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> Microsoft has a wonderfully lucrative cash cow that allows them to not be successful at their other endeavors (with success for this argument being defined as

> Microsoft has a wonderfully lucrative cash cow that allows them to not be successful at their other endeavors (with success for this argument being defined as a similar market share as their primary business). I disagree with this basic premise. Let's put our investor hats on. There are these businesses, Windows and Office. They throw off a certain cash flow. It doesn't last forever. So what to do? First, we re-invest some of that cash flow into extending the life of the cash flow from the profits themselves. Advertising, new versions, and so forth. Second, we can pay a dividend to investors. If the taxes are onerous, we can do magical things with trusts or some such to reduce taxes. Third, we can invest the cash flow in new businesses, basically treating ourselves as a VC or startup lab. We hope to turn the new businesses into streams of cash flow. WHy do we assume that options one and three are always on the table? If investors can get a better rate of return investing the cash flow from Office and Windows than Ballmer is delivering, why are we asking Ballmer to 1. Generate cash from Office and Windows and 2. Produce better returns than we can? I think the time has come to stop expecting so much from SteveB. Get him to generate tons of cash from Office and Windows and give the money to investors. Let them decide whether to invest that into Google stock or Apple stock or the next YCombinator round or whatever they like.

waterlesscloud 16y ago
I think Office can last a long, long time. The buy-in from business is huge. I don't think most businesses are going to trust the cloud. Maybe they should, but what they're doing now with Office works well enough, so they'll likely stay with it for quite a while. There's still a lot of mainframe stuff out there in cobol, after all. And a crazy amount of DOS. Business moves sloooooow.
- boredguy8 16y ago
  If Office doesn't innovate in the space of collaboration / versioning, they won't be around in a meaningful way in 5-10 years, I can almost guarantee it. And this is working in a place (a university) not known for fast change (just try getting faculty to start using a new ANYTHING). Right now, all collab suites I've seen, and I've been approached by more than I care to count (though undoubtedly not all), are kludge-y addons to move FILES around. The beauty of what Google's doing (and a lot of their playing is creating a pointillist map) is in this space: they're making it so I can get (right now mostly) text from one place to another through multiple streams to a final display regardless of ANYTHING. There are still some places file metaphors exist (docs), but that's fading in their newer products. Add robust lines of demarcation (privacy/security via groups) and the 'features' of Word don't beat the 'killer app' of portable, trackable, malleable information that people can collaborate on without effort. So: watch out, Office. (Though I love what you're doing in Excel)
  - arethuza 16y ago
    Excel isn't going anywhere - it is the basis for so many business systems. Pretty much every other Office app (perhaps with the exception of Outlook) could be replaced without too many noticing, but Excel is the key business application for decision makers in most organizations.
    - blrgeek 16y ago
      Imagine Excel with automatic cell-level revisions, with safe shared editing & control, with better automatic error checking. If someone does that, I'll guarantee you that 'decision-makers' will switch very very fast. You know the main problem with Excel? Finding out what changes were made, keeping updates between multiple teams/people in sync, sending the correct version of the doc. once updated, etc. If Google Docs Excel was as good as Excel today (it still lacks quite a bit, esp in UI), we'd never use Excel, simply to save a huge amount of time syncing everybody.
      - arethuza 16y ago
        Oh I agree that Excel has problems. However, there is a huge ecosystem around Excel - lots of enterprise apps have tight Excel integration and an amazing amount of complex stuff gets done in VBA in Excel. As to your other point, I've actually persuaded quite a few (very bright) finance people how to use TortoiseSVN and they picked it up pretty easily and seems to work very well for them. Wire it up so that you use a sensible diff tool to show differences between revisions and it actually is pretty civilised. Almost like real code! ;-)
    - boredguy8 16y ago
      Hence why I say, literally, "Though I love what you're doing in Excel". And it goes beyond just network effect: some of the data manipulation and collaborative editing changes are encouraging. We'll see where things go. But it's by no means the only option if they fall behind.
daveungerer 16y ago
If Warren Buffett hung out on HN, this is the kind of comment he would write.

waterlesscloud 16y ago

I think Office can last a long, long time. The buy-in from business is huge. I don't think most businesses are going to trust the cloud. Maybe they should, but what they're doing now with Office works well enough, so they'll likely stay with it for quite a while. There's still a lot of mainframe stuff out there in cobol, after all. And a crazy amount of DOS. Business moves sloooooow.

boredguy8 16y ago
If Office doesn't innovate in the space of collaboration / versioning, they won't be around in a meaningful way in 5-10 years, I can almost guarantee it. And this is working in a place (a university) not known for fast change (just try getting faculty to start using a new ANYTHING). Right now, all collab suites I've seen, and I've been approached by more than I care to count (though undoubtedly not all), are kludge-y addons to move FILES around. The beauty of what Google's doing (and a lot of their playing is creating a pointillist map) is in this space: they're making it so I can get (right now mostly) text from one place to another through multiple streams to a final display regardless of ANYTHING. There are still some places file metaphors exist (docs), but that's fading in their newer products. Add robust lines of demarcation (privacy/security via groups) and the 'features' of Word don't beat the 'killer app' of portable, trackable, malleable information that people can collaborate on without effort. So: watch out, Office. (Though I love what you're doing in Excel)
- arethuza 16y ago
  Excel isn't going anywhere - it is the basis for so many business systems. Pretty much every other Office app (perhaps with the exception of Outlook) could be replaced without too many noticing, but Excel is the key business application for decision makers in most organizations.
  - blrgeek 16y ago
    Imagine Excel with automatic cell-level revisions, with safe shared editing & control, with better automatic error checking. If someone does that, I'll guarantee you that 'decision-makers' will switch very very fast. You know the main problem with Excel? Finding out what changes were made, keeping updates between multiple teams/people in sync, sending the correct version of the doc. once updated, etc. If Google Docs Excel was as good as Excel today (it still lacks quite a bit, esp in UI), we'd never use Excel, simply to save a huge amount of time syncing everybody.
    - arethuza 16y ago
      Oh I agree that Excel has problems. However, there is a huge ecosystem around Excel - lots of enterprise apps have tight Excel integration and an amazing amount of complex stuff gets done in VBA in Excel. As to your other point, I've actually persuaded quite a few (very bright) finance people how to use TortoiseSVN and they picked it up pretty easily and seems to work very well for them. Wire it up so that you use a sensible diff tool to show differences between revisions and it actually is pretty civilised. Almost like real code! ;-)
  - boredguy8 16y ago
    Hence why I say, literally, "Though I love what you're doing in Excel". And it goes beyond just network effect: some of the data manipulation and collaborative editing changes are encouraging. We'll see where things go. But it's by no means the only option if they fall behind.

daveungerer 16y ago

If Warren Buffett hung out on HN, this is the kind of comment he would write.