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The last thing Microsoft needs is Gates to come back. Comparing Microsoft’s dilemma to Apple and Steve Jobs isn’t an accurate comparison. Apple was almost out
by TomOfTTB 15y ago
The last thing Microsoft needs is Gates to come back.
Comparing Microsoft’s dilemma to Apple and Steve Jobs isn’t an accurate comparison. Apple was almost out of business when Steve Jobs returned. When a company is practically out of business you can do things you otherwise wouldn’t be able to. Like destroy whole product lines (Newton), screw over partners (all the MacOS licensees) and even toss out your main product (MacOS in favor of OSX).
Microsoft is still profitable. They still have tons of customers. You couldn’t, for example, replace Microsoft Windows with a whole new OS and get away with it.
There is only one company in modern history that has grown to the size of Microsoft, started failing and then come back to achieve greater glory. That company is IBM.
If Microsoft is to succeed they need to find someone like Lou Gerstner (who saved IBM). Gerstner succeeded not because he tried to return IBM to its former glory but because he saw a value in the individual components of IBM that no one had seen before. he saw that IBM could do everything technology wise and realized that opened the door to a successful consulting business.
Microsoft needs that. Someone who can see the individual parts of Microsoft and combine them in a way no one’s ever thought of before. Someone who realizes the old vision isn’t working anymore and can move the company forward without being bound to it. Because being bound to the past is exactly what’s killing Microsoft right now and Gates is just as guilty of that as Ballmer is.
- stcredzero 15y agoMicrosoft needs that. Someone who can see the individual parts of Microsoft and combine them in a way no one’s ever thought of before. What would keep this someone from just taking the page from the Jack Gerstner playbook for IBM?
- roc 15y agoWell, if they really can and do see Microsoft's unique strengths, they'll notice that Microsoft is actually sitting on a world-class consumer-design group and a platform that could be painlessly [1] pruned down to a single cohesive media and social ecosystem. Simply moving Microsoft down the Enterprise/Consulting road would be a huge waste of that opportunity and would piss off any number of partners and third party developers. [1] It wouldn't involve screwing over partners, just clearing away the internal backbiting nonsense.
- stcredzero 15y agoMicrosoft is actually sitting on a world-class consumer-design group and a platform that could be painlessly pruned down to a single cohesive media and social ecosystem. I can see how Steve Jobs could do this in his old company, especially when his old company was on the ropes, and with the support of the "reverse-merger" NeXT crew at his back. How feasible is such a political assault in a Microsoft that's still prosperous?
- pedalpete 15y agoI don't read into this that the author is suggesting that Bill come back and he would just scrap all the existing products. As you mention, Microsoft doesn't need to scrap it's existing products. But they do need a technologist at the helm, and that just isn't Ballmer's world. Bill wanted tablets years go, so he made the Tablet PC. He saw the future of online collaboration, and bought Groove Networks (which brought Ray Ozzie as a side benefit). These were clever strategic moves done BEFORE anybody else was really thinking in these terms. Balmer isn't able to be the first mover because he doesn't have the vision.
- tjogin 15y agoIt's true that Bill Gates saw the future very early on, although he never managed to make anything good in either tablets or the online collaboration/synchronization space (especially the latter which Microsoft has attacked time and time again without success, see Joel Spolsky: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html). Bill Gates, clearly, is a phenomenal technologist, but while he has the vision and "cluefulness" that Ballmer lacks, I'm not sure he is up to the task of competing with Google and Apple today.
- marcamillion 15y ago>There is only one company in modern history that has grown to the size of Microsoft, started failing and then come back to achieve greater glory. That company is IBM. Am I the only one to challenge this ? What about Coca-Cola ?
- michael_dorfman 15y agoHas there ever been a time when Coca-Cola was not the world's best selling soft drink?
- sgift 15y agoThere was at least a time when Coca-Cola was in a sharp downward spiral - this led to the creation of "New Coke": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke#Background http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke#Background
- marcamillion 15y agoI believe it was around the time when they got rid of 'Coke', and then they had to do a mea culpa and introduce 'Coke Classic'.