9 ms·

Microsoft by the Numbers

170 points by fname 16y ago

eam 16y ago
Microsoft is a great company, I don't know why a lot of people dislike them. Look at their track record, look at the numbers they're impressive. Perhaps it's jealousy, who knows? Sure they have done several mistakes along the way ahem ie6... But you know what, at the end what matter is the profits. I don't know why people bash on them for their closed source technologies. They're here to make money, if they wanted to give away everything they would have been a charity not a business! You might as well go bash on coke, their ingredients are "closed source." In order for a taco truck to make money they got to sell their tacos, can't give them away now can they? In a nutshell all you who hate Microsoft, find a better reason to hate them. You can't say ie9, because it's beginning to look like it'll be an awesome browser for users and developers alike. End rant. Sorry if this is a little off topic. :)
- gvb 16y ago
  Beyond being convicted of abusing their monopoly, Microsoft has a long history of pulling dirty tricks on its competitors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft http://grokdoc.net/index.php/Dirty_Tricks_history http://grokdoc.net/index.php/Dirty_Tricks_history http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2007/02/microsoft_dirty_tric_1.html http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2007/02/microsoft_dirty_...
  - j_lagof 16y ago
    Apple has been doing way worse things and nobody (of importance) seems to care.
- csomar 16y ago
  >> Sure they have done several mistakes along the way ahem ie6 IE6 is not a mistake. It's old. It first come with Windows XP and Windows XP is 8 years old. At the time, IE6 was fine.
  - jomohke 16y ago
    Yep, this always bugs me too. When it came out it had quite a good rendering engine compared to most (all?) competitors. The problem arose from Microsoft disbanding the IE team and not releasing a new version for so many years. It fell behind from age.
    - borisk 16y ago
      Microsoft wanted ppl to develop Win32/.NET apps, not Web stuff. So no reason to improve IE 6.
  - TomOfTTB 16y ago
    It depends what part of the process yor're referring to. IE6's initial development wasn't a mistake. But disbanding the IE specific development team, abandoning all platforms that weren't windows and not updating it for years and years were mistakes and all those things happened in the era of IE6
    - shadowfox 16y ago
      Disbanding of the team appears to have a lot to do with the anti-trust cases though.
- CapitalistCartr 16y ago
  You might be too young to remember the days when MS ruled with an iron fist. When they got IBM to use their DOS, they structured the licensing so that the only affordable one was to pay MS for every box that went out the door, no matter which OS was on it. So a shop could either sell only MS-DOS, or not offer it at all, and any shop that didn't offer it couldn't stay in business, once IBM "approved" of MS-DOS. When they came out with any software, they chose the most confusing name possible. "Windows" was a generic term for any the panes in windowing GUI, until MS appropriated the word. Then came "Word", which sounded like about all the competition out there. Once they had the OS market sewn up, they used that to make their other software work better than anyone elses, with undocumented APIs. Then they offered "bundles" which meant, if you used their OS, which of course every business had to, you couldn't afford to turn down their other offerings. This might sound like fair, tough competition, but the reality was that they used their money and clout to run the competition out of business, then their de facto monopoly to make a fortune. And tough but fair, often gave way to threats. If a retailer didn't play ball, getting rid of competition, they would pull their joint marketing/advertising deals. If a small business came up with anything interesting, they'd swallow it, or run it out of business by any means necessary. This did more to stifle innovation for about 15 years than anything else. This is only the beginning of why people don't like MS. If we were to all post here, it would become an encyclopedia.
  - codingthewheel 16y ago
    Wow. You are completely misinformed and, I suspect, just trolling (and presuming to instruct others) based upon events you had no connection with and only understand second-hand from others. By the way, your allegation that Microsoft "stole all the simple-sounding names" is just laughable. I'd dissect the rest of your argument but frankly, I got tired of swatting flies like you years ago. The only accurate statement in your entire rant? MS-DOS. And even that's slanted.
    - xcombinator 16y ago
      He is not.If you think he is the misinformed person is you. You can inform yourself.Search for DRDOS.Search for windows trademark issues,lindows, you know what? they were an entire line of windows branded products before MS, MS destroyed them all, you can search what happened to them. Windows is a generic word, it can't never be trademarked(unless you are rich to get over the law), that applies to "word", "powerpoint", "project", "excel", "exchange". A word in the English dictionary just can't be trademarked, by law. Maybe you were a kid then, but there was a time when "word" was not the most used word processor, it was "WordPerfect", and people used Lotus123 instead of "excel". What did MS did? They made windows but didn't let WordPerfect and Lotus123 people(and everybody else, like compiler builders) use the windows API, so MS had a 4 year period of advantage. Once they did, the high level exposed API was slower than what MS used. I'm tired too. When people don't know they don't know what they don't know.
- melling 16y ago
  In the 1990's Microsoft forced every computer vendor to pay them for a DOS license regardless of whether they shipped DOS on the PC (did this apply to Windows?) They basically killed any chance of a competing OS in the PC world (4DOS, Quarterdeck, BeOS, Unix, OS/2). The US govt eventually forced them to stop this practice, but it was too late by then. Competition all dead. Another example, they built the browser into the operating system, thus killing of Netscape. Once they did that they let IE stagnate for several years, providing no innovation (IE6 is 2001). We are finally crawling out of that hole. IE9 is going to be good because it has competition and Microsoft now must compete or see further erosion in their browser market share. In short, because Microsoft has a desktop monopoly (90% for 15 years), and they've used it aggressively, they make people a bit unhappy. Personally, I don't care if people choose to use Windows, but many people don't want to, yet they must because of "corporate standards." The only other thing that bugs me is people always want the govt to look into Apple and Google. Everyone seems to have forgotten that Microsoft still has this huge 90% market share. If it could be reduced to 70%, for example, everyone would benefit, including Microsoft users. What's the reason to go after a couple of "small" fish nipping at the heals of Microsoft?
  - 4chan4ever 16y ago
    The number of users who want to run OS X, Ubuntu or *nix as opposed to Windows is a rounding error, for good reason. Buying a non-Windows PC is simply a mistake unless you're an uber-technical type.
- noeldr 16y ago
  this might shed some light on how M$ used to play: http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS.html http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS.html
  - johns 16y ago
    If you ever want to be taken seriously, grow up and knock it off with the childish M$ stuff.
    - blasdel 16y ago
      Yeah, at least go for the good old Micros~1
- philwelch 16y ago
  I'm with Steve Jobs (from back in the day): "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products.... I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success — I have no problem with their success. They've earned their success, for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products."
  - ttrashh 16y ago
    Microsoft seems to be working on it. They are pushing design HARD for their devs. Silverlight and WPF were designed with design in mind. I went to Mix a couple years ago and half the sessions there dealt with design or user experience in some way. Their hardware is not shabby either...zune, xbox 360 (well hardware quality aside), mice, keyboards.
Dobbs 16y ago
I don't believe the Linux vs windows server market share numbers. My current company has about 40 linux servers and 3 windows. My previous company had 1 windows server to 5 linux. The one before that was a similar ratio. I'm looking around online to see how IDC collected/calculated this data but can't see anything that actually says. The only thing I can think of is if they are taking commercial unixes like redhat and suse and comparing them against windows. If that is the case these numbers are beyond worthless due to the fact that most linuxs end up being centos, debian, ubuntu or other free distros.
- donw 16y ago
  I was thinking the same thing; Apache has double the marketshare on the web, and all the computationally intensive plays that I know of use Linux or BSD clusters on the backend. Google alone has somewhere over a million boxes, Amazon isn't exactly tiny, neither is Facebook, and most of the banks that I know of are still Big Iron on the backend.
  - fname 16y ago
    Apache works on Windows too! In my experience, most companies ditched IIS for Apache because it was better. Not to mention a lot of companies building web products for Windows that build on Apache.. That would increase Apache usage numbers too.
  - 10ren 16y ago
    I think Windows Server has a large market share in medium size businesses. Note: they didn't specify "web" server. They didn't specify much. Who knows, maybe they count google as one server? Also, I sometimes think the experiences of us here may be out of touch with what most ordinary businesses do. EDIT funfacts: Here's their source for "linux servers, 21.2%" http://blogs.computerworld.com/15675/idc_windows_dominates_linux_in_servers_not_just_the_desktop http://blogs.computerworld.com/15675/idc_windows_dominates_l... which quotes: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/behind-the-idc-data-windows-still-no-1-in-server-operating-systems/5408 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/behind-the-idc-data-wind... which in turn quotes: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/server-sales-show-signs-of-life-in-the-fourth-quarter-ibm-remains-top-dog/31236 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/server-sales-show-signs-of-lif... which quotes this IDC press release: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?sessionId=&containerId=prUS22224510&sessionId=IL5URBYDC2OK4CQJAFDCFFAKBEAVAIWD http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?sessionId=&containerId=prU... and here's IDC's description of their information product: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=IDC_P348 http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=IDC_P348 I couldn't see linux units mentioned there, nor their methodology, or definition of "server". EDIT2 The bottom of the press release: includes quarterly shipments (both ISS and upgrades) and revenues (both customer and factory), segmented by vendor, family, model, region, operating system, price band, CPU type, and architecture. Doesn't really help, but there's also a phone number and email address.
sprout 16y ago
I just bought a netbook with Windows 7 starter, and I did not wipe the Windows partition. That said, the only reason I'm trotting out that installation is to test my sites on IE. Otherwise, It's Ubuntu all the way. Probably Android when Intel releases the Froyo build. Also maybe Chrome, just for fun. In other words, the only reason I'm keeping Windows is I like playing with barely functional software. (I kid, I kid. Though it did hang for 4 hours on the logout screen.)
4chan4ever 16y ago
What's really fun is watching your typical Apple fanboy's face go pale, then red, then pale again as he reads this post and tries so very hard to understand why the world is throwing these numbers at him which prove how small-time Apple is in any area except the one. : )
whatusername 16y ago
I'm not sure what everyone else's experience is, but the MSN Messenger # feels a bit inflated. I'm in Australia so MSN was the dominant chat platform in the early 2000's. But these days if I want someone to chat to -- they're going to be on FBchat and not MSN. (Which also puts MSFT in second place there behind facebook)
- csomar 16y ago
  Yes, FBchat serves as a quick medium to chat with friends; but once I want to go in a long chat (and may be video/audio), FBchat is unreliable (slow/disconnect).
- city41 16y ago
  I honestly didn't think anyone used FBChat. You are literally the first person I've ever seen anywhere mention using it. Windows Live Messenger has a pretty good stranglehold in the business world, which is a pretty large segment of IM usage.
  - whatusername 16y ago
    :) Always nice to be "cutting edge". Facebook chat is crap - but it works (most of the time at least). It drops out, the text input is tiny, you're tied to FB, etc. But it's good enough. And I'll clarify that that is purely personal use - never used it for work. Do Microsoft have an Intranet focused IM solution ala Lotus Sametime? Notes shops all seem to be running sametime, Exchange shops seem to be not running IM or running public Messenger.
    - city41 16y ago
      Yes, Microsoft has Office Communicator. However, it's a terrible client, it's about on feature parity with AIM version 0.5. It doesn't even turn "http://... http://... strings into hyperlinks.
- robryan 16y ago
  I would agree with this to, maybe it's an Australian thing?
smilliken 16y ago
The techcrunch article is full of pointless commentary, I recommend just reading the original article: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/06/25/microsoft-by-the-numbers.aspx http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/06/25...
- rbanffy 16y ago
  But the original article is a selective disclosure of numbers carefully massaged for showing Microsoft as a solid company with a bright future. TC's commentary is to point this fact out.
mattmaroon 16y ago
MSFT never gets enough credit for what they've done with the Xbox. They've got the #1 machine (by games sold, the metric that counts) in their second at-bat in an industry that has historically dashed consumer electronics companies to bits. They somehow charge 23 million users for the same thing Nintendo and Sony give away for free. They've been at the forefront as far as connectivity and media consumption since the original Xbox. Despite the fact that everyone I know is already on their third or fourth unit due to Red Rings of Death, they all love it.
- masklinn 16y ago
  > They've got the #1 machine (by games sold, the metric that counts) That's not quite true, unless you're talking about games sold per console (which isn't that interesting when you're getting outsold by 30% overall)
- samratjp 16y ago
  So true, MSFT actually got online gaming right for the console and Kinect seems very cool even for the basic media manipulation - beat that, Apple Tv.
- yesimahuman 16y ago
  And I'm looking forward to being able to watch ESPN 3 on the xbox. Another reason to never, ever consider getting cable again (could Live be the future of cable tv?)
  - illumin8 16y ago
    Not likely - I found out that in order to receive ESPN on your Xbox360, your cable operator has to pay ESPN a monthly fee. So, your chances of getting it without also paying for the ESPN cable channel are practically nil. Yet another example of ESPN being one of the worst content cartels of them all.
    - yesimahuman 16y ago
      Well I've got ESPN 3 through AT&T with just internet service, so that's incorrect.
ShabbyDoo 16y ago
The problem with Techcrunch's implicit interpretation of the Microsoft stats is that they mostly are trailing indicators of a business model. Let's take Office as an example. Does anyone seriously think that it will still enjoy network effects five years from now? It was an exciting (at least financially) business model 15 years ago when Microsoft could basically tax the electronic exchange of business information. Now, Office documents can be at least read, if not written, without paying the tax. Word is hurt by the cultural shift away from using it as a means of generating pretty pieces of paper. Better collaboration tools are slowly eroding the Excel as database-synchronized-by-email model that dominates its use (as a percentage of documents). A large user base is nice, but it doesn't justify a high P/E ratio unless it can be leveraged in the future. Look at the "smartphone" numbers. The implicit message was that Apple doesn't really have all that much marketshare. Whatever. But, what's Microsoft have? Close to nothing, and there's little evidence that it's going to catch up. No one in his right mind can claim that the "phone" won't replace many (more) current desktop/laptop use cases in the coming years. What slice of that goes to Microsoft? I don't know much about the CRM space, so I can't comment on the Salesforce.com vs. MSFT thing. But, what's notable is that Microsoft doesn't really enjoy network effects in that space. It must compete like other enterprise software companies -- again, not a model to justify a high P/E. The netbook numbers can be counted as a "save" against consumer-facing Linux distros, but I understand Microsoft to be practically giving away Windows 7 "starter" edition to keep share. Hardly a great model. Furthermore, the OS is little more than a platform for a web browser. Microsoft is doing all the dirty work and making little in return. What if IBM blogged about its huge mainframe market share in the Fortune 500? Should we be excited about the future prospects of z/OS? How many mainframe customers would gladly get rid of their mainframes if switching costs were lower? 80+%? Look at the number of skilled COBOL programmers out there. Surely such a large development community will continue to propel the platform forward? What's causing Microsoft's stock to stagnate is that the company has failed to maintain the network effects that fueled its growth and pricing power. They're becoming yet another company competing for consumer nickels and corporate dollars. While that's well and good, it's not the stuff of hocky stick growth curves. And, Bing? I started using it because of 15% Bing Cash Back deals. Forget doing an actual search or clicking an ad.
- 16y ago
erikpukinskis 16y ago
These numbers would've bothered me ten years ago, but they don't any more. Because no matter how many units Microsoft continues to sell, they no longer set the agenda, and that's the important shift. 10 years ago, the entire industry had to dance around MS on tiptoe. That's over. There is no longer a single app platform that one company controls that dominates the industry. Microsoft is continuing to milk their golden cow by copying all the best features from everyone else's products and using their sales muscle to push their products in large volumes, good for them. But they no longer dictate the technical specifications and business models of the platforms I write for, and as long as that's true they can sell a billion smart phones for all I care.
barmstrong 16y ago
I believe his stats - but WHO are all these people using Windows Live Mail/Messenger, Azure, Windows 7, Windows server, etc? I have yet to meet one. Are these middle America and international markets?
- daeken 16y ago
  I use Windows Live Messenger, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, and will likely use Azure at some point (love the tech, but don't have anything for it yet). We exist.
- richbradshaw 16y ago
  I'm in the UK, a lot of less sophisticated users use MSN chat and many still have hotmail accounts. I guess Microsoft is the default until you know about other alternatives.
- robryan 16y ago
  I use MSN as long as most people I know still login to MSN even if they aren't using it as their primary chat. I use hotmail for a lot of my emailing mainly because I've been using it for 8 years, so everyone has the email and a hotmail account works quiet well for MSN/ windows live mail integration. Not claiming they are the best tools out, just that they get the job done for me. You haven't met people using windows 7? Moving away from the tech crowd pretty much everyone I know is using one of xp/vista or 7.
- bemmu 16y ago
  Also number of people using Azure isn't the metric that's really interesting, a better metric would be something that shows how many server hours were bought in a way that you could compare with EC2. I know Microsoft goes around university campuses trying to get students to use Azure for projects, and hand out a lot of test accounts in the process, inflating their numbers.
- trezor 16y ago
  but WHO are all these people using Windows Live Mail/Messenger, Azure, Windows 7, Windows server, etc? Guilty one here. While I use Windows 7, Windows server (multiple licenses) etc at home, I guess just Windows 7 is the norm for most people I know. At work I can attest to having some hundred Windows Servers and not a single Linux box. As we were a consulting firm, we had lots of different customers but our focus-area was MS-tech. Ofcourse my numbers will be biased, but let me tell you: there are lots of Windows Servers out there. Lots. Sure some Linux-servers here and there as well, but Windows Servers are having pretty good days all in all. As for Windows Live Mail... I dunno, I like gmail better. As for Windows Live Messenger though... At first that seems like a really odd question to me, but really, it's not that special. In my experience IM software is one of the categories of software with the highest geographically variation of any I've come across. In the US I hear people actually use AIM, which is entirely unheard of in the rest of the world. In Europe, you will find MSN is the status quo. In Australia Yahoo Messenger seems to be pretty big (or so it seems), but I've never seen anyone use it elsewhere. The interesting thing about this kind of software is how it's not the software itself which is drawing users. It's who you can reach (ie, userbase). So if everyone in your area is using product X, it doesn't matter if product Y does everything ten times better, it will still be useless to you unless you can reach the userbase of product X. Whoever gets users first wins (because who seriously bothers to run several IM applications?). And then it just seems to stay that way. If I were to take my (severely) biased impression and generalize, I would say everyone is using every product from Microsoft, with the noteworthy exception of BizTalk. Linux can only be seen on netbooks or as a means of bypassing the corporate web-filter. Oracle does exist, but only in very few companies which rakes in billions. MySQL doesn't exist at all, except for in the bottom-tier web-hosting basket. But I'm not going to do that, and I suggest you don't take (what I assume is) your Linux-hacker biased experiences and overgeneralise them either. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
michaelfairley 16y ago
For the "Global Windows Live Mail users", it would be nicer if they used active users (signed in during the past 90 days) to compare. I know I have a few Windows Live email accounts sitting around that I haven't touched in forever.
- scorpion032 16y ago
  Wouldn't that defeat the original purpose of posting it? ;)
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gvb 16y ago
See Seven Copies of Windows 7 Per Second: Fast! But How Fast? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1466549 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1466549 for a fun way to put the numbers in perspective. (links to http://technologizer.com/2010/06/27/seven-copies-of-windows-7-per-second-fast-but-how-fast/ http://technologizer.com/2010/06/27/seven-copies-of-windows-...)
notirk 16y ago
I just finished reading the MSFT blog post that this TechCrunch piece got its info from. I then went to nytimes.com and an ad on the site was "While you were reading this, 21 people bought Windows 7...Click here to learn more" and it takes you right to the MSFT blog with these numbers. I don't think this site and these numbers are a professional way to run a marketing campaign. Especially when your campaign lists net income on it and compares it with two of your growing, trendy competitors. It just feels...tacky. And that is coming from a user who switched to Windows 7 after using OSX for 4 years.

170 points by fname 16y ago

eam 16y ago

Microsoft is a great company, I don't know why a lot of people dislike them. Look at their track record, look at the numbers they're impressive. Perhaps it's jealousy, who knows? Sure they have done several mistakes along the way ahem ie6... But you know what, at the end what matter is the profits. I don't know why people bash on them for their closed source technologies. They're here to make money, if they wanted to give away everything they would have been a charity not a business! You might as well go bash on coke, their ingredients are "closed source." In order for a taco truck to make money they got to sell their tacos, can't give them away now can they? In a nutshell all you who hate Microsoft, find a better reason to hate them. You can't say ie9, because it's beginning to look like it'll be an awesome browser for users and developers alike. End rant. Sorry if this is a little off topic. :)

gvb 16y ago
Beyond being convicted of abusing their monopoly, Microsoft has a long history of pulling dirty tricks on its competitors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft http://grokdoc.net/index.php/Dirty_Tricks_history http://grokdoc.net/index.php/Dirty_Tricks_history http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2007/02/microsoft_dirty_tric_1.html http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2007/02/microsoft_dirty_...
- j_lagof 16y ago
  Apple has been doing way worse things and nobody (of importance) seems to care.
csomar 16y ago
>> Sure they have done several mistakes along the way ahem ie6 IE6 is not a mistake. It's old. It first come with Windows XP and Windows XP is 8 years old. At the time, IE6 was fine.
- jomohke 16y ago
  Yep, this always bugs me too. When it came out it had quite a good rendering engine compared to most (all?) competitors. The problem arose from Microsoft disbanding the IE team and not releasing a new version for so many years. It fell behind from age.
  - borisk 16y ago
    Microsoft wanted ppl to develop Win32/.NET apps, not Web stuff. So no reason to improve IE 6.
- TomOfTTB 16y ago
  It depends what part of the process yor're referring to. IE6's initial development wasn't a mistake. But disbanding the IE specific development team, abandoning all platforms that weren't windows and not updating it for years and years were mistakes and all those things happened in the era of IE6
  - shadowfox 16y ago
    Disbanding of the team appears to have a lot to do with the anti-trust cases though.
CapitalistCartr 16y ago
You might be too young to remember the days when MS ruled with an iron fist. When they got IBM to use their DOS, they structured the licensing so that the only affordable one was to pay MS for every box that went out the door, no matter which OS was on it. So a shop could either sell only MS-DOS, or not offer it at all, and any shop that didn't offer it couldn't stay in business, once IBM "approved" of MS-DOS. When they came out with any software, they chose the most confusing name possible. "Windows" was a generic term for any the panes in windowing GUI, until MS appropriated the word. Then came "Word", which sounded like about all the competition out there. Once they had the OS market sewn up, they used that to make their other software work better than anyone elses, with undocumented APIs. Then they offered "bundles" which meant, if you used their OS, which of course every business had to, you couldn't afford to turn down their other offerings. This might sound like fair, tough competition, but the reality was that they used their money and clout to run the competition out of business, then their de facto monopoly to make a fortune. And tough but fair, often gave way to threats. If a retailer didn't play ball, getting rid of competition, they would pull their joint marketing/advertising deals. If a small business came up with anything interesting, they'd swallow it, or run it out of business by any means necessary. This did more to stifle innovation for about 15 years than anything else. This is only the beginning of why people don't like MS. If we were to all post here, it would become an encyclopedia.
- codingthewheel 16y ago
  Wow. You are completely misinformed and, I suspect, just trolling (and presuming to instruct others) based upon events you had no connection with and only understand second-hand from others. By the way, your allegation that Microsoft "stole all the simple-sounding names" is just laughable. I'd dissect the rest of your argument but frankly, I got tired of swatting flies like you years ago. The only accurate statement in your entire rant? MS-DOS. And even that's slanted.
  - xcombinator 16y ago
    He is not.If you think he is the misinformed person is you. You can inform yourself.Search for DRDOS.Search for windows trademark issues,lindows, you know what? they were an entire line of windows branded products before MS, MS destroyed them all, you can search what happened to them. Windows is a generic word, it can't never be trademarked(unless you are rich to get over the law), that applies to "word", "powerpoint", "project", "excel", "exchange". A word in the English dictionary just can't be trademarked, by law. Maybe you were a kid then, but there was a time when "word" was not the most used word processor, it was "WordPerfect", and people used Lotus123 instead of "excel". What did MS did? They made windows but didn't let WordPerfect and Lotus123 people(and everybody else, like compiler builders) use the windows API, so MS had a 4 year period of advantage. Once they did, the high level exposed API was slower than what MS used. I'm tired too. When people don't know they don't know what they don't know.
melling 16y ago
In the 1990's Microsoft forced every computer vendor to pay them for a DOS license regardless of whether they shipped DOS on the PC (did this apply to Windows?) They basically killed any chance of a competing OS in the PC world (4DOS, Quarterdeck, BeOS, Unix, OS/2). The US govt eventually forced them to stop this practice, but it was too late by then. Competition all dead. Another example, they built the browser into the operating system, thus killing of Netscape. Once they did that they let IE stagnate for several years, providing no innovation (IE6 is 2001). We are finally crawling out of that hole. IE9 is going to be good because it has competition and Microsoft now must compete or see further erosion in their browser market share. In short, because Microsoft has a desktop monopoly (90% for 15 years), and they've used it aggressively, they make people a bit unhappy. Personally, I don't care if people choose to use Windows, but many people don't want to, yet they must because of "corporate standards." The only other thing that bugs me is people always want the govt to look into Apple and Google. Everyone seems to have forgotten that Microsoft still has this huge 90% market share. If it could be reduced to 70%, for example, everyone would benefit, including Microsoft users. What's the reason to go after a couple of "small" fish nipping at the heals of Microsoft?
- 4chan4ever 16y ago
  The number of users who want to run OS X, Ubuntu or *nix as opposed to Windows is a rounding error, for good reason. Buying a non-Windows PC is simply a mistake unless you're an uber-technical type.
noeldr 16y ago
this might shed some light on how M$ used to play: http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS.html http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS.html
- johns 16y ago
  If you ever want to be taken seriously, grow up and knock it off with the childish M$ stuff.
  - blasdel 16y ago
    Yeah, at least go for the good old Micros~1
philwelch 16y ago
I'm with Steve Jobs (from back in the day): "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products.... I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success — I have no problem with their success. They've earned their success, for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products."
- ttrashh 16y ago
  Microsoft seems to be working on it. They are pushing design HARD for their devs. Silverlight and WPF were designed with design in mind. I went to Mix a couple years ago and half the sessions there dealt with design or user experience in some way. Their hardware is not shabby either...zune, xbox 360 (well hardware quality aside), mice, keyboards.

Dobbs 16y ago

I don't believe the Linux vs windows server market share numbers. My current company has about 40 linux servers and 3 windows. My previous company had 1 windows server to 5 linux. The one before that was a similar ratio. I'm looking around online to see how IDC collected/calculated this data but can't see anything that actually says. The only thing I can think of is if they are taking commercial unixes like redhat and suse and comparing them against windows. If that is the case these numbers are beyond worthless due to the fact that most linuxs end up being centos, debian, ubuntu or other free distros.

donw 16y ago
I was thinking the same thing; Apache has double the marketshare on the web, and all the computationally intensive plays that I know of use Linux or BSD clusters on the backend. Google alone has somewhere over a million boxes, Amazon isn't exactly tiny, neither is Facebook, and most of the banks that I know of are still Big Iron on the backend.
- fname 16y ago
  Apache works on Windows too! In my experience, most companies ditched IIS for Apache because it was better. Not to mention a lot of companies building web products for Windows that build on Apache.. That would increase Apache usage numbers too.
- 10ren 16y ago
  I think Windows Server has a large market share in medium size businesses. Note: they didn't specify "web" server. They didn't specify much. Who knows, maybe they count google as one server? Also, I sometimes think the experiences of us here may be out of touch with what most ordinary businesses do. EDIT funfacts: Here's their source for "linux servers, 21.2%" http://blogs.computerworld.com/15675/idc_windows_dominates_linux_in_servers_not_just_the_desktop http://blogs.computerworld.com/15675/idc_windows_dominates_l... which quotes: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/behind-the-idc-data-windows-still-no-1-in-server-operating-systems/5408 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/behind-the-idc-data-wind... which in turn quotes: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/server-sales-show-signs-of-life-in-the-fourth-quarter-ibm-remains-top-dog/31236 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/server-sales-show-signs-of-lif... which quotes this IDC press release: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?sessionId=&containerId=prUS22224510&sessionId=IL5URBYDC2OK4CQJAFDCFFAKBEAVAIWD http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?sessionId=&containerId=prU... and here's IDC's description of their information product: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=IDC_P348 http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=IDC_P348 I couldn't see linux units mentioned there, nor their methodology, or definition of "server". EDIT2 The bottom of the press release: includes quarterly shipments (both ISS and upgrades) and revenues (both customer and factory), segmented by vendor, family, model, region, operating system, price band, CPU type, and architecture. Doesn't really help, but there's also a phone number and email address.

sprout 16y ago

I just bought a netbook with Windows 7 starter, and I did not wipe the Windows partition. That said, the only reason I'm trotting out that installation is to test my sites on IE. Otherwise, It's Ubuntu all the way. Probably Android when Intel releases the Froyo build. Also maybe Chrome, just for fun. In other words, the only reason I'm keeping Windows is I like playing with barely functional software. (I kid, I kid. Though it did hang for 4 hours on the logout screen.)

4chan4ever 16y ago

What's really fun is watching your typical Apple fanboy's face go pale, then red, then pale again as he reads this post and tries so very hard to understand why the world is throwing these numbers at him which prove how small-time Apple is in any area except the one. : )

whatusername 16y ago

I'm not sure what everyone else's experience is, but the MSN Messenger # feels a bit inflated. I'm in Australia so MSN was the dominant chat platform in the early 2000's. But these days if I want someone to chat to -- they're going to be on FBchat and not MSN. (Which also puts MSFT in second place there behind facebook)

csomar 16y ago
Yes, FBchat serves as a quick medium to chat with friends; but once I want to go in a long chat (and may be video/audio), FBchat is unreliable (slow/disconnect).
city41 16y ago
I honestly didn't think anyone used FBChat. You are literally the first person I've ever seen anywhere mention using it. Windows Live Messenger has a pretty good stranglehold in the business world, which is a pretty large segment of IM usage.
- whatusername 16y ago
  :) Always nice to be "cutting edge". Facebook chat is crap - but it works (most of the time at least). It drops out, the text input is tiny, you're tied to FB, etc. But it's good enough. And I'll clarify that that is purely personal use - never used it for work. Do Microsoft have an Intranet focused IM solution ala Lotus Sametime? Notes shops all seem to be running sametime, Exchange shops seem to be not running IM or running public Messenger.
  - city41 16y ago
    Yes, Microsoft has Office Communicator. However, it's a terrible client, it's about on feature parity with AIM version 0.5. It doesn't even turn "http://... http://... strings into hyperlinks.
robryan 16y ago
I would agree with this to, maybe it's an Australian thing?

smilliken 16y ago

The techcrunch article is full of pointless commentary, I recommend just reading the original article: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/06/25/microsoft-by-the-numbers.aspx http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/06/25...

rbanffy 16y ago
But the original article is a selective disclosure of numbers carefully massaged for showing Microsoft as a solid company with a bright future. TC's commentary is to point this fact out.

mattmaroon 16y ago

MSFT never gets enough credit for what they've done with the Xbox. They've got the #1 machine (by games sold, the metric that counts) in their second at-bat in an industry that has historically dashed consumer electronics companies to bits. They somehow charge 23 million users for the same thing Nintendo and Sony give away for free. They've been at the forefront as far as connectivity and media consumption since the original Xbox. Despite the fact that everyone I know is already on their third or fourth unit due to Red Rings of Death, they all love it.

masklinn 16y ago
> They've got the #1 machine (by games sold, the metric that counts) That's not quite true, unless you're talking about games sold per console (which isn't that interesting when you're getting outsold by 30% overall)
samratjp 16y ago
So true, MSFT actually got online gaming right for the console and Kinect seems very cool even for the basic media manipulation - beat that, Apple Tv.
yesimahuman 16y ago
And I'm looking forward to being able to watch ESPN 3 on the xbox. Another reason to never, ever consider getting cable again (could Live be the future of cable tv?)
- illumin8 16y ago
  Not likely - I found out that in order to receive ESPN on your Xbox360, your cable operator has to pay ESPN a monthly fee. So, your chances of getting it without also paying for the ESPN cable channel are practically nil. Yet another example of ESPN being one of the worst content cartels of them all.
  - yesimahuman 16y ago
    Well I've got ESPN 3 through AT&T with just internet service, so that's incorrect.

ShabbyDoo 16y ago

The problem with Techcrunch's implicit interpretation of the Microsoft stats is that they mostly are trailing indicators of a business model. Let's take Office as an example. Does anyone seriously think that it will still enjoy network effects five years from now? It was an exciting (at least financially) business model 15 years ago when Microsoft could basically tax the electronic exchange of business information. Now, Office documents can be at least read, if not written, without paying the tax. Word is hurt by the cultural shift away from using it as a means of generating pretty pieces of paper. Better collaboration tools are slowly eroding the Excel as database-synchronized-by-email model that dominates its use (as a percentage of documents). A large user base is nice, but it doesn't justify a high P/E ratio unless it can be leveraged in the future. Look at the "smartphone" numbers. The implicit message was that Apple doesn't really have all that much marketshare. Whatever. But, what's Microsoft have? Close to nothing, and there's little evidence that it's going to catch up. No one in his right mind can claim that the "phone" won't replace many (more) current desktop/laptop use cases in the coming years. What slice of that goes to Microsoft? I don't know much about the CRM space, so I can't comment on the Salesforce.com vs. MSFT thing. But, what's notable is that Microsoft doesn't really enjoy network effects in that space. It must compete like other enterprise software companies -- again, not a model to justify a high P/E. The netbook numbers can be counted as a "save" against consumer-facing Linux distros, but I understand Microsoft to be practically giving away Windows 7 "starter" edition to keep share. Hardly a great model. Furthermore, the OS is little more than a platform for a web browser. Microsoft is doing all the dirty work and making little in return. What if IBM blogged about its huge mainframe market share in the Fortune 500? Should we be excited about the future prospects of z/OS? How many mainframe customers would gladly get rid of their mainframes if switching costs were lower? 80+%? Look at the number of skilled COBOL programmers out there. Surely such a large development community will continue to propel the platform forward? What's causing Microsoft's stock to stagnate is that the company has failed to maintain the network effects that fueled its growth and pricing power. They're becoming yet another company competing for consumer nickels and corporate dollars. While that's well and good, it's not the stuff of hocky stick growth curves. And, Bing? I started using it because of 15% Bing Cash Back deals. Forget doing an actual search or clicking an ad.

16y ago

erikpukinskis 16y ago

These numbers would've bothered me ten years ago, but they don't any more. Because no matter how many units Microsoft continues to sell, they no longer set the agenda, and that's the important shift. 10 years ago, the entire industry had to dance around MS on tiptoe. That's over. There is no longer a single app platform that one company controls that dominates the industry. Microsoft is continuing to milk their golden cow by copying all the best features from everyone else's products and using their sales muscle to push their products in large volumes, good for them. But they no longer dictate the technical specifications and business models of the platforms I write for, and as long as that's true they can sell a billion smart phones for all I care.

barmstrong 16y ago

I believe his stats - but WHO are all these people using Windows Live Mail/Messenger, Azure, Windows 7, Windows server, etc? I have yet to meet one. Are these middle America and international markets?

daeken 16y ago
I use Windows Live Messenger, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, and will likely use Azure at some point (love the tech, but don't have anything for it yet). We exist.
richbradshaw 16y ago
I'm in the UK, a lot of less sophisticated users use MSN chat and many still have hotmail accounts. I guess Microsoft is the default until you know about other alternatives.
robryan 16y ago
I use MSN as long as most people I know still login to MSN even if they aren't using it as their primary chat. I use hotmail for a lot of my emailing mainly because I've been using it for 8 years, so everyone has the email and a hotmail account works quiet well for MSN/ windows live mail integration. Not claiming they are the best tools out, just that they get the job done for me. You haven't met people using windows 7? Moving away from the tech crowd pretty much everyone I know is using one of xp/vista or 7.
bemmu 16y ago
Also number of people using Azure isn't the metric that's really interesting, a better metric would be something that shows how many server hours were bought in a way that you could compare with EC2. I know Microsoft goes around university campuses trying to get students to use Azure for projects, and hand out a lot of test accounts in the process, inflating their numbers.
trezor 16y ago
but WHO are all these people using Windows Live Mail/Messenger, Azure, Windows 7, Windows server, etc? Guilty one here. While I use Windows 7, Windows server (multiple licenses) etc at home, I guess just Windows 7 is the norm for most people I know. At work I can attest to having some hundred Windows Servers and not a single Linux box. As we were a consulting firm, we had lots of different customers but our focus-area was MS-tech. Ofcourse my numbers will be biased, but let me tell you: there are lots of Windows Servers out there. Lots. Sure some Linux-servers here and there as well, but Windows Servers are having pretty good days all in all. As for Windows Live Mail... I dunno, I like gmail better. As for Windows Live Messenger though... At first that seems like a really odd question to me, but really, it's not that special. In my experience IM software is one of the categories of software with the highest geographically variation of any I've come across. In the US I hear people actually use AIM, which is entirely unheard of in the rest of the world. In Europe, you will find MSN is the status quo. In Australia Yahoo Messenger seems to be pretty big (or so it seems), but I've never seen anyone use it elsewhere. The interesting thing about this kind of software is how it's not the software itself which is drawing users. It's who you can reach (ie, userbase). So if everyone in your area is using product X, it doesn't matter if product Y does everything ten times better, it will still be useless to you unless you can reach the userbase of product X. Whoever gets users first wins (because who seriously bothers to run several IM applications?). And then it just seems to stay that way. If I were to take my (severely) biased impression and generalize, I would say everyone is using every product from Microsoft, with the noteworthy exception of BizTalk. Linux can only be seen on netbooks or as a means of bypassing the corporate web-filter. Oracle does exist, but only in very few companies which rakes in billions. MySQL doesn't exist at all, except for in the bottom-tier web-hosting basket. But I'm not going to do that, and I suggest you don't take (what I assume is) your Linux-hacker biased experiences and overgeneralise them either. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

michaelfairley 16y ago

For the "Global Windows Live Mail users", it would be nicer if they used active users (signed in during the past 90 days) to compare. I know I have a few Windows Live email accounts sitting around that I haven't touched in forever.

scorpion032 16y ago
Wouldn't that defeat the original purpose of posting it? ;)

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gvb 16y ago

See Seven Copies of Windows 7 Per Second: Fast! But How Fast? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1466549 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1466549 for a fun way to put the numbers in perspective. (links to http://technologizer.com/2010/06/27/seven-copies-of-windows-7-per-second-fast-but-how-fast/ http://technologizer.com/2010/06/27/seven-copies-of-windows-...)

notirk 16y ago

I just finished reading the MSFT blog post that this TechCrunch piece got its info from. I then went to nytimes.com and an ad on the site was "While you were reading this, 21 people bought Windows 7...Click here to learn more" and it takes you right to the MSFT blog with these numbers. I don't think this site and these numbers are a professional way to run a marketing campaign. Especially when your campaign lists net income on it and compares it with two of your growing, trendy competitors. It just feels...tacky. And that is coming from a user who switched to Windows 7 after using OSX for 4 years.