4 ms·

Greed/impatience. Their major competitors have the smart strategy: Skim a small amount off the top quietly and forever (Apple, Google, and Facebook). The perfe

Greed/impatience. Their major competitors have the smart strategy: Skim a small amount off the top quietly and forever (Apple, Google, and Facebook). The perfect rent-seekers. Microsoft doesn't want to put in the hard work/time/cost to create a comparable skimming operation, so they take ugly shortcuts like this. For one specific example, the Windows Store is trash. It has been trash for years. The visual refresh in Windows 11 hasn't fixed what is wrong with it (e.g. majority scam apps, difficult to locate stuff, difficult to evaluate the legitimacy/low trust). Microsoft needs to work hard/spend resources/put in the time to improve the experience, and then it will be a revenue generator, but why do that when you can do lazy stuff like this? Microsoft could be selling paid upgrades that add legitimately value to Windows that sell themselves, but again that requires actual hard work.

freediver 5y ago
.. and this makes it the most valuable company on the planet. How did they achieve that in your opinion?
- option_greek 5y ago
  Outlook365 + azure ad They didn't need anything else. Till there is no competition for user management and corporate email, they will be in business.
  - matoro 5y ago
    Does Gsuite not count as competition? It even fills the MS Office role with Gdocs.
    - nicce 5y ago
      Does it? It requires internet connection and sends all company data for third party. Smooth perfomance is locked for using Chrome browser.
    - quartesixte 5y ago
      Excel rules the corporate world. And to a certain extent, Outlook. But that’s mostly due to sheer inertia.
    - option_greek 5y ago
      It would and to certain extent it does especially with startups etc. Where they dropped the ball is not being serious about the enterprise support. There are other reasons as well like attaching Google's name to the product there by making it non-serious (as in free/personal vs enterprisey/serious) due to Gmail being associated with personal email. If they are serious they should have gone with a separate brand with competent support. Despite all the above reasons, the main reason for the current zero competition is because for all enterprises,using azure AD is a natural progression from their much abused on-prem AD which has been linked as the primary mechanism for user auth across all kinds of products (MS and non MS). To be honest, MS doesn't have to do anything now. Just sit back and collect the money (and once in a while acquire things that have potential to become enterprisey like the GitHub).
    - flatiron 5y ago
      Have you ever worked at a company that didn’t use office? I haven’t.
      - ineedasername 5y ago
        Where I work, Office is being used less & less in favor of Google docs, so I'm not sure what the future holds. MS bundling OS/Office licenses more agressively I'm guessing will be one factor. As a side note, this increased use of Docs is unfortunately out of sync with security policy where I work. Certain types of data are only allowed to be shared through an encrypted portal that auto-deletes the file... Unless you put that data in a Google Sheet and hit the "share" button.
    - donmcronald 5y ago
      Google bounces incoming mail on mailboxes that are locked for "suspicious" activity or logins. I've had it happen a few times as a result of a false positive and it's horrible. It's obvious no one at Google ever sits down and asks "will this be good for our users?" I have a free 50 user legacy account with Google Workspace and I only use it for personal stuff. I don't trust it for business.
- bogwog 5y ago
  > How did they achieve that in your opinion? Because the FTC is asleep at the wheel.
- chasil 5y ago
  Microsoft has never had a primary focus on retail consumers. The tools available on enterprise Windows platforms are vast compared to what an individual user can control on their standalone machine. These intrusive new Edge features have not appeared on my corporate desktop that is joined to Active Directory, and they likely never will. For individual consumers that prefer Chrome, it is likely time to install and learn a new operating system. Google could take some action to stop this. There could be a legal approach involving antitrust, but Google has its own problems with that issue at the moment, and action would likely have to be coordinated with Mozilla. Alternately, Google could force technologies into Chromium that compromise Microsoft, but are not sufficiently hostile to prompt a fork. I have thought that a tight binding of Go into Chromium, similar to Mozilla's actions with Rust, might make the entire market rethink C# and the .NET CLR. Kotlin can also be deployed at the JavaScript layer, and that would be an interesting platform to force-feed to Edge. Google has likely already had extensive internal discussions on transforming Chromium into a poison pill for Windows.
FpUser 5y ago
>"the Windows Store is trash" Maybe because nobody needs it. People are used to buying Windows software from elsewhere. I am in this category as well. When I need software I look by searching I have no desire to ever visit those stores.
- tdeck 5y ago
  It can be really nice to have an official way to download and install software in one click. For a few years after the windows store was released, I used to look there first for software but I was always disappointed. They never managed to make it good enough that anything I wanted would be published there.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    When I used to use windows 10+ years ago, ninite.com did this job perfectly.
  - FpUser 5y ago
    >"It can be really nice to have an official way..." Windows store started with only being able to serve UWP applications that were really constrained in what they could do. I just laughed when my competitors went that way as they'd lost some rather important features. As a person I just hate an "official ways" as in my opinion they are detrimental to customers but to each their own.
- donmcronald 5y ago
  It could be really awesome. Imagine if you could take a plain APPX package [1] and publish it on your website. That could be set up to integrate with the whole store platform so users could optionally get the benefit of auto-updates and optionally log in and make in app purchases. There's so much low hanging fruit when it comes to improving the user experience on Windows that I can't even understand what Microsoft is trying to do. 1. http://woshub.com/how-to-download-appx-installation-file-for-any-windows-store-app/ http://woshub.com/how-to-download-appx-installation-file-for...
vetinari 5y ago
> The visual refresh in Windows 11 hasn't fixed what is wrong with it They made it even worse. In the old store, it was possible to install stuff like python or powershell without an account. With the new one, it insists on Microsoft account.

freediver 5y ago

.. and this makes it the most valuable company on the planet. How did they achieve that in your opinion?

option_greek 5y ago
Outlook365 + azure ad They didn't need anything else. Till there is no competition for user management and corporate email, they will be in business.
- matoro 5y ago
  Does Gsuite not count as competition? It even fills the MS Office role with Gdocs.
  - nicce 5y ago
    Does it? It requires internet connection and sends all company data for third party. Smooth perfomance is locked for using Chrome browser.
  - quartesixte 5y ago
    Excel rules the corporate world. And to a certain extent, Outlook. But that’s mostly due to sheer inertia.
  - option_greek 5y ago
    It would and to certain extent it does especially with startups etc. Where they dropped the ball is not being serious about the enterprise support. There are other reasons as well like attaching Google's name to the product there by making it non-serious (as in free/personal vs enterprisey/serious) due to Gmail being associated with personal email. If they are serious they should have gone with a separate brand with competent support. Despite all the above reasons, the main reason for the current zero competition is because for all enterprises,using azure AD is a natural progression from their much abused on-prem AD which has been linked as the primary mechanism for user auth across all kinds of products (MS and non MS). To be honest, MS doesn't have to do anything now. Just sit back and collect the money (and once in a while acquire things that have potential to become enterprisey like the GitHub).
  - flatiron 5y ago
    Have you ever worked at a company that didn’t use office? I haven’t.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      Where I work, Office is being used less & less in favor of Google docs, so I'm not sure what the future holds. MS bundling OS/Office licenses more agressively I'm guessing will be one factor. As a side note, this increased use of Docs is unfortunately out of sync with security policy where I work. Certain types of data are only allowed to be shared through an encrypted portal that auto-deletes the file... Unless you put that data in a Google Sheet and hit the "share" button.
  - donmcronald 5y ago
    Google bounces incoming mail on mailboxes that are locked for "suspicious" activity or logins. I've had it happen a few times as a result of a false positive and it's horrible. It's obvious no one at Google ever sits down and asks "will this be good for our users?" I have a free 50 user legacy account with Google Workspace and I only use it for personal stuff. I don't trust it for business.
bogwog 5y ago
> How did they achieve that in your opinion? Because the FTC is asleep at the wheel.
chasil 5y ago
Microsoft has never had a primary focus on retail consumers. The tools available on enterprise Windows platforms are vast compared to what an individual user can control on their standalone machine. These intrusive new Edge features have not appeared on my corporate desktop that is joined to Active Directory, and they likely never will. For individual consumers that prefer Chrome, it is likely time to install and learn a new operating system. Google could take some action to stop this. There could be a legal approach involving antitrust, but Google has its own problems with that issue at the moment, and action would likely have to be coordinated with Mozilla. Alternately, Google could force technologies into Chromium that compromise Microsoft, but are not sufficiently hostile to prompt a fork. I have thought that a tight binding of Go into Chromium, similar to Mozilla's actions with Rust, might make the entire market rethink C# and the .NET CLR. Kotlin can also be deployed at the JavaScript layer, and that would be an interesting platform to force-feed to Edge. Google has likely already had extensive internal discussions on transforming Chromium into a poison pill for Windows.

FpUser 5y ago

>"the Windows Store is trash" Maybe because nobody needs it. People are used to buying Windows software from elsewhere. I am in this category as well. When I need software I look by searching I have no desire to ever visit those stores.

tdeck 5y ago
It can be really nice to have an official way to download and install software in one click. For a few years after the windows store was released, I used to look there first for software but I was always disappointed. They never managed to make it good enough that anything I wanted would be published there.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  When I used to use windows 10+ years ago, ninite.com did this job perfectly.
- FpUser 5y ago
  >"It can be really nice to have an official way..." Windows store started with only being able to serve UWP applications that were really constrained in what they could do. I just laughed when my competitors went that way as they'd lost some rather important features. As a person I just hate an "official ways" as in my opinion they are detrimental to customers but to each their own.
donmcronald 5y ago
It could be really awesome. Imagine if you could take a plain APPX package [1] and publish it on your website. That could be set up to integrate with the whole store platform so users could optionally get the benefit of auto-updates and optionally log in and make in app purchases. There's so much low hanging fruit when it comes to improving the user experience on Windows that I can't even understand what Microsoft is trying to do. 1. http://woshub.com/how-to-download-appx-installation-file-for-any-windows-store-app/ http://woshub.com/how-to-download-appx-installation-file-for...

vetinari 5y ago

> The visual refresh in Windows 11 hasn't fixed what is wrong with it They made it even worse. In the old store, it was possible to install stuff like python or powershell without an account. With the new one, it insists on Microsoft account.