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It's easy to point out Google's mistakes and point to their engineering culture, but look at Microsoft as a counterexample. Microsoft has more or less the same

It's easy to point out Google's mistakes and point to their engineering culture, but look at Microsoft as a counterexample. Microsoft has more or less the same story as Google; one or two wildly successful products supplementing the rest of the business. The other groups at Microsoft leap into new markets to try and expand the core business (Xbox 360 being a fine example). I doubt we would call Microsoft's culture an engineering culture in the same vein as Google.

Silhouette 16y ago
> Microsoft has more or less the same story as Google; one or two wildly successful products supplementing the rest of the business. Really? I think if you list Microsoft's product lines, only a relatively small proportion failed badly. Sure, Zune never took off and their various on-line efforts haven't exactly had stellar results. Still, it's not like MS only makes money on Windows and Office. They also have a very successful range of server products aimed at businesses. Their initially loss-leading efforts to penetrate the computer game market are now doing pretty well. They even make good keyboards and mice. Now, here's the kicker. Microsoft do effectively give away a couple of things, notably software development tools and IE. They also run Microsoft Research, which is where a respectable amount of serious work on the future of both programming and HCI is going on today. However, these things are done in a way that supports their overall business interests, which is exactly the sort of strategic decision that good management needs to be getting right. I'm hardly a Microsoft fanboy, as many of my previous posts will confirm, but I don't think they have been anything like Google or Facebook in terms of hit-to-flop ratio in recent years.