3 ms·

I want to think of something positive about MSFT but I can't find anything. Can anyone remember the last time MSFT innovated something (not followed an existing

by pavs 16y ago

I want to think of something positive about MSFT but I can't find anything. Can anyone remember the last time MSFT innovated something (not followed an existing market/paradigm) and led the market by sheer quality of the innovation (not because of monopoly)? The only product that I can think of is Xbox360.

pclark 16y ago
MSFT has pretty much always been a second mover. When you're as large as Microsoft you need to confirm the markets you enter are $2BN+ and a good way to do that is wait for someone to prove the market first. Also Bing is a very innovative search product.
daeken 16y ago
I don't know about the numbers on it, but as far as I'm aware, .NET is quite successful. While the original release was fairly poor and highly derivative of the Java world, they've done an incredible job from .NET 2 and up. With each release, they've made the framework more useful, they've improved their languages (I'm not a fan, but C# has come a long way), and MSR has been doing awesome work on the research side of things. There are a lot of negative things you can say about .NET, but I don't think a lack of innovation is one of them.
ido 16y ago
XBox Live (which was available way before the 360) & its marketplace were quite innovative (although not the first of their kind, I think they were both the first really successful implementations).
WalterGR 16y ago
Can anyone remember the last time MSFT innovated something (not followed an existing market/paradigm) and led the market by sheer quality of the innovation (not because of monopoly)? I can't remember the last time any tech company created a market/paradigm and then proceeded to lead it [1]. Can you think of any companies? [1] Presumably you meant for some particular measure of time.
- hga 16y ago
  FPGAs by Xilinx starting in 1985?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- pavs 16y ago
  Apple did it with iPod/iPhone/iPad. Sure mp3 players, multi-touch phones and tablet devices was there even before Apple released theirs. But can you dismiss their contribution in innovation in this sectors? Apple virtually, single-handedly created markets for these devices. Everyone flowed after them. Same can said about Kindle. There e-readers before kindle, but amazon jump started the market with their innovation on the device. I am sure I can find examples of few other tech companies who have done massive innovations if I took some time to research. But MSFT, being the top 5 richest/largest tech company in the world have done very little (if any) innovations that made the world follow them.
awa 16y ago
One of the problems is that MSFT is too large, so they tend to look for market opportunities > $1B if they want to do something. Hence, usually they enter a sector only if some other company has already done some good work to make the sector look juicy enough

by pavs 16y ago

pclark 16y ago

MSFT has pretty much always been a second mover. When you're as large as Microsoft you need to confirm the markets you enter are $2BN+ and a good way to do that is wait for someone to prove the market first. Also Bing is a very innovative search product.

daeken 16y ago

I don't know about the numbers on it, but as far as I'm aware, .NET is quite successful. While the original release was fairly poor and highly derivative of the Java world, they've done an incredible job from .NET 2 and up. With each release, they've made the framework more useful, they've improved their languages (I'm not a fan, but C# has come a long way), and MSR has been doing awesome work on the research side of things. There are a lot of negative things you can say about .NET, but I don't think a lack of innovation is one of them.

ido 16y ago

XBox Live (which was available way before the 360) & its marketplace were quite innovative (although not the first of their kind, I think they were both the first really successful implementations).

WalterGR 16y ago

Can anyone remember the last time MSFT innovated something (not followed an existing market/paradigm) and led the market by sheer quality of the innovation (not because of monopoly)? I can't remember the last time any tech company created a market/paradigm and then proceeded to lead it [1]. Can you think of any companies? [1] Presumably you meant for some particular measure of time.

hga 16y ago
FPGAs by Xilinx starting in 1985?
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
pavs 16y ago
Apple did it with iPod/iPhone/iPad. Sure mp3 players, multi-touch phones and tablet devices was there even before Apple released theirs. But can you dismiss their contribution in innovation in this sectors? Apple virtually, single-handedly created markets for these devices. Everyone flowed after them. Same can said about Kindle. There e-readers before kindle, but amazon jump started the market with their innovation on the device. I am sure I can find examples of few other tech companies who have done massive innovations if I took some time to research. But MSFT, being the top 5 richest/largest tech company in the world have done very little (if any) innovations that made the world follow them.

awa 16y ago

One of the problems is that MSFT is too large, so they tend to look for market opportunities > $1B if they want to do something. Hence, usually they enter a sector only if some other company has already done some good work to make the sector look juicy enough