6 ms·
Worst move in 30 years? Thirty years takes us all the way back to 1989. Just off the top of my head, here are some worse moves: 1) late to the internet, 2) squa
by Zanni 7y ago
Worst move in 30 years? Thirty years takes us all the way back to 1989. Just off the top of my head, here are some worse moves: 1) late to the internet, 2) squandering the marketshare lead of IE 6, 3) Windows Vista, 4) Windows 8, 5) late to search.
- oblio 7y agoYou forgot: 0) Late to modern smartphones. That's the biggest blunder they've ever had.
- sersi 7y agox) appointing Steve Balmer as CEO
- close04 7y agoWell he was the reason behind some of the other failures. But the title is obviously going for shock and awe clickbait, as most such "definitive" titles are.
- gridlockd 7y agoSteve Ballmer wasn't a bad CEO. People keep talking about how he dropped the ball on mobile, but so what? So did Blackberry, Motorola and Nokia and those companies had mobile as their core business. To think a "better" CEO could've pulled it all off is delusional. Under Ballmer, Microsoft focused on core business and reached into cloud - successfully. As a result, Microsoft is now stronger than Apple. Microsoft doesn't depend on people buying luxury cellphones, a market which is reaching saturation. That's not a "sexy" story, but it's the truth. A more "proactive" CEO would've just blown more money on Zunes and Kinects to fail in the market.
- solarkraft 7y ago> reached into cloud As much of a problem I might have with some of Ballmer's ideas and actions, this is simply amazing. It completely saved the whole company.
- rando444 7y agoThis was entirely reactionary. Microsoft looked at what AWS was doing and realized they were getting left in the dust and they are still playing catch up, albeit in very good shape. Nadella discusses having to catch up to AWS in his book. Ballmer's major contribution was finally allowing the company to follow Amazon's playbook.
- jarfil 7y agoNokia dropped the ball on mobile, then Ballmer bought Nokia. Also MS reached into the cloud thanks to Nadella, not tanks to Ballmer.
- LeonB 7y agoWhen Satya Nadella became CEO Microsoft Azure was four years old. As old timer insiders said to me prior to that time “You wouldn’t believe just how committed Microsoft is on this. I’ve never seen anything like it.” (But Satya has made it really work.)
- snowwrestler 7y agoI think the parent is saying that Nadella led the charge into the cloud inside MS under Ballmer, which is a big reason he was considered for the CEO position after Ballmer.
- LeonB 7y agoCould be, could be. I hadn’t thought of that.
- totaldude87 7y agowasn't Satya part of the Azure platforms from day 1?
- u801e 7y agoFrom what I've read, Nokia had some issues where certain departments wanted to stick with Symbian, and others were working in a new OS. The Nokia N9 was the last phone they released with the new OS (Meego). I believe they would have been fine if they focused on the European and Asian markets instead of the US.
- rchaud 7y agoEven at the time of the Microsoft deal in 2011, Nokia hadn't been US-focused for at least 5 years. US carriers weren't carrying any Nokias beyond the $50 dumbphones you could get anywhere. Unlike the rest of the world where people bought phones at more or less full price, the US market had mostly carrier subsidized pricing, and carriers ran the ad campaigns, not manufacturers (except Apple). Back when the iPhone, HTC G1 and Motorola Droid ads were saturating TV around 2008/9, I couldn't recall seeing a single ad for Nokia. Nokia's only real sales outlet were 3(!) retail stores in the entire US. And even those shuttered well before 2011. The idea that focusing away from the US might have saved them as an independent entity doesn't hold up because their average selling price (ASP) was falling due to low-end models selling better than their more expensive smartphone line. Eventually it reached a turning point where the brand was more closely associated with super-durable and super cheap "burner" phones than upscale smartphones. Finally, their smartphone line was a mess because like Windows Mobile 6.x, the OS appeared on a variety of screens, both touch and non-touch. The Ovi app store was deeply fragmented as a result, because old apps scaled badly on larger touch devices, and newer apps didn't work at all on the non-touch phones.
- brainpool 7y agoSteve also managed to keep the company intact at a time when they were very close to get cut-up due to antitrust lawsuits. Also, Steve was probably the only one that could lead Microsoft post Gates as Bill remained in a decisive position pulling strings for quite some time (which in some sense is understandable, but not many could have faced such a situation).
- nailer 7y ago> Steve also managed to keep the company intact at a time when they were very close to get cut-up due to antitrust lawsuits. That was the change in administration. "Microsoft is a monopoly" came under judges appointed by Clinton. "The punishment is Microsoft has to give free Windows licenses to schools" was under judges appointed by the GW Bush administration.
- simonh 7y agoMicrosoft's failure in mobile lies squarely with Bill. He lead their mobile and pen computing initiatives as personal pet projects.
- _pmf_ 7y ago> So did Blackberry, Motorola and Nokia and those companies had mobile as their core business. I think one difference is that BB, Motorola and Nokia dropped the ball technically; Microsoft had a technical solution that was ahead of its time, but failed on the business side.
- mr_toad 7y ago> reached into cloud Belatedly. I mean, they’re the largest software vendor on Earth, and they’re still miles behind a book retailer.
- thih9 7y agoI find it unexpected that Windows ME is also missing from the list; it used to be the blunder. See: - Wikipedia's "reception" section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Me#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Me#Reception - An XKCD comic: https://xkcd.com/323/ https://xkcd.com/323/
- Zanni 7y agoEh. I remember ME. It was the worst version of Windows at the time, but obviously predated Vista and 8. ME generated a lot of bad press, but it was mostly stability stuff that was quickly fixed. Vista was terrible and only ever got slightly less terrible before Windows 7 arrived. Windows 8 was so frustrating (from a usability standpoint) that I defected to Mac. In any case, it's not meant to be an exhaustive list ...
- whoopdedo 7y agoI occasionally felt that ME was so bad in order to push the last holdouts finally into the 32-bit era.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y agoME was 32 bit... I think what you mean to say is to push the last hold outs into the NT on the desktop era.
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y agoNT was on the desktop! I think you mean in the home.
- u801e 7y agoThat didn't happen until people started using Windows XP. I only saw a few businesses using NT or Windows 2000, but I don't recall many people running those versions in their home computers.
- vectorEQ 7y ago-1) windows
- rbanffy 7y ago-3) dropping Xenix
- the-dude 7y ago0) Anti-competitive practices
- lenkite 7y agoWorst move was losing Windows Phone.
- rubinelli 7y agoMS iterated on smartphones multiple times, and it never worked. Moving on may have been the smartest thing they have ever done.
- pjc50 7y agoThe first two were due to their anti-competitive strategy not working for them. You can only build the moat if you've already got all the customers inside. Microsoft consistently bet on closed systems: Compuserve-like "information superhighway" rather than the Internet, ActiveX versus "DHTML" (which would become Web 2.0) and Flash. The "bad" OSs weren't really that bad, but they were attempts to force a big change on people without too much choice, and people absolutely hate that. Note how the successors kept most of the same underlying features while dialling back the UI redesign.
- unixhero 7y ago6) fucked up mobile 7) bought Nokia and fucked up mobile again, although the handsets were (*edit: and are still) great. Although you are correct, these were the worst strategy moves, I don't think we are not talking about that. This is about fiendish corporate behaviour towards friends and partners.
- rbanffy 7y ago> although the handsets were great. Still are. Even better with Android.
- draw_down 7y agoYou know that old quote about getting a man to understand something his salary depends on him not understanding?
- edoceo 7y agoZune
- aphextim 7y agoWindows ME?