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Former Microsoft Exec: Microsoft Has "Become the Thing They Despised"
zacharye writes "Microsoft has a long and storied history of leadership in the tech industry, and the company has driven innovation for decades. In recent years, however, Microsoft has fallen behind the times in several key industries; the company's mobile position has deteriorated and left it with a low single-digit market share, and Microsoft won't launch Windows RT, its response to Apple's three-year-old iPad, until later this year. In a recent piece titled 'Microsoft’s Lost Decade,' Vanity Fair contributor Kurt Eichenwald analyzes the company’s 'astonishingly foolish management decisions' and picks apart moves made during the Steve Ballmer era."
Microsoft has a long and storied history of leadership in the tech industry, and the company has driven innovation for decades
LMFAO
Elop did to Nokia in a matter of months what Ballmer took over a decade to do to Microsoft.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Executives, Executives, EXECUTIVES
That's the problem with management with KPIs: they have to report results every 3 months. Cutting some long term projects looks great in the beginning: less overhead and fewer costs, and if you move your researchers to production, you even get a bigger income.
The damage only becomes visible 2-5 years later. And then it's too late.
Too bad the whole world is focussed on those dan
A former exec disgruntled with his previous company? you don't say...
did you forget to take your meds?
That thing was way ahead of its time. But Gates and Balmer killed it. and now Allard is off doing something else...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
They still have a commanding market share in many areas...
And that's the exact reason you're unlikely to see them reinvent themselves the way Apple did. Apple did it because they had no choice - they were getting their asses handed to them in every sector they were in, they were haemorrhaging money and were on the verge of bankruptcy. It was a do-or-die move.
Microsoft have no need to copy them. They may not be raising the roof on the stock indexes, but they're still making money and because of that, inertia will mean that they'll never look at the kind of radical solutions that Apple did; it's easier to play the safe game and make smaller profits for less risk.
-Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience-
In many ways Apple had it easier. The state they were in, the board was willing to try anything and Jobs had free reign to make major changes. If what Jobs did didn't work, there wasn't much loss.
MS is still profitable and making major changes that affects their profitability will face resistance. MS needs new leadership and Ballmer is not likely to lead the reinvention. Over the last several years, it seems the leaders that were willing to change how MS did things have left: Ozzie, Allard, Bach. Everything must be Windows or Office has been a major problem to their innovation.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Remember back in the days that Windows didn't have basic operating system features like memory protection and used to crash thrice daily?
Remember back in the days where using the latest version of IE would assure you that nothing but the most quirky IE only pages would render correctly?
Remember back in the days where Apple had a usable GUI for half a decade and MS users were stuck on a really shitty command line?
I do, it wasn't that long ago, pretty much it was the entire company's history before the "lost decade". But Windows doesn't crash so much any more since the later service packs of Windows 2000 and is fairly usable these days. It seems that Microsoft should have become IBM a long time ago.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
The article is way off base. The most fundamental reason for their success is not anything they have done or not done. It is the whole corporate sector conflating "Microsoft compatibility" with "interoperability". Otherwise they have always been the same. Lackluster products and copying/buying innovation done elsewhere has been its mainstay. The low quality of its products was masked by the ever increasing speed and decreasing cost of hardware. Their monopoly masked the incompetence of their managers. All that is happening now is people inside and outside Microsoft, waking up and smelling the coffee.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
and the company has driven innovation for decades
Uh... geez. Where to even start?
The first and last real MS innovation was the Microsoft BASIC interpreter which became ubiquitous in 1980s home computers. Everything else they ever did was shamelessly stolen and/or bought and/or badly copied from others. Even MS-DOS started out as a bought-out CP/M imitation.
They disparaged GUIs and the whole idea of user-friendly computing until the Mac proved them wrong. It took them a decade to come up with a usable competitor (Windows 95). Then it took them years to recognize the importance of the Internet, so they killed the competition by illegally leveraging their monopoly on Windows desktops. With the competition dead, they stalled IE development and set back web innovation by a decade until Firefox broke the market back open.
Now you can see them screw up the same way with mobile devices. It took even Bill Gates until last week to admit that the PC-centric model may be "changing". Thankfully, with Gates gone and that dancing sweatmonkey in charge, they don't seem to be capable of their past level of predation anymore.
MS has always been a follower at best. It has frequently been a predatory abuser of its monopoly. It has usually parasitized on the innovations of others. Embrace, extend, extinguish was always how they operated. It has never been an innovation leader.
I don't know about that. Where Microsoft has really been dynamic this decade is at the enterprise level. For example Microsoft Dynamics (which I understand was an acquisition) ties very tightly to office. But accountants and sales people know office. CRM, ERP, Accounting... all tied together with an office interface relatively easy to configure/setup and use. That's rather impressive. Now tie that in with the enhancements to Sharepoint and Universal Communicator and you really have a fully formed office based total communication system. So they have been innovative on a windows / office paradigm.
Their problem is in consumer / internet and to a certain extent not developing there was strategic. It bought them an entire extra decade of dominance. Now Balmer / Microsoft is fighting for consumer market share we'll see what they do. But I don't think its fair to say there has been a lack of innovation. Perhaps not innovations you are about though.
After opening with a false premise like "storied history of leadership", do you really want to read more?
After opening with a false premise like "storied history of leadership", do you really want to read more?
Yeah, that was a good one. I also liked "...and the company has driven innovation for decades." That made me chuckle.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
> my office smelled like my Aunt Lena's underwear drawer.
That's a disturbingly specific choice over the usual "smelled like a whorehouse".
Log in or piss off.
why would regular users (not OS junkies) want to upgrade at all?
Few do, however that is not Microsoft's meal ticket. Microsoft's big meal ticket is now, as it always was, illegal market control of PC OEMs. Microsoft's second biggest meal ticket is illegal tying of servers to client operating system.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
...clearly as a founder he's part of the old boy's club and not going anywhere soon unless Microsoft's board finally says enough z'nough.
Ballmer's position is secure because he excels at the one thing that actually counts: complete, unquestioning obedience to Bill Gates, who as the largest shareholder still controls the company.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.