2 ms·
>Maybe some selection bias is going on? I think the selection bias is 1980s companies because that was the context. (Linux is 1991, Java 1995, Google 1998, et
by jasode 9y ago
>Maybe some selection bias is going on?
I think the selection bias is 1980s companies because that was the context. (Linux is 1991, Java 1995, Google 1998, etc)
From the 1980s, the major software companies that's still alive today, you have:
Intuit (Quicken/TurboTax),
Adobe,
Computer Associates,
Autodesk
Intuit was one of the few that survived direct Microsoft competition from MS Money and MS TaxSaver.
Adobe and Autodesk survived because Microsoft never entered the professional graphics editing market of Photoshop and CAD drafting. If Microsoft did try to compete, they still might have lost to Adobe and Autodesk but it sure helps when Microsoft ignores that market. (Microsoft sort of had a competing edocument standard of XPS to Adobe's PDF but that initiative didn't seem to have all of MS's attention behind it.)
Computer Associates (now CA Technologies) was this weird corporation that basically did a bunch of acquisitions of forgettable companies. I can't think of an instance where CA and Microsoft competed head-to-head. CA bought a database programming 4GL (Nantucket Clipper) in 1992 but the DOS based programming languages were already starting to die by then so MS Visual Basic for Windows didn't really compete fiercely with it.
- Zardoz84 9y agoI remember that CA had a ofimatic suite that was stored on a few floppies on early 90's. I had a free copy somewhere...
- smsm42 9y ago> I think the selection bias is 1980s companies Most of 1980s companies didn't survive, whether they competed with Microsoft or not. Microsoft did, but that doesn't mean it killed every other company that didn't. But Microsoft competed with Apple, and Apple didn't die. Xenix - Microsoft's UNIX offering - went nowhere (though it wasn't even MS product, technically), and other Unixes still alive. In DOS times, there were pretty successful competitors to MS-DOS (of course, those died when DOS computing died, but I'm not sure this qualifies as direct competition).
- scholia 9y agoI think CA was correctly described as a "bottom feeder"... It was a scavenger that extracted the remaining value from failing and failed companies. I'm not saying it was bad for the ecosystem ;-)