6 ms·

Before succumbing to schadenfreude just remember that this will eventually happen to your favorite tech company in the future, be it HP, Dell, Apple, Google, Ya

Before succumbing to schadenfreude just remember that this will eventually happen to your favorite tech company in the future, be it HP, Dell, Apple, Google, Yahoo, Fog Creek, Amazon, Y Combinator, etc. Companies have ups and down. Hopefully MS will see this as a learning experience, become a better competitor and then we as consumers will benefit.

lanstein 16y ago
/ did happen in the past (Apple)
- Anechoic 16y ago
  Sure, and it's arguably happening right now to some of the companies I mentioned (Dell, Yahoo) but if/when they recover it will likely happen again. Apple will likely face bad times at some point in the future.
  - timr 16y ago
    Don't tell anyone, but I think it's happening to Google right now. It's just early stages (like MS in 1995), and Google still has more good products than bad, so it isn't exceptionally noticeable. But the recent, high-profile launch disasters, the clutter that's slowly creeping into the result pages, and stuff like the search page background goofiness...they sure feel like early MS-style mistakes.....
    - nostrademons 16y ago
      MS in 1995 still had many, many years of good work ahead of it. Remember that they won the browser wars, after everyone had written them off as being too big and clumsy to adapt to change. That was also when we got Win2k and WinXP (arguably the best versions of Windows ever) and their Office product matured into its familiar form. I'd say Microsoft started going downhill after 2002, when they disbanded the IE team and embarked on the disaster that was Vista. But I remember that when I started college in 2001, I hated Microsoft and yet virtually all the software on my computer was by them. It's a sign of market dominance when your customers hate you and yet use your products anyway. ;-)
      - varjag 16y ago
        It might be more a sign of you growing up than of MSFT changing its market position though ;)
      - timr 16y ago
        "MS in 1995 still had many, many years of good work ahead of it. Remember that they won the browser wars, after everyone had written them off as being too big and clumsy to adapt to change. That was also when we got Win2k and WinXP (arguably the best versions of Windows ever) and their Office product matured into its familiar form." Eh. We also got WindowsME in 2000, which was arguably the worst version ever. And to be fair, Office has been mostly re-arranging the furniture and re-painting the walls since Office95. And...let's not forget Bob. Bob was Microsoft's Buzz, circa 1995. That said, sure, it's not like MS got to their current state on January 1, 1996. And there's no way I'd argue that they (or Google) are going away soon. My point is only that Google is starting to show signs of lumbering corporate giant-hood, and that it has happened pretty quickly, in comparison to MS.
      - tomjen3 16y ago
        Sorry but I doubt that holds - MS produced their worst software even during that time, Windows Me. And Win7 is miles ahead of XP, although XP is better than Vista.
    - InclinedPlane 16y ago
      Google is probably past an inflection point, they've still got plenty of upward momentum and almost certainly won't peak for many, many years. However, Google seems to have empire-itis just like any other big company. Eventually they'll start believing their own BS more than they will external truths, they'll become process bound and bureaucracy bound, they'll start to saddle themselves with more and more strategy taxes until they become increasingly like any other big company. There's still time for that not to happen, but all the signs are pointing that way.
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
- rbanffy 16y ago
  It's complicated. Apple's products were always highly regarded. Their problem was pricing - they charged too much for boxes Dell sold for much less.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    Apple's products weren't highly regarded through most of the 90s. The survived on a niche market at the time, but weren't highly regarded during this phase either for their design or technical architecture. Pricing wasn't their problem -- their products were the problem. It wasn't until 2000 or so when they got their mojo back.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      They were highly regarded in their niches. If you needed a computer to edit photos or to assemble a print publication, a Mac would be your obvious choice. In the PowePC era, it was the fastest computer you could buy that ran off-th-shelf productivity software and many found their way into labs as instrument controllers. Considering the size of their lineup, a couple lemons (pun intended) were to be expected. Still, considering how many models were made, I saw more bad computers coming from PC makers. And, until the arrival of NT4, PC GUIs had little to no advantage over what Apple was offering. Windows was ugly and crash-prone. In retrospect, NT4 was also very crash prone, probably because MS moved graphics drivers onto kernel space. Windows only became more acceptable (some would prefer "less offensive") visually with the NeXT-like visuals of 95.
      - steadicat 16y ago
        That's not the history as I remember it. Windows 95 came before NT4, and it was the first to introduce the famous "start button" visuals. 95 however was still based on the old kernel and it crashed a lot. NT4 came later, with the same visuals, but due to the NT kernel it was remarkably stable.
        dflock 16y ago
        Windows NT4 was much more stable than the previous Win3.11->95->98->Me line, but - primarily due to moving Graphics drives into the kernel for performance - was considerably less stable than its immediate predecessor in the NT line, Windows NT 3.51.
- philwelch 16y ago
  HP, too.
thought_alarm 16y ago
Yes, but most companies can't rely on the revenue from two gigantic monopolies to keep the zombie alive. It will take a lot more than the failure of the Kin (which it appears was set up to fail all along) to change the corporate and engineering culture at MS.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  Which means it will bleed more and longer than any previous tech giant. I'll grab my popcorn and enjoy it thoroughly.
  - nostrademons 16y ago
    IBM has been bleeding for a long time and they still haven't died yet.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      Sadly, IBM is far less entertaining to watch.
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        And, I would like to point out, is almost as entertaining as watching Sun bleed dry. Not at all.
    - wallflower 16y ago
      I've always been amazed looking back at how IBM embraced open source back in the early 90s with a vengeance. I wonder if this saved the company.
      - nostrademons 16y ago
        I think it both saved and killed the company. It saved the company in that it stopped the hemorrhaging of cash and gave them an actually profitable business model. Without this, they would've gone out of business entirely sometime in the early-mid 90s. It killed them as a center of innovation. IBM hasn't invented anything worthwhile since the IBM PC in 1981. (No, I don't count Eclipse: IntelliJ idea came out first and better, and yet was eclipsed because IBM could afford to offer their product for free.) Maybe that's the dilemma that Microsoft now faces. They can embrace their mediocrity, cater to their existing customer base, and continue to milk billions a year from their Winoffice monopoly. Or they can try to innovate. But most of their recent projects seem like they're trying to innovate and the coming out thoroughly mediocre, which isn't really a good combination.
mikecane 16y ago
Or MS is next in line after Nokia and Sony, on the downward spiral. Seemingly-invincible companies go under all the time. It doesn't have to be one big explosion, but death by a thousand cuts.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
Any company that has empire-itis, yes. But there's hope that some companies can escape that disease.
signa11 16y ago
> Hopefully MS will see this as a learning experience... if the london-stock-exchange fiasco didn't change anything at microsoft, i doubt that this will have any impact at all.
- WorkerBee 16y ago
  the london-stock-exchange fiasco Are you referring to this? http://blogs.computerworld.com/london_stock_exchange_to_abandon_failed_windows_platform http://blogs.computerworld.com/london_stock_exchange_to_aban... Despite the ignorant and inflammatory commentary that I linked to, I doubt that Accenture's failure to write a system in C# raised much of a wave inside Microsoft. Accenture could have made the same mistakes in Java or in any other language.
gaius 16y ago
It happened already to HP. All the cool people quit en masse and formed Agilent.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  Wasn't Agilent owned by HP?
  - gaius 16y ago
    I was being a little facetious - HP split in two, with one half called Agilent taking the instruments, calculators and so on, and the other half still called HP doing PCs, printers, cameras. When people think of HP as being a great engineering firm, and a great place to work, they're thinking of the bit that became Agilent.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      I really liked the computers the calculator division made.
tomjen3 16y ago
Companies have their ups and downs (thats the funny thing about the runway start ups usually talk about, there is normally another in the end that you go down on). But Fog Creek and Y combinator aren't near big enough for them to collaps like that, so I doubt that they will fall that far. Remember the bigger they are, they harder they fall. And lets face it - Microsoft is insanely big.

lanstein 16y ago

/ did happen in the past (Apple)

Anechoic 16y ago
Sure, and it's arguably happening right now to some of the companies I mentioned (Dell, Yahoo) but if/when they recover it will likely happen again. Apple will likely face bad times at some point in the future.
- timr 16y ago
  Don't tell anyone, but I think it's happening to Google right now. It's just early stages (like MS in 1995), and Google still has more good products than bad, so it isn't exceptionally noticeable. But the recent, high-profile launch disasters, the clutter that's slowly creeping into the result pages, and stuff like the search page background goofiness...they sure feel like early MS-style mistakes.....
  - nostrademons 16y ago
    MS in 1995 still had many, many years of good work ahead of it. Remember that they won the browser wars, after everyone had written them off as being too big and clumsy to adapt to change. That was also when we got Win2k and WinXP (arguably the best versions of Windows ever) and their Office product matured into its familiar form. I'd say Microsoft started going downhill after 2002, when they disbanded the IE team and embarked on the disaster that was Vista. But I remember that when I started college in 2001, I hated Microsoft and yet virtually all the software on my computer was by them. It's a sign of market dominance when your customers hate you and yet use your products anyway. ;-)
    - varjag 16y ago
      It might be more a sign of you growing up than of MSFT changing its market position though ;)
    - timr 16y ago
      "MS in 1995 still had many, many years of good work ahead of it. Remember that they won the browser wars, after everyone had written them off as being too big and clumsy to adapt to change. That was also when we got Win2k and WinXP (arguably the best versions of Windows ever) and their Office product matured into its familiar form." Eh. We also got WindowsME in 2000, which was arguably the worst version ever. And to be fair, Office has been mostly re-arranging the furniture and re-painting the walls since Office95. And...let's not forget Bob. Bob was Microsoft's Buzz, circa 1995. That said, sure, it's not like MS got to their current state on January 1, 1996. And there's no way I'd argue that they (or Google) are going away soon. My point is only that Google is starting to show signs of lumbering corporate giant-hood, and that it has happened pretty quickly, in comparison to MS.
    - tomjen3 16y ago
      Sorry but I doubt that holds - MS produced their worst software even during that time, Windows Me. And Win7 is miles ahead of XP, although XP is better than Vista.
  - InclinedPlane 16y ago
    Google is probably past an inflection point, they've still got plenty of upward momentum and almost certainly won't peak for many, many years. However, Google seems to have empire-itis just like any other big company. Eventually they'll start believing their own BS more than they will external truths, they'll become process bound and bureaucracy bound, they'll start to saddle themselves with more and more strategy taxes until they become increasingly like any other big company. There's still time for that not to happen, but all the signs are pointing that way.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
rbanffy 16y ago
It's complicated. Apple's products were always highly regarded. Their problem was pricing - they charged too much for boxes Dell sold for much less.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  Apple's products weren't highly regarded through most of the 90s. The survived on a niche market at the time, but weren't highly regarded during this phase either for their design or technical architecture. Pricing wasn't their problem -- their products were the problem. It wasn't until 2000 or so when they got their mojo back.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    They were highly regarded in their niches. If you needed a computer to edit photos or to assemble a print publication, a Mac would be your obvious choice. In the PowePC era, it was the fastest computer you could buy that ran off-th-shelf productivity software and many found their way into labs as instrument controllers. Considering the size of their lineup, a couple lemons (pun intended) were to be expected. Still, considering how many models were made, I saw more bad computers coming from PC makers. And, until the arrival of NT4, PC GUIs had little to no advantage over what Apple was offering. Windows was ugly and crash-prone. In retrospect, NT4 was also very crash prone, probably because MS moved graphics drivers onto kernel space. Windows only became more acceptable (some would prefer "less offensive") visually with the NeXT-like visuals of 95.
    - steadicat 16y ago
      That's not the history as I remember it. Windows 95 came before NT4, and it was the first to introduce the famous "start button" visuals. 95 however was still based on the old kernel and it crashed a lot. NT4 came later, with the same visuals, but due to the NT kernel it was remarkably stable.
      - dflock 16y ago
        Windows NT4 was much more stable than the previous Win3.11->95->98->Me line, but - primarily due to moving Graphics drives into the kernel for performance - was considerably less stable than its immediate predecessor in the NT line, Windows NT 3.51.
philwelch 16y ago
HP, too.

thought_alarm 16y ago

Yes, but most companies can't rely on the revenue from two gigantic monopolies to keep the zombie alive. It will take a lot more than the failure of the Kin (which it appears was set up to fail all along) to change the corporate and engineering culture at MS.

rbanffy 16y ago
Which means it will bleed more and longer than any previous tech giant. I'll grab my popcorn and enjoy it thoroughly.
- nostrademons 16y ago
  IBM has been bleeding for a long time and they still haven't died yet.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Sadly, IBM is far less entertaining to watch.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      And, I would like to point out, is almost as entertaining as watching Sun bleed dry. Not at all.
  - wallflower 16y ago
    I've always been amazed looking back at how IBM embraced open source back in the early 90s with a vengeance. I wonder if this saved the company.
    - nostrademons 16y ago
      I think it both saved and killed the company. It saved the company in that it stopped the hemorrhaging of cash and gave them an actually profitable business model. Without this, they would've gone out of business entirely sometime in the early-mid 90s. It killed them as a center of innovation. IBM hasn't invented anything worthwhile since the IBM PC in 1981. (No, I don't count Eclipse: IntelliJ idea came out first and better, and yet was eclipsed because IBM could afford to offer their product for free.) Maybe that's the dilemma that Microsoft now faces. They can embrace their mediocrity, cater to their existing customer base, and continue to milk billions a year from their Winoffice monopoly. Or they can try to innovate. But most of their recent projects seem like they're trying to innovate and the coming out thoroughly mediocre, which isn't really a good combination.

mikecane 16y ago

Or MS is next in line after Nokia and Sony, on the downward spiral. Seemingly-invincible companies go under all the time. It doesn't have to be one big explosion, but death by a thousand cuts.

InclinedPlane 16y ago

Any company that has empire-itis, yes. But there's hope that some companies can escape that disease.

signa11 16y ago

> Hopefully MS will see this as a learning experience... if the london-stock-exchange fiasco didn't change anything at microsoft, i doubt that this will have any impact at all.

WorkerBee 16y ago
the london-stock-exchange fiasco Are you referring to this? http://blogs.computerworld.com/london_stock_exchange_to_abandon_failed_windows_platform http://blogs.computerworld.com/london_stock_exchange_to_aban... Despite the ignorant and inflammatory commentary that I linked to, I doubt that Accenture's failure to write a system in C# raised much of a wave inside Microsoft. Accenture could have made the same mistakes in Java or in any other language.

gaius 16y ago

It happened already to HP. All the cool people quit en masse and formed Agilent.

rbanffy 16y ago
Wasn't Agilent owned by HP?
- gaius 16y ago
  I was being a little facetious - HP split in two, with one half called Agilent taking the instruments, calculators and so on, and the other half still called HP doing PCs, printers, cameras. When people think of HP as being a great engineering firm, and a great place to work, they're thinking of the bit that became Agilent.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    I really liked the computers the calculator division made.

tomjen3 16y ago

Companies have their ups and downs (thats the funny thing about the runway start ups usually talk about, there is normally another in the end that you go down on). But Fog Creek and Y combinator aren't near big enough for them to collaps like that, so I doubt that they will fall that far. Remember the bigger they are, they harder they fall. And lets face it - Microsoft is insanely big.