better products than google/yahoo/etc ?
No, they will leverage their desktop monopoly to push their search. Their search engine may be crap, just like IE is crap, but when 95% of desktop computers sold comes with their search engine as the default, very few people will ever bother looking for anything better.
Aside from that, how will they find something better when the search engine they use is designed to lock customers in?
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
"In Scoble's words: 'Microsoft's Internet execution sucks (on whole)."
MS was a late comer to the internet and little has changed since they came around. In some ways, you'd think MS has simply been waiting for the internet to peak and go away, so they could get back to having the full attention of users when kool-aid time comes around. Scoble's rant is just more evidence that their business model spanks of a rigidity that mimics the tobacco and music industries (resisting change) where respect for the client isn't even considered, much less demonstrated.
Scoble is going to be slapped around with 'what took you so long to wake up and smell the coffee?' retort so much that I'm surprised he choose that particular route for his dump this time. I want to know what is really behind his new attitude...
"If you have a technical issue with Microsoft, it's faster to search their database with Google rather than their own search engine" Times Online. Get your act together guys!
Reduce, reuse, cycle
The enemies of ancient egypt were orcs and vampires? There you have it gentlemen, the proof that education through games is a bad idea.
What? Wrong story? Oh.
Well, okay, so what you take half a page to say is, "follow the money". Okay got it.
But what you really should say is this. Be doubtfull of a person who disagrees with you but be suspicious as hell when a person agrees with you.
In that light, "just what is your game bud, who is paying you eh!"
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I don't get it... Scoble has built himself up to be the most influential blogger out there and everyone just went with it... I prefer my opinion from those with half a brain and notion of what's going on in the wider scheme of things - someone in the know and in the loop.
I guess I just don't get the whole Church of Scoble thing, either.
I think he's fairly pro Microsoft. I mean I am Anti-MS, and when I read this I say: "Yay, go Microsoft! Just go on like that."
Mediocrity is the new progress.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I'm not sure what that means, but I like it anyway. That's right up there with Cobert's "flaccid with anger". Can't wait to be in the middle of a really important high-level meeting and announce some part of the plan "spanks of rigidity."
They'll still be wondering what it means on the plane home. Adding that to my quote tiddler. ---->
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Are you implying somehow that Windows isn't broken?
Thanks, I'll be here all week.
The truth shall set you free!
Just because his paycheck is no longer coming from M$ he didn't become significantly more reliable. Who knows, he might get paid from elsewhere. Or just writes the crap out of spite. Once compromised, ever compromised.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Ship a better search, a better advertising system than Google, a better hosting service than Amazon, a better cross-platform Web development ecosystem than Adobe, and get some services out there that are innovative (where's the video RSS reader? Blog search? Something like Yahoo's Pipes? A real blog service? A way to look up people?)
Yeah! More useless web apps! That'll show 'em!
I am a Linux Zealot. But I also use Vista and have a Zune. Am I sort of some kind of schitzo?
Before you bash Microsoft please try to use their "CURRENT" (As in Slackware-CURRENT) products before making such flaming statements. A LOT has changed since 1990 friends.
Hey, you can't blame Microsoft; they've been looking all over the place for small companies who do those things so they can buy them out, but they just haven't been able to find any yet.
Look folks, do exercise some healthy skepticism when a conflict of interest is _that_ blatant. When people's paychecks depend on the King (or CEO, or whatever) liking what they write, there's rarely even a need to put an explicit "thou shalt present me as the Messiah" clause in their contract. Either they figure it out on their own (like this guy seems to), or natural selection takes care of it. In Soviet Russia, Putin takes care of you!
Don't worry if you're a kleptomaniac, you can always take something for it.
While some marketing departments may believe that the only good publicity is good publicity, I don't think that's the case. Microsoft's biggest risk is becoming irrelevant, and even being criticized is better than being ignored. Besides, if the criticism is something fairly obvious, it's not like it's going to be news to people who have actually tried the product.
MS should focus on its core competency, which is hardware.
Drop all these other side projects like the search engine, the news site, the OS..
Go back to making great mice, keyboards and joysticks.
They used to be the best, and now that they are sidetracked with all these other projects they are losing focus, and it's starting to show.
The truth is that M$ has pretty muched sucked since 2000. It took them a whopping 5 years for them to get XP working properly.
s -with-visual-studio-2005/
And Vista/Visual Studio 2005 is pretty much a train wreck for C developers. We used to be able to rely on the development environment. In fact, that area was always a significant innovation for these guys. No more. Fire Steve Embalmer before it is too late.
And the evidence just keeps rolling in:
http://www.microsoftweblog.com/2005/11/05/problem
Let's see how Jon Udell behave.
Microsoft didn't make all that money by innovating or being better than their competitors. They made that money by doing a better job of selling their products to their customers.
They still do.
Did someone not get their Scobie snack today?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Allchin convinced upwards that Microsoft needed to keep the jewels propriatary, and he won. Silverburg left, and you can trace Microsoft's decline from that very day. I was not a Silverburg acolyte at the time, in fact, I was on Allchin's side. But clearly, we were wrong in a big way. There was no hint of a Google at that time, and the focus was stabbing Lotus Notes in the heart, kicking AOL to the curb, and those little fuckers at Netscape who said they would bury us.
Hindsight is a bitch. Microsoft should hire Silverburg back, put him in a room with Ozzie, and change the company. The stock has done NOTHING for too long. Ballmer, are you reading this? You know its true, tubby.
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OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
with google search, gmail, gmaps, gphone, gspots (wireless ones), gapps we are all heading full ahead to the greatest g of them ever - ginternet.
i, for one, gwelcome our gnew goverlords!
eh, /... what you have turned me into...
I'll take Blair over Bush any day of the week.
Bush is so stupid, he doesn't even know when he's spinning.
John Kennedy once said:
Microsoft is in crisis, but they are not willing to acknowledge it. It seems to me that they would rather spin everything so that no one notices it. The last time they had a crisis (being late to the Internet and world wide web) they responded admirably.
But that was a different world. These days their monopolistic practices have been exposed. Competitors are not afraid of them. Microsoft is defending too many fronts, many of which they created (Xbox, Windows CE/Mobile, etc.)
More importantly, Microsoft isn't as lean and hungry as they used to be. They are living off the the wealth of Office and Windows income. However in other areas, they have not produced. Windows and Office are their crutches but if those products start to fail, MS has nothing to fall back upon anymore. As with the release of Vista, it is apparent that they have lost focus of their core products. With Office, Microsoft's problem is that older versions of Office are good enough.
A decade ago, Apple faced a similar situation. Except Apple didn't have reserves MS has today. That forced them to get lean. Whole product lines were cut while the company refocused. They scraped their old OS and developed a new one. Some credit Jobs with getting the company's comeback as he was the driving force behind it. Right now, there is no one at MS that seems is doing that. If the recent relevations from Allchin are true, his managers (Ballmer, Gates) are not focused.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Scoble is a blogger. He generates his value and ultimately salary by getting lots of hits and demonstrating to his clients that he can whip up a thunderstorm in a shitcan. I wonder why he would write an inflammatory article about his former employer, the largest and most hated computer company in the world?
Why does anyone listen to this guy? His blog is a poorly-written pamphlet filled with entries that are either obvious, moronic or both. What does he even do? Doees he have some kind of job, other than writing crap about stuff he has no clue about?
Can we just ignore him until he does something of value?
There is no better programming IDE than Visual Studio. Anjuta's code completion is far from doing what visual studio does, last time I checked, it didn't work with templates. If I don't have a clear reason, I will not spend the effort of learning to program in something that doesn't list the methods of a given object when I press ".". I didn't need anything to learn, and like, basic c#, but would probably need to read a lot to learn the basics of gnome and gtk classes and functions.
Ship a better search, a better advertising system than Google, a better hosting service than Amazon, a better cross-platform Web development ecosystem than Adobe, and get some services out there that are innovative ... That's how you win.
Nah; what you do is sit back and wait for the "smart guys" to develop something new that people seem to want. Then you invest minimal resources in making shoddy ripoff, so that you have resources left over to agressively market your product to the majority of people who can't tell quality from shoddy.
This is how IBM made their billions. Then Bill Gates & Co. took the idea (and a lot of IBM marketing) and ran with it. It worked quite well for both of them. And they've both managed to bankrupt most of their competitors who have the silly idea that quality counts for more than a tiny corner of the market. Yes, there's a market for quality, but it has always been a specialy niche.
Of course, to pull it off, you have to start with enough marketing clout to overwhelm your competitors' marketing efforts. IBM worked their way up, by building quality products until around 1960 or so; then they figured out that as the market leader they no longer needed quality, and switched all their efforts to marketing shoddy products. Microsoft started with an "IBM PC" advertising budget larger than the total budgets of their competitors, and have never had to make a quality product. These days, unless you have a few billion $$$ to spend, you can forget about taking that path.
It'll be interesting to see if a company like google can actually succeed and become a stable mass marketer before Microsoft finds a way to squash them with an inferior knockoff.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
..."Sure, I'm paid by X, but it doesn't affect my objectivity."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I think that Microsoft should just stop trying with anything internet. Just focus on the Operating System. Let Adobe, Google, Amazon and whoever else take care of the applications and the internet. They are doing us all a disservice by even trying.
What I've never understood about these sorts of discussions, is why it matters? It doesn't matter if Microsoft sucks at the internet. In the last decade or so, it seems like they want to do everything possible related to computers. Why not just focus on what they (think) they do best? Instead, everytime someone makes some money in computers, Microsoft feels the urge to jump in even if they have no experience or ability in that particular area. They even buy small companies who compete in an area that Microsoft was considering entering, and shut them down, then fail to produce their own product. And all their dirty pool over applications that come preinstalled makes no sense, except that they feel the need to dominate. What's next? Microsoft entering starting its own line of gasoline stations, putting Shell and Exxon on their hit lit? They should stick to their basics - making an OS, and making office applications; leave the rest to other companies that can do it better.
So the blogger has bought into Microsoft's delusion as well by assuming that Microsoft needs to succeed in the internet arena.
Rather than 'biting the hand the fed him', Scoble is leveling harsh public criticism in an attempt to get the company to do better.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
I sure hope MS doesn't win, because then we'll all be stuck using products and services that suck -- cluttered, cumbersome, and ugly.
Lisa: Did you know that the Chinese use the same word for crisis as they do for opportunity?
Homer: Yes! Crisitunity!
/offtopic
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Right... Mid 90s. Apple Computer.
The parallels are shockingly simmilar. The big, bloated behemoth floundering under its own weight. The same reaction - to consolodate power, make things more proprietary, raise prices, and put a new and largely useless and mypoic CEO in charge. Business as usual, despite the looming cliff.
All while the smaller, leaner guys eat them for breakfast.
Right now, all I hear from my IT friends, co-workers, and so on is how XP is a disaster and wondering if there isn't ANY alternative out there. Because the OS isn't the big deal - it's when you have to lay out cold, hard cash to replace half of your PC that it is.
I'd like to see MS just make software. Strong, reliable OS's and apps' that run well on all PC's and function well with legacy apps. OK, now stop your chortling. Instead, MS focuses on trying to win at everything, and they usually start out WAY behind. The two most glaring examples that come to mind are IE (back when Netscape had already established itself as THE leader) and Zune, when the IPod had already totally OWNED the portable music player market. I'm sure there are others, but that's what comes to mind ATM. I'd like to see MS stop trying to win EVERY race, and just focus on the one's it know's already.
I agree with your comment, in general. But Vista feels like a pre-release operating system. That's their flag-ship product. I'm sure they will make it work (hey, it's bundled with pretty much any new PC) but with the requirements I'd expected something a little more...coherent, maybe even something that made me think wow a little. Using it has not been a pleasure.
And Office. What is the reason I should want to upgrade?
Should I even mention Zune?
I'm not actually trying to bag on them. It just seems like there's a pattern and it's lack of focus.
Quack, quack.
Loved that P-38. Had one on my keychain from the early 70s to early 90s, when I lost the last one I had. Pian in the ... fingers for really large cans, but like yo said, effective.... You are dead-right about intuitive, too, the only really intuitive behaviours are eating, drinking, and sex, cuz if they aren't ... the gene-chain stops dead. You should have been modded up. Thanks for the jog down Memory Lane.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
...
they must do better than amazon at amazons specialty
they must do better than google at google's specialty
they must do better than adobe at adobe's specialty
or else THEY SUCK!
good call robert. youre not disgruntled one bit
Read the article again, and think very carefully about whose bitch he is now.
The only reason most consumers use what software they use is because either: A.) It came with the computer B.) It was on the shelf at Best Buy/Stapes/Target/Walmart. C.) Their relative/friend gave them a "copy" Seeing that Windows and MS Office apply to all 3 rather easily it is a no brainier to why it is successful.
Yes, but the real question is why nothing else comes with the computer or is on the shelf at Walmart.
The answer is anticompetitive pressure that's at a breaking point. The "record proffits" Scoble talks about are getting harder to maintain, especially as hardware prices drop. The potential difference in performace for the user and profits for the vendor is large and growing. One of the most interesting things from the Iowa consumer case is that people at M$ thought gnu/linux was in Dells best interest as they were busy planning to whack them. You can't keep vendors and users from persuing their best interests forever.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
they are currently getting slaughtered in many sections of the press over Vista they are quietly laying the ground work for the next phase, which is largely why there has been so little reaction from Redmond to the adverse press.
No reaction, discounting present company of course.
Do you really think they have been "laying the groundwork" for six years and it's not in Vista? How many times are you going to accept their usual line, "this version sucks but the next one will have everything our competitors have but much better"?
Did you consider the fact that it's difficult to answer so many obvious failings? Vista, Office, Xbox, Zune, net services have all taken a justified beating and are all outclassed by their competition. They got so greedy in so many directions all at once that they ended up with a mass of "trip bits" and other stuff that does not work - nowhere.
The only thing remotely correct in your impassioned defense and refutation of this negative press is surprise. I will be very surprised if they pull a rabbit out of the hat at anytime in the next five years.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Its nice to see that the 'hooked on phonics' kids are growing up and posting on slashdot
It's not their fault IE does not do spell checking.
Give him credit for being right. If M$ is unable to compete with the OS that they've been developing for six years, they will never be competitive. It's over for them.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.