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Microsoft's Missed Opportunities: Memo From 1997
New submitter gthuang88 (3752041) writes In the 1990s, Microsoft was in position to own the software and devices market. Here is Nathan Myhrvold's previously unpublished 1997 memo on expanding Microsoft Research to tackle problems in software testing, operating systems, artificial intelligence, and applications. Those fields would become crucial in the company's competition with Google, Apple, Amazon, and Oracle. But research didn't do enough to make the company broaden its businesses. While Microsoft Research was originally founded to ensure the company's future, the organization only mapped out some possible futures. And now Microsoft is undergoing the biggest restructuring in its history.
At least F# and LINQ saw the light of day.
That memo is waaaay too long. No wonder none of that stuff happened - no one read past the first page and a half.
Better known as 318230.
They have adopted git, which for Microsoft presumes that they invented it. That must count for something, right?
You can make a hundred correct predictions in a row as to where the market is heading, and then whiff on two, and an apple or a google gain a foothold.
It's not rocket science... it's way harder than that.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Maybe MSFT was trying to learn from Xerox, Kodak, and other companies that pioneered technologies and then failed to follow through. It may just not be in the blood of a large organization to listen to their researchers, or figure out what to do with what they produce...
Seriously. Business people will look at all the pie-in-the-sky stuff and say 'We are making a crapload of money without all that stuff, why should we spend one single nickel on any of it? Its all just a waste of money. If it can't make me money today, it gets none of my money today." I have every expectation that the guys who invented the transistor met with business people who told them: "That's real nice, but I already have a triode or a pentode for that. Give me something I don't already have." It's just like this: when microsoft beat the Sherman Act by claiming that 'Its unpossible to unbundle one piece of software from another', they effectively put Netscape out of business and owned the browser market for about 7 years. Internet Exploder was the de-facto standard, and if you weren't compatible, you were one of 'them', and would be curtly told to 'upgrade to a newer version of Internet Exploder'. When Firefox finally started breaking their monopoly by getting around 35% market share, m$ finally started realizing that they might have a problem. So they thought about fixing bugs in old 'Exploder'. Problem: they hadn't spent more than a nickel on it, nor changed half a bit in more than 10 years, the old team had been long disbanded and had either left the company or had been moved to other parts of the company. They scrambled to re-assemble the team and re-purpose servers to building IE once again. This is the mentality: If its not (really) broke, don't fix it. And so it goes with all that forward-looking stuff that came out of microsoft research in '97 (and it was a different time 17 years ago, PC's were king and all the really old-timers needed the cash to buy 3rd yachts and mansions).
"In our defense, nobody was doing that yet to prove it profitable. Now that we know it is, research me too!"
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Rocket science needs complex math. market prediction needs a functioning crystal ball.
In the late nineties and into the last decade Microsoft just dumped too much time and money on their vision of a hyper-connected home. They dumped so much research money into building out test spaces and building out test devices, they failed to realize that people don't want an intelligent dryer and an intelligent toaster and an intelligent melon baller. The reality is whatever fancy device you own that has any kind of transistor in it, much less a CPU-- a phone, a tablet, a TV-- you're having to fuss with it. Constantly. And the same is/was always true for their "Microsoft At Home" vision. And yes, these things were connected-- but only to each other.
That, and the fact that Microsoft has always misread the Internet, from coming to TCP/IP late, to ignoring the vital interoperability that cloud services demand. It's always been about the toys with them. Toys that run Windows. Ugh.
Gratefully, only a few of these monstrous things ever saw the light of day beyond the lab.
Are we violating any of Intellectual Ventures' patents by reading it?
#DeleteChrome
As spoken by somebody who's clearly never worked for a company. Anyone in Research & Development knows that no matter how much proof you have, no matter how much financial benefit something would bring to the company, Management will not approve it if it doesn't agree with their current world view. And Management's world view is generally limited to Pet-Topic-of-the-Fortnight, usually involving Sales or some fad business process like 4DX.
No matter how much money MS had/has, it cannot see the future. They are off the hook for that. But also, no matter how much money MS has they refuse to fix their shitty OS. Come on, MS, are you telling us windows is such a mess that you cannot secure it or that you won't spend money to secure it?
Never saw F# used anywhere, anyone know of project or product that uses it?
You mean you never learned to tell the time...?
Step 1) Figure out how long a drying cycle lasts (or set for a pre-determined time)
Step 2) Put clothes in dryer and turn on.
Step 3) ???? (do something else for a while)
Step 4) Return to dryer after drying period has elapsed / PROFIT!
Tada. No need for a smart dryer.
Modern dryers offer timed settings, but they are not the most efficient: The recommended settings stop when the clothes are dry enough. This changes with the season, the specific set of clothes you put inside of it, and all that. So if you don't want to go downstairs in the worst case scenario, you will make multiple visits every so often, because you just got there too early.
Waaay back I remember someone pointing out that Microsoft was spending enormous sums to hire researchers, especially promising ones in academia. The idea, apparently, was for MS Research to be a sort of "intellectual roach motel" (love that phrase) were IQ would check in, and nothing checked out. This made a certain amount of sense. As a monopolist you don't -want- any innovation. One way to do that is hire hitmen to kill potential innovators. But the risks there are huge. A much easier way if you have the money is to hire promising minds and then keep them neutralized. That's just what Microsoft did.
No one ever showed me that memo!
Man, I am pissed! Heads will roll for this!
I think 18,000 will suffice (fifth element ref)
--
B. G.
(Borg)
1. Don't make stupid software
2. Profit!
Table-ized A.I.
Yeah, let's all spend $1,000 on a 'smart' dryer to save $10 in electricity. Makes total sense.
All that memo will do (and it did) is to create a regressive hierarchy of backbiting political scum, who devote their energy to their next, larger, paycheck.
Any new ideas will be ruthlessly crushed, to avoid the risk their will succeed and toss those on high into the rubbish heap of history.
So they have done that with the company, and it only survive because of its natural monopolies in a few software fields.
Apple could have killed them ages ago, by allowing their OS to be licensed on any processor, and include a state machine rom with each licenced copy, said state machine being a soldered un-crackable dongle, so that Apple gets ~~$100 per copy - they would slay Microsoft.
As it is Apple clings to their walled garden = dumb, but Apple = richer than me, so what do I know?
It's not about saving electricity so much as arriving to find that you've got a whole dryer full of now-wrinkled clothes, which either have to be ironed or run through the dryer again.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
He already has a smart dryer if the dryer is able to stop when the clothes are dry.
If your clothes can't stand 15 extra minutes in the dryer, then you're a slave to your possessions and your life is way too fucking complicated already.
Boo. Eff. Enn. Hoo!
Are you seriously that OCD that you absolutely have to race to your dryer the second it turns off to fold your clothes? Is your time that god awfully important and precious that you can't spare a couple of extra minutes doing laundry like people have done for at least a generation? If they're wrinkled, turn it back on for 5'ish minutes!
I'm good friends with a neurosurgeon who also does extensive cancer research. His time is VERY valuable. You know what? He's completely fine using a traditional dryer with a timer. Why? Because it's f'ing laundry!!!
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
http://www.forbes.com/global20...
Apple is the #15 largest company in the world. Microsoft is #32.
Apple has $160 billion of CASH on hand. Microsoft's total assets, all of their real estate, etc is $150 billion.
You obviously don't do much laundry, nor have priced dryers lately...
Ps, about desktop market share -
Westwhip.com has a significant market share in their target market too. A 90% share of a segment that's becoming a historical era doesn't mean much.
IIRC that was all mapped out in the Halloween Document leaked so many moons ago. Yes it played out pretty much as they had planned with the exception of it preventing other companies from making or creating innovative things. Not everything is created by guys like Ray Ozzie and when you cage those people up they lose the ability to see outside their caged box so no outside-the-box creativity.
Boy if those dryers only had some fancy kind of audible alert device...
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I wasn't the one asking for a smart dryer. I was pointing out *why* someone might want a smart dryer, and I do in fact just run the dryer again a little longer if stuff gets wrinkled.
I'll bet your neurosurgeon friend can read and derive context, too.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
http://www.forbes.com/global20...
Apple is the #15 largest company in the world. Microsoft is #32.
Apple has $160 billion of CASH on hand. Microsoft's total assets, all of their real estate, etc is $150 billion.
So how have they "almost lost" to Apple? And at what point is that defined? Have they "lost" when they have run out of money? Or have no marketshare? Of the millions of companies over the world you are supporting the assertion that one has "almost lost" to another when they are separated by just 17 places in the calculated size. When Microsoft bought $150 million of Apple stock back in the 90s people were saying the same thing about Apple and there was a LOT more disparity in wealth and marketshare in all markets that they both participated in between them at that time. Anybody who knows the history of the tech industry knows it's the height of naivety to declare that a company has "lost" to another until they are completely out of the market.
This is the same typical memo every R&D facility of a big company creates. Google, Apple, Cisco, Intel, and many others have the same memo of the same technologies. Problem is R&D is thinking of too many ideas, too many core competencies, and not focusing on some basic fundamentals to build your business.
In light of the largest layoffs in MS's history, the real reason this memo is released is to declare:
This layoff [i.e. MS's fall from grace] wasn't R&D's fault. So Typical of R&D, get credit for the ideas, then cut and run when they flame out, don't fix it, and 'argue' why R&D was right in the 1st place.
LINQ, F#, Vista, Metro, etc, etc.
They started to focus on cool geeky stuff instead of shaping the future. Not that they did shape what garbage we have today, but Microsoft is one of very few companies that can do that now.
Maybe we should stop gouging customers, filing patents, and supporting repressive regimes. Nahhhh!
It looks like you're trying to write a memo... let me help you with that
Plenty of other organisations, (IBM, Xerox...) have equally-sad stories.
Genuine transformational innovation ignored by the senior management...who in the case of IBM, then Microsoft, were focused exclusively on two things:
1. Screwing their customers
2. Screwing their competition
IBM got their comeuppance, and had to reinvent themselves as the "services" company we know and love (ahem) today.
A far cry from the company that had Nobel prize-winning people on their R&D teams.
Now its Microsoft's turn.
Steve Jobs: We're better than you are! We have better stuff.
Bill Gates: You don't get it, Steve. That doesn't matter!
Apparently it actually does.
Something about improving dryers make you mad, pardner? Because you seem surprisingly uncivil about it.
Modern dryers offer timed settings, but they are not the most efficient: The recommended settings stop when the clothes are dry enough. This changes with the season, the specific set of clothes you put inside of it, and all that. So if you don't want to go downstairs in the worst case scenario, you will make multiple visits every so often, because you just got there too early.
I have a fairly old dryer and it has an "automatic" setting. It works by employing the thermostat. When the contents are cold and damp, they are absorbing heat, the thermostat stays below the critical temperature (about 135 degrees F), and the timer doesn't run. Once the contents have absorbed enough heat, the excess amount triggers the thermostat, which causes the timer to run. So the dryer's actual run time varies with conditions, and does a reasonably good job of running just long enough to get things dry, but no longer.
Some newer models have an actual humidity sensor, which means that they can tell precisely when the clothes are dry.
Does Microsoft promote people into Windows/Office executive positions more or less permanently, or does it rotate people in and out of those jobs so that nobody is wed to the success of those products permanently?
If those were the jobs people strived for and then hung onto, it's easy to see how the most ambitions people would work to get into those jobs and then use their skills (political and otherwise) to maintain those products pre-eminence and power to keep those jobs and suppress disruptive technologies that might displace them.
If those products were seen as self-sustaining and needing only slight guidance, then maybe Microsoft could have kept merely average people in those positions and/or made them less lucrative to push more ambitions and talented people into other areas of the company that could have benefitted from more aggressive and ambitious people who could have furthered more innovative stuff.
My guess is that Windows & Office were seen as the jewels and where the "best" people went, where they got fat and rich and did everything to suppress anything which might disrupt their fortunes. It almost sounds like the politics of Rome or the kind of thing that cripples an aristocratic society over time by preventing disruptions and innovations that would topple the established order.
Maybe someday we'll read a "Rise & Fall of the Microsoft Empire" that portrays Gates as Augustus and Ballmer as Nero or Commodus.
Indeed, I meant westfieldwhip.com
Why do you say this?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
God dammit, a smart dryer that posts to twitter when the action stops should be + $15, not + $1000.
I have an ancient dryer. I put my clothes outside and the wind does all the hard work. I bring them in when I can be bothered.
Powered dryers are for homos and republicans.
As a monopolist you don't -want- any innovation.
Why do you say this?
Progress is disruptive. It messes up the spreadsheets.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Like all large tech companies, MS does not give a shit about what you or anyone else thinks, wants, needs, feels, says or does. MS does what is good for MS senior management. Like all large tech and and IT companies, MS is a firm run by pirates for their own sole benefit. That which is good for political turf and compensation is good. Everything else is the enemy. Lost in this weeks announcement of bloodletting is that the new CEO decapitated all his rivals and awarded his flunkies.
The organizational beast survives for the benefits of its rulers. That is all.
Everything spot-on!
You did forget to mention that they established Windows by essentially dumping the product on the market, benefitting from rampant piracy of Windows and more or less preventing anyone from making money developing a competing OS. (MSDOS was so bad that it made this an easy play...certainly nothing they'd want to stop or curtail.)
This is what built the Windows monopoly. If piracy wasn't such an easy option, I doubt Windows would ever have achieved critical mass.
Sure you COULD pay for Windows back then, but if you DID pay for windows you were called a "CIO".
Today we call those same people "14%-ers".
-Matt
Even if all that were listed in the memo were given top priority and implemented, and we have to assume there must be some equal competitors, Microsoft would not succeed. It is very difficult or almost impossible for a company that people hate to not fail in the long term. Microsoft has not been trying to try to gain back love. Just before Ballmer left, he fucked the customers with the new win8.0 UI . People are just waiting for a chance to jump ship at the earliest possible moment. Face with this situation, it is a loosing battle however great the empire is.
This memo isn't in context. Back at this time they were in the midst of an anti-trust action. Microsoft missed the perfect opportunity. Here's what they should have done:
1) Sell the windows/dos OS to IBM. Lock, stock and barrel, they keep their apps/office. No brainer, probably could have bagged 20 Billion for that.
2) About 3-4 months later, move all the office and apps to Linux. Again, a no brainer. They also get to screw IBM again like they did with OS2. I know they had an effort to migrate their apps in 1998 in a middle eastern country that is in the news.
3) Dismiss the action against them since IBM has the crappy OS now. They get a real OS that they don't have to worry about. Linux gets a unified GUI and apps. By now Windows would be just another bad joke, like Exec 8 and MVS.
Without that OS still around, the whole world would be different today. Probably for the better.
Progress is what allows one to maintain a monopoly. History has demonstrated that static monopolies die quick, natural deaths.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Progress is what allows one to maintain a monopoly. History has demonstrated that static monopolies die quick, natural deaths.
Progress disrupts monopolies. Retarding progress in an entire industry extends their lifetimes. Hence patents.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The only reason Microsoft still has it's 'monopoly' is it's ability to change and refocus, thus preventing it's competition from disrupting them.
Were Microsoft static, it would have been supplanted long long ago. When is the last time, for example, you saw a piece of software which advertised, as a system requirement, "IBM PC or 100 percent compatible?"
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Were Microsoft static, it would have been supplanted long long ago.
Microsoft is mostly static. The big exception is their foray into the living room, on which they continue to choke. They've finally made some money at it, but they'd have made so much more if they hadn't totally blown the Xbox One launch. Otherwise Microsoft has been playing sit-still all along, doing the absolute minimum. It's been Windows and Office, Windows and Office, Windows and Office.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Microsoft isn't static. Take their utter dismissal, followed by 180 degree turn around and headlong rush into TCP/IP and the Internet. They're surprisingly agile, for such a large company. If they weren't, they'd have been eaten long ago.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.