3 ms·
> keeps competitors weak by being the best Not "the best" per se.. Rather "good enough" and part of other tools the customers already use, while keeping them f
by GekkePrutser 5y ago
> keeps competitors weak by being the best
Not "the best" per se.. Rather "good enough" and part of other tools the customers already use, while keeping them free so it becomes a matter of having to spend extra $$$ for another product.
Take Teams for example. It's a pig of an app IMO. Slow (takes almost a minute to start on my otherwise-fast M1 Mac), extremely high memory use, constant errors "Oops something went wrong + cute pic of ice cream", a mess visually and not dense enough UI. They focus all their time on adding new features rather than optimising. They also focus very strongly on the "for everyone", trying to be a jack of all trades, master of none.
Slack does a much better job at team collaboration IMO. Especially for tech users, it's fast, shows a lot in small screen space and isn't as heavy (though I really miss the IRC bridge!). But Teams comes for free with O365 and integrates fully with that ecosystem. So no hassle with integrating with your ID Provider etc, it's just plug and play. So if you'd want to have slack at work you'd have to make an unreasonably strong business case for all the extra cost and work.
Another example: Sharepoint. I doubt you could find anyone who would consider Sharepoint best at anything. Yet it's still used heavily in favour of other options, because it's again free if you're already in the MS ecosystem, and it integrates with all the other tools like OneDrive and Teams (both basically just layers on top of Sharepoint). So even if you're not using sharepoint, you're using sharepoint :P
I do agree they are the best at the VS Code niche. But usually this is not their game, they go for 'good enough'. Maybe it's because their developers dogfood VS Code so they couldn't stand it being slow :)
For example, VS Code is highly optimised and doesn't suffer the performance drawbacks that usually come with electron. They have optimised the hell out of it. However they never bothered to do the same with Teams, probably because they own that space anyway.
- skohan 5y agoYeah when I think of MS products, they're never the best. They're usually just good enough, and then adoption is driven by some sort of leverage.
- nickpeterson 5y agoIt’s tricky though, because they will compete hard on some things if they sense it’s vital. Look at SQL Server, 2005 was probably the most improvement I have ever seen in a single ms release. But once they establish a lead they crank down the dial and cruise.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoIndeed, IE was a typical example too. And WinXP. Once they have the lead, innovation goes on the slow burner.
- ethbr0 5y agoThis is true of any company large enough to have multiple core revenue drivers, with their own orgs. At the end of the day, you only employ so many top-tier folks, and you have a current corporate focus.
- cratermoon 5y agoExcel, in particular, was famously a force of greatness to be reckoned with.
- delusional 5y agoDecisions at large enterprises is large driven by compliance considerations. I once asked why we were picking a specific Microsoft product when it was inferior to the alternative and the answer i got was "The Microsoft platform is approved". So because we had some random Microsoft product we have already paved the way for the dump truck in the future. That's the magic of Microsoft. To be completely clear, I don't blame the guy. The approval process sucks, so if you get to bypass that, it's a huge win for your own sanity.
- jodrellblank 5y ago> "So if you'd want to have slack at work you'd have to make an unreasonably strong business case for all the extra cost and work." Why is having to demonstrate that something is worth the cost and effort of doing it "unreasonable"? Isn't that simply "a business case"?
- Mandatum 5y agoI think they're arguing that you'd need to make a much better business case for Microsoft competitor products than you would something else, because you're up against the "we already have this at home" response.