37 ms·

Don't forget Microsoft

• foobarian 5y ago
  Can Microsoft please make a Windows phone after all? Both Apple and Android ecosystems and hardware together are terrible in various ways and don't work well with Windows.
  • rafale 5y ago
    They did. It was called Windows Phone... It came out too late, offered too little.
    • drunkpotato 5y ago
      It was pretty good. Seemed better than Android at the time. I'm not sure why Microsoft didn't put as much oomph into it as they did for, say, the Xbox, but if they had it might be a major player now.
      • qbasic_forever 5y ago
        I had a HTC windows phone and it was not good in my experience. The app store was non-existent, the OS forced you into using its own social media experiences which were half implemented and janky vs. native apps, and the web browser was slow and clunky for the era (2010s). The home screen was enormously painful with all kinds of different sized icons strewn about and blinking, changing, etc. randomly--I could never find anything in the same place. The only good thing I could say is that the settings were much simpler and easier to navigate than apple or android phones at the time. But that was really more because there was far less you could change or do in windows phones. As far as effort put into it, Microsoft spent years pouring money and resources into trying to grow their phone platform. Remember they basically invented modern smartphones with Windows mobile phones--I was using 'real' web browsers on my windows mobile 5 phone as far back as 2006, years and years before the iPhone came out. They spent billions buying companies like Nokia, trying to get more developers on their platform, etc. There were at least two or three complete restarts to the whole platform. There were internal competitors even from the Xbox/game division (remember the Kin?). It just churned and churned and churned despite all resources and money thrown at it--all of it wasted in the end.
        • drunkpotato 5y ago
          Oh, thanks for the context! I never owned a Windows phone, I just played with ones other people had, same for Android. And from a total beginner perspective, Windows phone seemed a lot easier and more intuitive, but I can believe that with more use its annoyances would become more clear. That's interesting about Microsoft really trying for mobile. My recollection is that they didn't put much effort into it, but clearly I was just unaware of it. Which is, perhaps, a sign? For all its investment, perhaps it didn't have the right marketing, as I was never aware of Microsoft's efforts for Windows Phone the same way that I am for Android and iPhone.
          • to11mtm 5y ago
            There was a point where I saw a decent amount of buzz, but I also live in an area that had one of the bigger "Microsoft Stores." That said there was a point Microsoft more or less lost the plot on Windows phone, it was a few things that added up to them giving up IMO: - Being unable to negotiate with companies like Snap to bring apps to the platform. Often this was because of Microsoft's level of sandboxing which prevented certain types of low level access. - Other app developers never bothering to even try, despite the perfectly servicable APIs provided and ability to write in multiple languages. - Google was purposefully obstructive with Youtube's APIs IIRC, which eventually made the Youtube app useless. I bring up that last point, because it seems like the closer to competitive WP -got-, the more google turned the screws. Thinking very specifically about WP10 here, which really was a Swan Song for the platform; using a Widi receiver to get an ad-hoc windows desktop was pretty freaking cool in 2016.
        • chimera77 5y ago
          as far back as 2006, years and years before the iPhone came out iPhone came out in 2007, at least in the US.
          • BlueTemplar 5y ago
            Sure, but when it came out it was pretty barebones : no 3rd party apps, no 3G...
    • jlcoff 5y ago
      Windows phone were pretty good. Always been happy with them, of not for the lack of developers interest.
  • colmvp 5y ago
    How are they terrible? Having used cellphones since the 90s, my experiences with Android/Apple phones have been nothing short of remarkable and to be frank, life changing in terms of day-to-day utility.
    • foobarian 5y ago
      Android hardware is weak. UI is good, app ecosystem is weaker than Apple but more free at least. Apple hardware is top notch, obviously. But I wish the software side was not so strictly controlled, look at the browser picture for example or in-app platforms or the shenanigans with the 30% cut. Then small nits like: - the alarm doesn't tell me how many hours to go when I set it - the orange silent button is an abomination that needs to go. With Apple's focus on not having any buttons I have no idea why it has lasted this long - the volume settings make no sense in the way that Android's make sense So basically I'd like some wizard to take both of those phone systems, throw them in a cauldron, stir them together, throw away the slag, and sprinkle in some extra goodness. Ahhh some day maybe ...
      • jlcoff 5y ago
        > Android hardware is weak Is it ? I'm using a 4 years old $200 phone which suits me just fine, if not for stupid apps requiring more resources for a worst experience. The only reason of upgrade is battery wearing off. Any Google related issues might be mitigated switching to LineageOS as the hardware is relatively open.
        • p_l 5y ago
          There's a certain level of truth to it, as none of the Android phone makers appear to be able to push for a customized SoC, even the ones with own designs (Samsung) appear to keep a "wall" between mobile and SoC divisions. This means that relatively easy wins like throwing a lot more cache on high end phone, are unavailable because instead they are just one of the many customers for the SoC with different priorities resulting in a compromise design.
      • NAHWheatCracker 5y ago
  • salil999 5y ago
    I'm surprised you say the Apple ecosystem is terrible. It's arguably the best, most complete and integrated ecosystem out there currently. Of course it's not going to work well with Windows. Apple wants you to buy a Mac.
    • smoldesu 5y ago
      It's hard to call the iPhone complete when it makes egregious concessions in it's capabilities in the name of "safety" (which turns out to be a moot-point anyways, as sufficently funded state actors have proven to us over the past few months).
      • jolux 5y ago
        Security is not moot just because state actors can break it, that's basically expected. The idea is to give everyone below the level of a state a harder time.
        • smoldesu 5y ago
          If all that effort didn't come at the expense of user agency, I'd be inclined to agree. Instead, it looks like an increasingly toothless justification to prevent people from undermining the App Store's profitability. The security theater isn't as convincing when their puppets are falling apart in their hands.
          • jolux 5y ago
            But it's not security theater. Sandboxing and strong isolation is one of the oldest techniques around for increasing security. iOS has the least malware of any OS. The security measures it contains would appear to be extremely good at keeping out threats that plague many other platforms.
            • smoldesu 5y ago
              Sandboxing and strong isolation are not mutually exclusive with allowing third-party sources to install apps. If their sandboxing is as good as you say it is, there should be no security threat imposed by allowing other apps on the device. The two should be distinct, separate threat models, but Apple conflates them.
  • rr808 5y ago
    Right now due to my lack of self control a lack of apps is a bonus. I just need a maps, camera, uber that's about it.
    • seabriez 5y ago
      I know I noticed that iPhone hasnt really made my life better. It only has wasted a TON of time. Sometimes I wish I just had a flip phone, but FOMO is strong to give it up. Maybe one day.
  • meowkit 5y ago
    The OS is in the middle of an internal refactor which will make a modern mobile edition (with support for all chipsets/apps on launch) more feasible in the future. In an odd turn of events the hardware has exceeded the software in the case of Surface supporting Android on the Duo.
    • woldenron 5y ago
      > The OS is in the middle of an internal refactor which will make a modern mobile edition Could you elaborate? Is there any info on that?
  • nly 5y ago
    Personally I wouldn't be surprised if they take another crack at it and succeed at some point. Microsoft is in it to play the long game.
  • excalibur 5y ago
    They did. I had one. It was not the worst. They gave up because precious few of you also did.
• rafale 5y ago
  "There's a horse in Redmond that always suits up and always runs, and will keep running." - Tim "Apple" Cook
  • ape4 5y ago
    Microsoft needs a CEO with "Microsoft" as his/her middle name.
    • rzzzt 5y ago
      Mike Rowe might be available...
      • tomcam 5y ago
        That was beautiful
• reilly3000 5y ago
  I think this is a really solid analysis and strategy. I want to briefly expound on the data side which is a huge growth area: mSFT would do well to SHOW the rank and file analyst and developer machine learning in context of their daily work, not TELL CEOs about its transformational possibilities. They own the world’s most popular surface for interacting with data. Why not make Azure’s machine learning be keystrokes away? Give away credits and training, suggest use cases, provide actual value. Sell a $0.000000000001/unit cost that makes it safe for anyone to try in their daily work. It doesn’t need to do much, some cool forecasting, predicting the value of the next cell inline, etc would be delightful. I’m a but disconnected from their ecosystem at this point but I see a window where the can captivate the long tail with pragmatic ML and assert their centrality for the coming decades.
  • freeone3000 5y ago
    You might be looking for Excel's "Analyze Data" feature, introduced in 2019 to O365 with natural language integration in 2020.
• zarriak 5y ago
  Great article but please use GAFAM not FAAMG or FAMGA
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    Why? Of the options you list, to me GAFAM is the least recognizable. Why pick that one?
    • PoignardAzur 5y ago
      It's the one I've seen most often in France, fwiw.
      • AnimalMuppet 5y ago
        Hmm, interesting. I hadn't thought of it being a language- or country-based issue. Still, this is an English language site (and article), so if that's the reason for the request, it seems unreasonable.
    • zarriak 5y ago
      Like the other reply to you mentioned, it is the one most commonly used in other countries to my knowledge. I first noticed it in an article from FT talking with Japanese investors. It was my first notice of it because I had always seen the many others that were replied to my first comment. And upon my cursory search after that article it seems like the agreed upon big tech shorthand in the rest of the world that isn’t the US.
  • pronlover723 5y ago
    Why not M-FAAG which you can pronounce Em-Fog
    • joeldg 5y ago
• quickthrower2 5y ago
  Hindsight is 20x20, but Microsoft share price has increased about 5 fold in 5 years, while only doubling the 5 years before that. It had to play a bit of catch up with other FAANG type companies.
• ourmandave 5y ago
  Microsoft may have too many internal competing interests to recognize that it has become the Azure company, but it should be clear by the late 2020s. Any divisions that yell "Developers!" at events already know this. The rest are probably aware. My only problem is how everything is going to subscription based pricing and requires a cloud account.
• blip54321 5y ago
  I feel like the elephant in the room is culture. * Facebook seems to be a bunch of smart people working on pet projects. Monopoly profits drive a political empire where people at the top think up something random, and it gets built. * Google has customer contempt. They started with brilliant people who were used to being smarter than everyone else. They also started in algorithm-driven markets like search and ad-words, where everything was statistical and individuals didn't matter. They've lost the smarts and the ethics, and they're in a bit of a hole. I think they've reached the end of the growth line. * I know nothing about Apple. Too secretive. * Microsoft has a bunch of cut-throat teams, competing with each other. Their technology is middling. However, they're the only one of the bunch you'd want to partner with for B2B. * ... except for Amazon, which is hyper-customer-focused, and has a track record of successful forward-looking projects. AWS has been rock solid. On the other hand, I'd never want to work there; they treat employees like crap. But it somehow works out for them.
  • dredmorbius 5y ago
    This cartoon still holds much truth: http://joyreactor.com/post/287724 http://joyreactor.com/post/287724
    • zinekeller 5y ago
      Please try to find the original (in this case, it's from Manu Cornet's webseries Bonkers World: https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts)
      • dredmorbius 5y ago
        Thanks! I wasn't able to hunt that down.
  • mwattsun 5y ago
    Microsoft is an enterprise company, has a bureaucratic manner and bureaucratic ways of doing things, for example going all in on the XML craze of the late 1990's and early 2000's. There's a lot of ceremony in their projects, TypeScript being a notable exception (at least one that comes to my mind.) It reminds me of a complaint that is interesting to me about India being in love with bureaucracy and paperwork [1]. Somehow it all works and I think they are making strides to be more nimble, but I wonder if it's part of Microsoft's DNA. [1] It’s 2021 and the Indian bureaucracy remains the greatest impediment to progress https://theprint.in/opinion/its-2021-and-the-indian-bureaucracy-remains-the-greatest-impediment-to-progress/587750/ https://theprint.in/opinion/its-2021-and-the-indian-bureaucr...
• powera 5y ago
  It's somewhat surprising that Oracle isn't even mentioned in the article.
  • tomrod 5y ago
    It's not terribly surprising: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941 Oracle is rich for shrewd business arrangements. I'm not sure its considered a good company technically?
    • tux3 5y ago
      With only very little snark, I'm more than happy to nominate many Microsoft products for the same category of top down B2B sales that Oracle occupies. You don't chose to use MS Teams. Someone sells it to your employees. On a technical level, Teams technically works.. some of the time. No one picked Azure because they have better tech. You pick Azure either for business reasons, or because they exclusively offer something you need. I have encountered more bugs, incorrect documentation, and operations mysteriously hanging for 20 minutes in a couple weeks of Azure usage than in years of GCP and AWS use. It is not even close. And I will refrain, with great effort, from speaking about the confused inconsistent mess that is Azure Active Directory.
      • tialaramex 5y ago
        Microsoft Azure Active Directory is a great example of Microsoft's habit of using buzzwords to indicate chronology rather than indicate anything about technology. That's four words, you've got lots of opportunity to tell me what exactly this does, but nope, Microsoft at the front tells me this is from an era when the Windows group wasn't ascendant at Microsoft, in this case the recent era. Azure tells me this is from Microsoft's "cloud" era starting in about 2010 (but the early part of that is "Windows Azure"). Active though is from an earlier incarnation, it's a turn of the century idea. Huh. "Microsoft Core Directory 365" would tell me this was a newer product, maybe from the last 3-5 years or so, "Windows Directory.NET" is from maybe 2005, while "Windows Directory X" would most likely be a late-1990s product and plain "Microsoft Directory" suggests maybe it's from the late 1980s or early 1990s. Notice how if you don't know that Microsoft names their products based on chronology you might assume Azure Active Directory is Active Directory but in Azure? Big mistake. Thinking that way can cost you a lot of time or money.
• logshipper 5y ago
  This is a good and thorough article. The author got down to brass tacks pretty quickly and brings up interesting hypothesis about $MSFT. That said, I do have one gripe: > To oversimplify Notion to its demographics, it is Office 365 for people below age 35. I recognize this is an oversimplification, but even so, it seems like a stretch. Notion is a decent product, and I have used it for a few small-scale team projects in uni (mainly for Kanban-related stuff) - but to call it a replacement for O365 is an exaggeration at best. Yes, you can have pretty, nested documents in Notion and that's great, but a tabular database in Notion is by no means a replacement for Excel or even Google Sheets. The velocity that is afforded by Excel in terms of formulas is unmatched and there's a reason it has yet to be unseated as the kingpin of modern finance. Most young people I know use a combination of Discord + Google Suite to collaborate. I am aware this is slightly anecdotal, but I am also having a hard time imagining myself as a founder and then asking my CFO to use Notion to prepare investor pitches. Source: Am 23 :)
  • tester756 5y ago
    > Discord + Google Suite I use shitton of MS products, but I cannot switch from Google's gmail, docs and drive to anything. I hate MS login page and endless redirects between their services I cannot explain what puts me off, but Google's (gmail) login page and way better switching between apps feels way better. Also I have feeling that MS account is more "formal", idk how to explain it.
    • tempnow987 5y ago
      God, if you have personal and work accounts under the same email bring on the insane pain. There is sometimes confusion on the MSFT backend (or was) in these cases and you'd get jammed into weird corners (ie, reset would do just your personal so you couldn't ever get a work account reset etc). It's something about their federation tech vs google. Google, if you are in wrong service, nice switch account, one redirect it feels like.
      • rightbyte 5y ago
        Ye there is something fishy about Office365 login. Sometimes the account switch for no good reason. Even if I just entered the username and password in a prompt. It is a great mistake login in on different accounts on the same computer ...
• mongol 5y ago
  At the large retailer I work for, AWS is off limits. Strategically, they don't want to base their IT operations in a cloud of a company that is also a competitor in online retail. I can understand that. Here Azure has a great advantage.
  • jhickok 5y ago
    Couldn't agree more. If regulators ever attack the Amazon stack and split up the company, AWS could become one of the most valuable companies in the world.
    • chii 5y ago
      > If regulators ever attack the Amazon stack and split up the company they'd have to have justification for doing so - which i don't see any.
      • gscott 5y ago
        Profits from AWS props up Amazon losses on retail.
        • karatinversion 5y ago
          Amazon started breaking out operating income separately in 2013, and the rest of the business has made a profit every year since then. The US retail operation now brings in as much profit as AWS, though some of that is offset by losses in their rest-of-the-world retail business.
  • cpitman 5y ago
    This is very common for my clients. Another common variant are B2B focused clients where their customers contractually require them not to put data onto AWS. IE, Walmart doesn't want any of their data to end up on AWS, and if you want to do business with Walmart you need to similarly protect their data.
  • jen20 5y ago
• mupuff1234 5y ago
  Doesn't windows have an ~80% market share in desktop os? Is it really less of a monopoly than other big tech?
  • mcdermott 5y ago
    Sure, but the desktop market has been shrinking. Unless you are in business, all you need is an iPhone, android and maybe a companion tablet are you are good computing wise. There was a time when your grandparents used Windows, but now they all use iPads/phones.
• tester756 5y ago
  >Acquiring Replit is also worth exploring given its strong positioning among young developers who are still malleable. Microsoft already has top compiler / programming language / tooling engineers / people Why would the need Replit? Is the product good? Why not JetBrains?
  • Zababa 5y ago
    Replit is an online IDE, it'll fit well with Github/VSCode/Azure devops/NPM/Typescript. Something big and integrated is coming I think.
    • echelon 5y ago
      Ultimate thin client. No more code on your machine. Give employees a $100 netbook.
      • rejectfinite 5y ago
        Sounds awful
        • echelon 5y ago
          Absolutely awful. Doesn't mean it isn't coming.
      • colinmhayes 5y ago
        My company is already here. All code is built and tested on our cloud. Guess what, everyone still gets a $2000 MacBook even though a chrome book would work just as well. Developers don’t like to feel like their employers are cheap.
    • redisman 5y ago
      VSCode already works in the browser and is already integrated in the GitHub website. Just open your repo and press “.” on your keyboard. I really don’t think they’ll acquire a IDE company when they have the most popular one already
• zuminator 5y ago
  The one idea I question here is advising Microsoft to acquire Zoom. Microsoft has almost as bad a track record with chat/videocall apps as it does with cell phones. Plus, Zoom has perhaps already seen its best days. It was in the right place in the right time, but the public is fickle. If Apple ever gets around to putting enterprise features into FaceTime, the entire product space will be disrupted with unpredictable results. Better I think for Microsoft to spend a couple of billion at figuring out what went wrong with Skype (free hint: reliability and call quality) than to throw $150b at Zoom and just repeat the same mistakes. BTW Microsoft, why does your Skype website still feature a "Shang-Chi" movie tie-in? Is anybody paying attention to keeping your landing pages up to date?
  • redisman 5y ago
    They already have Teams. Zoom would just languish as their 2020s Skype. Waste of money unless they just want to kill another competitor
    • rejectfinite 5y ago
      This. It is truly amazing how many in this thread have 0 clue about MS products. I guess GSuite is amazing if you are a 2 person company. Everything above that is on the Office 365 train.
      • boulos 5y ago
        Disclosure: I used to work on Google Cloud (but never on Workspaces née GSuite itself). There are plenty of companies with tens of thousands of employees using GSuite [1]. Also various governments, agencies, regulated industries and so on. A few years ago, GSuite added improvements to Office importing (primarily Excel and PPT, IIRC) that assuaged a lot of folks. Companies still might have departments using Office (e.g., Legal still using Word for its redlining or Finance using Excel) but because you can shove them all in Drive or import them into the GSuite equivalent, most of the company happily uses GSuite for everything else. [1] https://workspace.google.com/customers/ https://workspace.google.com/customers/
      • 5y ago
• rejectfinite 5y ago
  > Notion: Office 365 for people below age 35. At a minimum, Office should aspire to the ease of use that Google Docs has (Office 365 for people below age 45) What? Employees use what the company bought. Every company I have worked for has used Office 365. Teams is fine, but Discord is the best. Yes Slack sucks too compared to Discord. Office 365 now has all the collaboration features of Google Docs and has had for some time. Trust in MS is also huge in enterprise. Nothing can also touch the management of computers and servers with AD/GPO or Intune. MacOS only has janky MDMs and Chromebooks are not used in real jobs.
• cwillu 5y ago
  > Microsoft’s identity became murky. Was it the Windows company? Office? Xbox? Developer tools? Tea became murky. Was it water? Tannins? Milk? Sugar?
  • Spivak 5y ago
    I mean I don’t think it’s wrong to say that MS isn’t a cohesive entity and it makes the branding weird at times. When you have MS as the amalgamation of the success of 100 mostly isolated little divisions which might as well be separate companies then what MS actually does is as murky as what Alphabet does. I think the sanest statement is that MS acts as a big pile of money and shared infrastructure for their “subsidiaries.”
    • cwillu 5y ago
      It's an odd selection of divisions to make that point though.
• astlouis44 5y ago
  The next wave is 3D. Not just games, but in enterprise, shopping, communication. Satya and team realize this, and the Activision-Blizzard buyout was just setting the stage for what's to come. That's why Microsoft's next acquisition MUST be Epic Games, due to their market leadership in everything real-time 3D. This purchase would cement Microsoft firmly in the upcoming metaverse race, and provide a real set of legs to stand on to face off against Meta and Apple. Microsoft could also go after Unity, but this would make less sense as the acquisition price would be about the same as Epic, and with Unreal Engine they get a software suite that's getting scarily close to photorealism with Nanite, Lumen, and Metahuman.
  • mupuff1234 5y ago
    > The next wave is 3D Are we back in the 90's? 3D interfaces sounds cool on paper, but a good 2d interface is almost always gonna be a better long term experience.
    • astlouis44 5y ago
      Have you ever tried VR..?
      • doublerabbit 5y ago
        It's sub-par; the whole expirence is meh. I have to wear glasses so I had to buy lense extensions for my Valve Index because you can't put headset over my current glasses. I miss out because my internet is so rubbish. I'm awaiting 5minutes just to download a 200mb world, 2Mb ADSL is all my apartment has. You look like a idiot waving your hands while strapping a big box to your head. Sure, it may get smaller and smarter as tech envolves on, but you still look goofy. You need a large spacious area otherwise your going to mash your hand on your television or other furniture. Don't get me wrong it can be fun but eh, it's not something I would jump out of bed to get on a company meeting for.
      • mupuff1234 5y ago
        Yes, just games and some novel VR experiences. Not for enterprise, shopping or communications (unless you consider in-game chat) To clarify - I'm not against VR, I just think it's mostly gonna be use for entrainment, not so much productivity.
• 101008 5y ago
  I really enjoyed this article. Can someone recommend a book about Microsoft history? I'd love to read about the internal through the ages...
  • rejectfinite 5y ago
    Older book but Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft Hardcover by G. Pascal Zachary
  • TowerTall 5y ago
    There are a lot of insights on this page. Start with chapter one. Written by BiiGs personal technical assistance back in the old days https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/ https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/
  • radmuzom 5y ago
    While not Microsoft history, try "In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters". Has many stories on what made MS successful.
• mushufasa 5y ago
  Interesting article on Microsoft. But: in what world are they forgotten??
  • rejectfinite 5y ago
    Yes it read really weird to me. Someone who only uses Macs, iphones and only worked at startups? Every company I worked for has been using Windows. From POS terminals to C# dev machines.
  • pjmlp 5y ago
    In a world that thinks developers (any kind of developer) only uses Macs.
• mrkramer 5y ago
  Microsoft's biggest failure was Windows Mobile. If they got Mobile right hands down they would be on a highway to $10T company but otherwise they are riding the wave of cloud, AI and gaming. Like Steve Jobs[0] said they are strong opportunists, they have no taste, they don't have original ideas and they don't bring much culture into their product but they keep on coming. Microsoft uses its big cash pile to either acquire companies or to copy them. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSg3fU9XWow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSg3fU9XWow
  • pjmlp 5y ago
    Apple was quite happy to get some of that cash in the late 90's.
  • bombcar 5y ago
    I feel if Windows Mobile had just kept at it for ten years straight they would finally have had something - continually changing strategy killer any hope they had of being in a solid third place.
    • miffy900 5y ago
      To be fair, they were at it for about 6 years before giving up (2009 to 2015); which is a really really long time to spend trying to get momentum going.
      • tonyedgecombe 5y ago
        I suspect the real problem was it was hurting other parts of the business. They needed to abandon it to free themselves to accept the reality of the dominance of the iPhone.
        • toopok4k3 5y ago
          Dominance of iPhone? Do we live in the same planet? Android won the masses.
• teh_infallible 5y ago
  Microsoft has never been good at building things, period. With the possible exception of Xbox, their products are almost universally annoying to use.
  • yucky 5y ago
    Excel?
    • lnxg33k1 5y ago
      He just said it's not good at building software, how can you say that they excel ? :look:
      • yucky 5y ago
        I don't understand. Excel is one of the most utilized pieces of software ever created. Entire business run off of it. It's amazing software by any definition.
        • lnxg33k1 5y ago
          https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/excel https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/excel :D
          • yucky 5y ago
            Well played :)
  • beart 5y ago
    xbox had its own issues. The red ring of death, for example.
• urthor 5y ago
  "It is not a beloved consumer brand like Apple, Facebook, Amazon, or Google." They're not a beloved consumer brand, yet. Microsoft has made an enormous investment in consumer and developer sentiment. VS Code, Microsoft Flight Simulator, WSL, and Xbox are huge, long term plays that are a rocket ship in their brand's sentiment.
  • toiletfuneral 5y ago
  • redisman 5y ago
    Office has a good reputation with most white collar professionals. Windows is still ubiquitous outside of programmers
    • eatonphil 5y ago
      Going by the StackOverflow yearly survey, Windows is still the most used among professional developers by a good margin. But yeah maybe 40% doesn't equate to ubiquitous. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#most-popular-technologies-op-sys-prof https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#most-popular-...
    • herbst 5y ago
      It's super easy to convert an average user to libre office tho. Just wait for the next major office update and tell them that there is a piece of software that has a UI that still reflects what these people are used to.
  • colinmhayes 5y ago
    I agree that Microsoft has put tons of resources into developer evangelism. Wsl, vscode, and terminal have been a major turn around for them. But I’m not sure they’re trying to be anything more than “the only option that was presented to me” with anyone else other than executives that sign the office365 contract.
  • suby 5y ago
    I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm a software developer and my sentiment regarding Microsoft is negative and growing more so as the years go by. VS Code, Flight Simulator, WSL, and Xbox are fine, but they have destroyed goodwill with me through mismanaging Windows. Windows is now sprinkled with dark patterns like not allowing local accounts w/ windows 10 unless you turn off your internet during install. Windows 11 now requires a MS account. The number of advertisements in the OS continues to grow. The enormous and unforgivable amount of e-waste that they will soon create with the Windows 11 hardware requirements / the end of life date for 10. The sense that everything I do on their OS / software is being monitored through telemetry. The UI regressions w/ 11. Hard to quantify this but the I have encountered a lot of bugs with Windows in recent years and some of these bugs are infuriating. I could go on, but I'll leave it there. Like I said, I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I suspect that the number of dissatisfied users is growing.
• robertwt7 5y ago
  > No singular power law product defines Microsoft like Google’s Search, Apple’s iPhone, Amazon’s e-commerce, or Facebook’s social network. Umm windows and office? Great article, I still think that with thousands of amazing engineers in microsoft, they need to simplify 2 things. Focus on using 1 thing, then reiterate to make it better, i.e: why is there teams and skype? then there's teams for business, teams for personal, skype for business. Also teams app is built on angular instead of xamarin? I heard that teams of engineers within MS are free to choose any tech that they want. If they had chosen xamarin since the beginning (now MAUI), wouldn't it made xamarin much less buggy? It seems like every teams are going on different directions with different managements. you don't see that on apple (pushing swift everywhere), facebook is also using react for almost all their internal apps. Second thing is it's so hard to make your voice heard in MS that most people just gave up lol. I have this bluetooth issue on windows 11 where my bluetooth speaker produce no sound after receiving call from teams. I have to reconnect every couple of hours. I've had it for 4 months, and I don't know where to give feedback at all (feedback hub is useless) other than asking strangers on reddit. If you have 96k engineers around the world, can't you assign at least 5-6 PM that focuses on consumer satisfaction, engineering excellence, or at least have a bug bash once in a while. Again i'm not sure what's happening inside the company, maybe i'm to judgy, but at this point a lot of people are feeling the same way
  • epolanski 5y ago
    > Umm windows and office? So it's two, not one. I share the sentiment of your reply though, e.g. I have a hard time associating Apple with the iPhone only also hard, would actually associated them with iOS products.
• tempnow987 5y ago
  For a company that had a dude yelling Developers on stage - how in the world did they blow their dev stack so badly? XAML, WPF, UWP, silverlight etc etc. They owned with WinForms back in the day. There was nothing close to market share / productivity for LOB apps. Then it was like they just dynamited repeatedly, and kept on dynamiting? I can't even imagine the wasted dev cycles, and now the wasted time using janky juddering online apps (even Vax/VMS green screen LOB apps were actually FASTER -> keyboard driven, no lag). If you tracked medical billing from vax/vms days (a fast typist could crank through billing slips and a tech forward clinical staff could checkin a patient and go with a few keyboard keys (including the good old F keys)). Now its wait wait wait, mouse click, mouse move, click, wait type, submit, wait.
  • twoodfin 5y ago
    I dunno, a Martian surveying the 2022 development landscape might believe the company that owned GitHub and VSCode was doing fairly well.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • AitchEmArsey 5y ago
      When the GitHub purchase was happening, there was a lot of noise from both parties about how the companies would remain separate and GitHub would keep the things which make it appealing to developers; it therefore seems disingenuous to me to consider any of the positives of GitHub to be attributable to MS.
    • raxxorrax 5y ago
      But they don't capture them to develop against their frameworks. I liked WPF, but their APIs were clearly influenced by business decisions like forcing software into their store, especially in UWP. I am not yet if they are a reliable partner to invest time in. Apple uses such a model, but then why would I use Windows if it just morphs into a worse clone of it? I dislike that model and believe it is extremely bad for digital/technical education. Those that use open systems with software freedom will shield others from the worst exploits MS or Apple might come up with in the future. VSCode is indeed nice. Github is ok.
• ncmncm 5y ago
  What the article misses is the essential core: Microsoft is the Big Evil. Only Google really competes in that space. The others might like to compete, but Apple is too stand-offish, Amazon too random, Facebook too inept, Russia too old. Microsoft and Google are always on the lookout for the next bigger Evil. Google eagerly sheds anything that turns out not to be It. Microsoft is slower at that, not giving up as easily, and often late to the party, but sometimes things finally work out for them better than could have been expected (Xbox). The goal is literal World Domination, and odds are one or the other will achieve it. Younger generations won't even remember when they didn't already have it, or be able to imagine a world where they don't.
  • lnxg33k1 5y ago
    Amazon just little ago killed some employees to keep them working during a storm, makes people pee in a bottle, Facebook ignored and hid the burden it puts on teenagers development, and you say they're not as bad? I would say the only not as bad, despite hating it, is Apple
    • ncmncm 5y ago
      I am saying Amazon is not in a position to try to rule the world, and is not evidently seeking that. Is Apple actually less bad than Amazon, or do you just know less about what happens at and on behalf of Apple?
      • lnxg33k1 5y ago
        Thinking about it, probably you're right, I forgot about the chinese workers who suicided in chinese factories partners https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-life-death-forbidden-city-longhua-suicide-apple-iphone-brian-merchant-one-device-extract https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-l...
        • tonyedgecombe 5y ago
          At rates lower than the general population.
• blibble 5y ago
  > It is not a beloved consumer brand like Apple, Facebook, Amazon, or Google. the reason for this is very simple: very few people choose to use Microsoft products willingly (except maybe the xbox) their products either come with the computer by default or it's installed on your work machine and the software is at the very best mediocre and somehow getting worse (trying to figure out how to save a Word document locally these days is NOT easy) [1]: even for the original xbox Microsoft initially deliberately kept their name off of it
  • Gareth321 5y ago
    >and the software is at the very best mediocre and somehow getting worse (trying to figure out how to save a Word document locally these days is NOT easy) This is a great example of hostile UX. It appears designed to encourage people to use their cloud services, since they offer OneDrive as the first option in the list, and something like 90% of users choose the first option in a list. IMHO, what Google and Microsoft are sorely lacking is an obsession with UX. It is what drives Apple to maintain the hardware integration, and it works. Google and Microsoft are making inroads here but it just feels very half-hearted by comparison.
  • TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
    > very few people choose to use Microsoft products willingly My gut feeling is that, for PERSONAL use, the US has shifted to favor Apple products, over something running Windows. Even in my backwater neck of the woods, I'd say that Apple vs Microsoft is running at least 2 to 1. For 25 years, Gartner ran the same report saying that Microsoft "owned" the computing device landscape. Now their schtick is that Android rules the world. Fine. But what I want to see is the operating system market share data, by country, with the corporate purchases factored OUT. It doesn't seem that hard, but, naturally, that data is NOWHERE to be found online. If Gartner is actually using real numbers, then this would be "internal polling" data which I'm sure they consider their trade secret. If it were possible to get the data for the US, for personal use only, I think it would show that Apple is doing even better than most trade analysts begrudgingly give them credit for. With the demise of most Microsoft stores, and the way Microsoft is cannibalizing trust with the direct commercialization of Windows on factory-installed machines, I don't see how Windows on personal devices can be the "thing" it has been traditionally considered.
• polote 5y ago
  > Undoubtedly, Nadella has been an exceptional CEO. > With the right strategy and execution, Microsoft can become the first $10T company.What would I do if I were running the company? I guess unfortunately they don't have OP has a CEO
• AlexanderTheGr8 5y ago
  > As the surface area of new software markets plateaus, tech will transition towards a consolidation era. Do you think this is true? We are seeing more tech companies than ever before. But that could just be due to the pandemic and insanely high amount of money in the market. If consolidation happens, innovation will plummet. This always happens. Any oil-based company hasn't innovated in 20 years. Most of the consolidated industries have little or no innovation. As any product gets more complicated, consolidation does happen and innovation does plummet. Think: 1) Web browsers: Ruled by Google and Safari now (+ Firefox so HN won't be offended, although they have 3.6% and it's going to keep declining over time). We have not seen any innovation in browsers in such a long time. 2) Operating Systems: Windows, Mac, and Linux haven't really done anything new in the last 5 years. Win+Mac just keep adding more "telemetry", but no innovation 3) Cloud: it's obviously really complex. It's consolidated. It's innovating today, but seeing the trajectory of browsers, OS and other products, innovation will stagnate there as well. Should we just take it for granted that tech is supposed to be consolidated? New fields in tech like crypto, mobile are still very active but are they also just moving towards consolidation?
  • BlueTemplar 5y ago
    Well, yes, it's the eternal cycle... Funny that you would take the example of oil companies : it was the small tight oil startups that did the latest round of innovation (in hydraulic fracturing, though it was a "take already existing innovations and integrate them" kind of innovation) and captured that market (even though they never became profitable as an industry), and some of the "7 sisters" themselves come from the antimonopoly forcible splitting of Standard Oil into 34 companies... (when the forced splitting of the GAFAMs ?)
• bigcat123 5y ago
  The writing is so sloppy. Just from the beginning: > Despite its scale, Microsoft is one of the most overlooked companies in tech. What's the standard of overlookness? I never for a moment feel MSFT was overlooked, by any measure of sampling. > It is not a beloved consumer brand like Apple, Facebook, Amazon, or Google. In 90s, MSFT used to be thought as one of the 2 pillars of THE PC industry as a whole. And MSFT was commonly thought to be the more powerful one of the wintel dual. MSFT lost its glamour when the anti monopoly suit hit them hard. Then very loosely speaking MSFT lost a lot of battle in the 2010s. But still, MSFT has a much longer history than FB and Google. Theese 3 enjoyed probably similar scale of love from their users. And FB is the one with the least amount of love in their hayday. Apple is a different story. They always have a particularly cult like following that skewed every commentators' perspective. > It was not a venture capital success story: Microsoft was too profitable to raise real VC money, so the founders owned 70% at IPO. What? BC has been much smaller in the days of MSFT. You should say BC was not favored not MSFT was not relevant to VC. It was after MSFT created the PC market, and enabled Internet, then that the entrapeneriship becomes much cheaper through online economy. Then the VC becomes a central force of the high tech industry. You are asking the father to be judged by its grandson for greatness... > It is the oldest of FAMGA, hidden away in a different state. What?... Why not included HP, DEC, Fairchild then... Of course some is old some is young. The fact that MSFT lives for so long is a symbol of success itself... Thus mumbling of words are unbearable...
  • ngc248 5y ago
    The OP has a conclusion in his mind and constructing all his arguments to reach that conclusion. I mean Microsoft is Microsoft.
    • bigcat123 5y ago
• phkahler 5y ago
  Microsoft is only relevant to me because my employer hasn't noticed all our needs can be met by cloud services and Libreoffice. Seriously, if there were ever a time for Linux on the desktop it's now - in the office.
  • shrimp_emoji 5y ago
    Or, better than LibreOffice (albeit closed source but cross-platform and 99% identical to the MS Office suite): https://www.freeoffice.com/en/ https://www.freeoffice.com/en/
    • chakkepolja 5y ago
      The only viable threat to MS Office I see is the Google docs ecosystem.
• TedShiller 5y ago
  Microsoft teaches us how to design bad software
• civilized 5y ago
  Does anyone else find it boring to kibitz on how an absurdly powerful company could become more powerful? Wouldn't it be more interesting for Microsoft to actually improve its products, e.g. stop Excel making a nearly irrevocable assumption that something is a date just because it has two numbers and a hyphen between them? Make a successor to MS Access that doesn't suck? Fix the shitshow that is figures, tables, and cross references in Word? Make a nice new product inspired by FOSS projects that are way ahead of them, or failing that, at least some decent craftsmanship on existing products? At some point, doesn't the endless lust for monopoly power become boring? Why not just actually do a good job at the thing your company is supposed to be about? How many yachts do Satya and the MS board of directors need? Why not do something beautiful instead? Who needs to spend their life replaying the modern equivalent of an ambitious feudal lord?
• gumby 5y ago
  I was on the board of a company with a product offering on Azure (because one big customer used AZ for part of their stack). Expanding outside was tough: few prospects were interested as few used Azure (and we had a lot of uptime issues with Azure). This was in 2020 and 2021. The devs complained but porting to AWS saved the product. MS has a nice lock in with the big companies’ IT departments, which gave them nice recurring revenue but pointed their attention away from where the puck was going several times (most notably missing the Internet and missing phones and BYOD). They are huge, but in my technical life I was never really exposed to them (except Excel and some Powerpoint). That’s why this board experience was such a surprise to me.
  • PaulWaldman 5y ago
    Did the company end up dropping their big customer or did the company use both Azure and AWS? I work with customers who insist on Azure as long as they know it's an option, however they also have other vendors who are only on AWS and they seem to be okay with it.
    • gumby 5y ago
      Turns out customer had switched to Azure after Microsoft made an investment. This reminds me of the 2000 dot bomb: hardware companies were paying their customers to “buy” the product. That didn’t end well.
• wglb 5y ago
  What most analysis if Microsoft misses, and I think this one does as well, is that Microsoft is mostly not an innovator. What they have always excelled at is execution. They were late to the internet, phones, and now the cloud. But given their foothold (in the IBM days, this used to be called Account Control, but we don't whisper that anymore). So when it was clear that cloud was the thing, they came up with Azure, and as usual, are executing on this very well. Because of this, I don't think it is a good example for startups to follow. I think that successful startups are innovators.
  • MikusR 5y ago
    Microsoft is an innovator that is very bad at execution. Tablets With Tablet PC, smarthones with windows ce.
    • Toine 5y ago
      When Microsoft tries to innovate it fails : it's not an innovator
      • tester756 5y ago
        How about https://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/ https://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/
• kumarvvr 5y ago
  I always felt Azure was costlier than AWS. My perspective is of a solo developer. Does Azure justify its higher prices in the enterprise space with other value adds? Or is it the "no one gets fired for using IBM" thing?
  • spydum 5y ago
    They mostly cater to big enterprises who are used to getting huge volume discounts.
  • vondur 5y ago
    Pretty much that. If you are an all Microsoft shop and want to migrate on prem infrastructure to the cloud, it’s the easiest way to go.
• 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  I would absolutely love it if Microsoft developed a line of no-code (tiny-code?) tools for companies trying to build tech solutions. It would be great if we just had generic tech for generic business solutions so we didn't have to keep building software engineering teams to build the same god damn simple components over and over again. Imagine Terraform or ITTT using pre-made plugins and applications and some configuration language. You could download pre-made configuration for common solutions the way you load Resume templates in MS Office. Imagine never having to actually build a microservice ever again, but just downloading and running some generic-microservice-app that loads plugins for whatever you need the microservice to do, and the only thing you'd have to "write" is 10 lines of business logic. Now imagine downloading a "template" of an entire B2B SaaS, and being able to tweak a couple lines and then run it in any cloud provider. You could launch a company over a weekend.
• Xisiqomelir 5y ago
  “FAMGA” seems forced.
  • airstrike 5y ago
    MAGMA is the new acronym
    • lotsofpulp 5y ago
      MAMAA
• irrational 5y ago
  I’m somewhat surprised Azure is doing that well. I work for a Fortune 500 company. Before jumping on the cloud computing bandwagon we examined the AWS, Azure, Google, etc. and settled on AWS. So far we have been very happy with AWS.
• enos_feedler 5y ago
  I am pretty convinced that Microsoft is about to acquire Twitter. Dorsey leaving Twitter is basically setting it up to be run by big tech. Would add 3-4B$ instant ad revenue to Microsoft's business. Without a mobile OS, Microsoft needs to own significant mobile properties in the consumer mindshare and Twitter is one they can easily grow to be much bigger than it is today. They can build an Xbox gaming social service on top of Twitter spaces (add video streaming to spaces). It just seems to make sense given they've been at the table to talk with Pinterest, Discord and Tiktok. Twitter seems like a deal they can get done and it's not unlike a Linkedin. In fact there are probably synergies there too. The stock dropping is also a sign that something could happen. Usually it gives extra room for a premium bump on an acquisition offer. If it's not Microsoft, someone is coming in soon.
• SMAAART 5y ago
  Second-mover advantage is underrated and often confused with first-mover advantage.
• shp0ngle 5y ago
  Lot of people want to be and write like Stratechery, but they are obviously not Stratechery.
• shmerl 5y ago
  In gaming MS still has heavy lock-in mentality. When they'll start supporting Vulkan things might change.
  • herbst 5y ago
    I am sure they are afraid, the majority of every game released on steam today just works on Linux. One huge reason less to stay on Windows for a lot of people
    • shmerl 5y ago
      That still doesn't remove the tax they put on developers who release for Xbox by not supporting Vulkan there. But I agree, their lock-in was eroded pretty well in the recent times through tools like Wine, Proton, dxvk, vkd3d-proton and etc.
  • physicsguy 5y ago
    Compared to what? MacOS/iOS doesn't support Vulkan either. Graphics driver support on Linux is still horrendous, and is a tiny part of the market - most things use OpenGL still. The Xbox uses D3D. The PS5 uses Gnm and Gnmx which are proprietary. The Switch uses NVN which is proprietary.
    • shmerl 5y ago
      > Graphics driver support on Linux is still horrendous Your information is outdated by close to a decade, so check your sources. And how is usage of lock-in by Sony and Apple excusing MS? If anything all that just highlights who the bad players in the industry are. And MS is one of them.
      • physicsguy 5y ago
        If you want the latest NVidia graphics drivers on for e.g. Ubuntu, you have to install them yourself by downloading them from the website, and then when you upgrade your kernel, tty1 into the machine and reinstall the drivers because no desktop will start. I maintained a cluster with 200 compute cards until about two weeks ago. I’m well aware of the flaws in the Linux driver model. I’m not excusing it, I’m saying that they’re not doing anything notable. Most graphics engines can
• voidfunc 5y ago
  Microsoft is so diversified it would take some truly monumental changes or a spectacular collapse for it not end up a 10T company. The question is when not if in my mind.
  • herbst 5y ago
    If people stopped using their weird OS (which definitly isn't one of their strengths) most tech would render irrelevant as well. However not even Windows 8, or ads in a paid OS made that change happen.
• georgewsinger 5y ago
  This is a good article, but I'm surprised an article about how Microsoft can become a $10T company doesn't have a single mention of VR. If I were charge at Microsoft, I would orient the entire company around enterprise VR Computing.[1] [1]https://simulavr.com/blog/why-vrcs-are-better-than-pcs-and-laptops/ https://simulavr.com/blog/why-vrcs-are-better-than-pcs-and-l...
• alexklark 5y ago
  Microsoft is a legal & sales company. Not a tech, not a marketing, not gaming. They can sell condoms and every corporation CIO will eventually get microsoft condoms operation manager user license for every employee, a million dollars pack of condom server, as well as condom office and will ensure that payment to Microsoft is most important task of his company and that users should suffer and waste as much time as possible. I don’t know how they do it. It must be a deal with the devil. Or they are weasels & bribers company.
  • KronisLV 5y ago
    Here's a bad joke: with how many security holes Windows Server has historically had, maybe the line of business that you're suggesting is not the best fit. On a more serious note: i doubt that they are alone in pushing for marketing and sales, since most large corporations do that: some are just better at not being very obvious at doing that. They are still a ways away from the likes of Oracle, though, at least in my experience. I wouldn't (always) call doing sales effectively in a corporate environment bribery, though, that's a bit much. Now, personally i'd opt for libre software, be it a database or an operating system, but i understand that for many settings that's a non starter and oftentimes the larger entities will be willing to pay for support and also licensing.
  • rejectfinite 5y ago
    Show on the doll where MS hurt you.
• alexklark 5y ago
  Microsoft is a legal & sales company. Not a tech, not a marketing, not gambling. They can start selling condoms and every corporation CIO will eventually get microsoft condoms operation manager user license for every employee, a million dollars pack of condom server, as well as condom office and will ensure that payment to Microsoft is most important task of his company and that users suffer and waste as much time as possible inside this condom paradise. I don’t know how they do it. It must be a deal with the devil. Or they are weasels & bribers.
• AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  "No singular power law product" Uh, what? 1) owned x86 OSs for... 40 years and counting 2) office I'm not MS historian, but those two effective monopolies (the first was leveraged for the second) have been the core of MS profits for decades. Basically-free windows as I understand it fueled Azure to the third pillar only in the last... 5 years?
  • raxxorrax 5y ago
    Not even sure the data is correct on Azure, seeing how O365 is allegedly shrinking in revenue. Questionable in my opinion and might be very dependent on how you separate here. Are all these AD users that use Azure AD users of Azure? What if their MS 365 licence counted for Office or Azure? I believe revenue is trimmed to make it look good.
• excalibur 5y ago
  > Even to avid Silicon Valley historians, Microsoft is hard to define succinctly. No singular power law product defines Microsoft like Google’s Search, Apple’s iPhone, Amazon’s e-commerce, or Facebook’s social network. Are you kidding me? Why can't or won't you admit it's Windows? What did MS do to you?
  • ngc248 5y ago
    Windows and Office. These were power law products before the other mentioned products were still a twinkle in their founder's eyes
• indigodaddy 5y ago
  Would would the advantage be for Azure and AWS to, as the author puts it, “sandbag [conceal] the breathtaking growth of the segment?”
  • Victerius 5y ago
    Perhaps to avoid encouraging potential rivals from attempting to build rival products.
    • indigodaddy 5y ago
      Yes this was my first thought, but wouldn’t the potential stock rises from revealing the true crazy growth override that concern?
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• kodemager 5y ago
  There are a lot of assumptions about Microsoft in this thread and they basically all boil down to people not understanding what it is Microsoft does. They sell solutions to non-IT enterprise organisations, and while it’s reasonable to assume that a lot of HN simply aren’t in touch with this world, it’s one of the largest markets for IT software there is in the world, and the only real competition Microsoft has in this area is AWS. With several decades worth of experience in enterprise organisations in the European public sector, and quite a few years in the European financial private sector, Microsoft has been the sole business partner in terms of IT that has always been a solid pick. There seem to be this notion that Microsoft sells shitty products by manipulating IT managers, and that is just wholly untrue. They sell the software people want, and they sell it in a package that includes real world telephone support with their actual headquarters. Not some chat-bot or forum like Google, not some outsourced call Center like Apple, but real phone lines directly to Seattle. When something big goes wrong on any of our user facing solutions, which is basically anything office365 including sharepoint Microsoft will call us, on the hour, every hour, with updates unti things get resolved. This is essentially the most valueable thing to any IT manager in an organisation of 20.000 employees where maybe 50 are IT related, because it lets you tell the organisation exactly what Microsoft is doing to resolve the issue that is currently stopping your business. The reason Azure was capable of sneaking past AWS and securing itself a healthy market share wasn’t only that it makes sense to live in Azure when you already have Office365, it was that Amazon didn’t realise how much of a deal phone support meant to the European Enterprise market. They very quickly picked up on it though, and are now in some areas like HDPR a better option than Azure. Mean while a company like Google had office365 before there was office365 and have some arguably interesting services in Google Cloud, but they will never sell anything to enterprise because Google still doesn’t understand how to sell things to enterprise. It doesn’t seem like Google really cares in terms of gsuite or Google Cloud, but they do care about education, and, still they struggle with delivering what we want from them even though they ask us and we tell them. Apple is in a somewhat similar boat, except they don’t really care what we think. They do things the Apple way and never reach out. Anyway, the result is that Microsoft is a great business to business partner. Especially in recent years where they have inhoused more and more of their services so you almost never have to rely on some 3rd party “gold partner” or whatever they call themselves that essentially all suck and always have sucked. The only partner we have currently is for licensing, and even this is an area that I hope Microsoft inhouses because it’s just such a stupid mess. In my eyes a lot of what Microsoft sells to private customers is know how. They don’t give Office365 to students because they are nice, they do so because it means that every hire we onboard already knows excel. This means it’s incredibly hard to compete in the office space. Similarly everyone we hire knows windows, some of these people can’t tell the difference between an android or an iOS devices when they call IT support (no I’m not kidding) but they all know windows. I know that a lot of techies want Linux to be a competitive choice for users in areas like the public sector, but those are the people who would need to use it, you can’t imagine how expensive retraining 20.000 employees who can’t tell an Android and an iOS device apparat to use Linux. So as private users, we’re not really Microsoft customers. I mean, we are, but not really their primary customers. Because Microsoft makes their money in enterprise, and that position has probably never been more secure than it is today. Because what is the alternative to office365? Nothing. And when you already have your AD and licensing tied up to AzureAD and all the other integrations between Azure and windows + office365, then the business case to not use Azure as your cloud environment dwindles. It sometimes does make sense to use AWS, as I stated earlier, but not often. As such Microsoft along with Apple (who have the private market of non-techies locked down) are probably some or the safest stock in the world of technology. I’d still rather invest in green energy though. Who doesn’t need energy?
• thorwawayrus53 5y ago
  Dont' forget *its* Microsoft. Github never asked for login until Microsoft acquired it. Broken windows help page. Try installing drivers and navigate to knowledge base. When some thing does not work on windows you reboot and hope it works or just reinstall operating system. Try tweaking all the settings in visual studio only to be reset on the next update You have no control over updates. It happens especially when you want to give presentation. Also you can not poweroff whenever you like, because it chooses when the update should happen. No amount of changing setting can fix this. These are few problems. Don't forget *its* Microsoft. It won't change.
• barrkel 5y ago
  This is a prescription for a complete lack of focus. For an article that theorizes that execution takes a second seat to riding an S curve, there's not a lot of focus on acquisitions that aim at another S curve. Instead, it focuses on a somewhat odd competitive advantage - antitrust - and considers scattering bets all over mostly on the basis of demographics. $10T is treated like a target which is naturally good. But so many acquisitions would be financed in significant part by stock swaps, so all you're doing is getting to the $10T by agglomeration rather than growth. It's a fun business strategy essay but I didn't find a compelling strategy and the sustainable competitive "advantage" is odd, because it only empowers agglomeration instead of growth and actual competition. Needs more focus on why the agglomeration would be more efficient.
• lbriner 5y ago
  I think 90% of the time I use MS products, I am happy enough but there are some things that definitely would make them suck less: * Sort out the single-sign on thing as others have said. Why do I have to tell you whether my account is work or personal? Why do you let me have 2 accounts for the same email address anyway? * Endless tinkering with things like menus, control-panel settings (usually takes me 10 seconds to find the "Apps option", mostly pointless eye candy like in Windows 11 when most people would rather you just fixed the myriad of minor bugs that have never been fixed * A proper support system, not just 1000s of call-centre types telling you to trying re-installing windows * As a dev, not always making massive changed in .Net before sorting out the bugs they introduce far to easily. An example, I recently updated an MS extensions library and because they had added a load more constructors to a class, my dependency injection started failing but, of course, there were no obvious helpful errors. * They have never sorted out the licensing. It is horrifically complicated and very expensive and would be easy enough to fix if they cared. Yes, we get that you are trying to make sure we don't avoid licensing by purchasing large multi-core machines or using VMs but you could do a better job * Harmonising their hundreds of customer-facing sites like MSDN, Bizspark, Outlook, Office 365, Product Feedback etc. Even the design is all over the place but in some places you can login with the "wrong" account and it still lets you into a new account. Not cool. If I used the wrong login, tell me it isn't registered so I can find the correct one. On the other hand, I do like their more open culture and you are more likely now to have a conversation on github with real devs who can explain some of those crazy choices they might have made.
  • mschuster91 5y ago
    > Sort out the single-sign on thing as others have said. Why do I have to tell you whether my account is work or personal? Why do you let me have 2 accounts for the same email address anyway? Because the classic use-case is that people in corp environments have set up MS accounts on their work email addresses dating back many years, while the company had on-premise AD/Exchange and actually bought Office licenses. Now, the company switches to O365 + Azure AD because the CEO is following the hype train... and there comes the problem ahead: Microsoft is in a difficult legal position as they can't just blindly "merge" old accounts with corporate accounts (as the creators of the accounts may have created them on private devices, the accounts hold private data, ...), so the cleanest solution is what Microsoft has done: keep the "old" accounts around and don't contaminate them with corporate.
• anothernewdude 5y ago
  Having been stuck using Azure due to client's poor decision making, I can honestly say Microsoft need major changes before it comes close to gain support from developers at large. Number 1 should be documentation that accurately reflects the state of Azure services and tools. I should not be expected to translate names of things, or figure where things have moved since the documentation was last updated. Nor should I have to figure out the "microsoft way" of doing things. They should be simple, not needlessly obfuscated. Resource groups is amazing though.
• Fnoord 5y ago
  > Without a clear growth driver, Microsoft went on the defensive against the rest of FAMGA in the late 2000s: Bing, Skype, Surface, and Windows Phone were reactive moves. Eh, Surface shouldn't be in this list, its from the 2010-2020 decade: > Microsoft first announced Surface at an event on June 18, 2012, presented by former CEO Steve Ballmer in Milk Studios Los Angeles. Surface was the first major initiative by Microsoft to integrate its Windows operating system with its own hardware, and is the first PC designed and distributed solely by Microsoft. [1] Zune, however, belongs to this list. Along with a plethora of other products. They were each ways (or 'hobby projects') to move profits from Windows/Office in different markets. Many of these failed, or had only marginal success at best. Windows Phone is just the (failed) successor of Windows Mobile. It was an attempt to develop a capacitive touch-based OS and range of devices (Lumia) but it flopped because of two dominant market players with no market share gained. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface
  • pjmlp 5y ago
    Unfortunely as names get reused, Surface was initially something else at Microsoft. A screen based table which one could place tags with IDs that would trigger tag specific menus around the card and a .NET SDK to go along with it.
    • Fnoord 5y ago
      Ah yes, I remember that. Kind of like the command table in Command & Conquer. That was a cool concept, but it was just a concept AFAIK (nowadays, it wouldn't be so novel anymore). IIRC the one they released was the mega touchscreen for presentations. Or did that have a different name?
      • pjmlp 5y ago
        They have the same name, hence the confusion when one doesn't know about that MSR work.
• nigma1337 5y ago
  I still try to avoid Microsoft, although their opinions on Linux have changed (or atleast, they make it seem like they have), them paying analysts to make Windows look better than Linux, is quite scummy imo.
  • modo_mario 5y ago
    Their attitude towards things like Linux only goes as far as it profits them. It's pure facade. They still tried to shove their own ODF format (which was garbage) in the UK not too long ago. Will twist themselves in a pretzel to prevent (local) govs from switching to Linux, etc Github desktop client for Linux that was almost finished is no longer worked on now they own it, skype was promised to be maintained on Linux only to be ditched a year after, etc, etc
• tegeek 5y ago
  For me, as a developer, Microsoft is a company with deep roots in compilers and operating systems. All of the business empire started from these two foundations. Since its inception till today, Microsoft has been producing some global products every decade. And then making these products unbeatable in the global marketes. Be it Windows, Office, Exchange, Developer tools & Compilers, Web Servers, XBox, Azure, Teams etc. You just name it and Microsoft is right there in almost every field with profitable products. A lot of people don't like the traditional Microsoft products but all of the products just work and are being used for tens of millions of customers around the globe every day. Any Software company with ability to create profitable products every decade is a killer company. That is the secret souce Microsoft has. As a developer just imagine about a company which gives you a developer tool to make a web application, using the company's provided compiler, which then can be deployed on a company's provided webserver and can store some data on company's provided database which is running on company's provided operating system. The company also happens to provide end-to-end tools for running a company of a 5 people to a company of 500,000 people. This is Microsoft.
  • ta1356547 5y ago
    Then there's other ethical developers. This is a company with a deeply scummy past, who did everything to throttle competition when they had the upper hand. They might be trying to change their image lately, still a hotbed of scumbags who learned from the best.
    • ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      >This is a company with a deeply scummy past, who did everything to throttle competition when they had the upper hand. This applies to literally any billion/trillion dollar big tech company ever, Intel, Nvidia, AMD, Dell, Facebook even Apple and Google. They all abuse their market dominance at the expense of their competitors when they get there. It's literally the M.O. of any major corporation. Microsoft was just the first major successful big tech software company to make it there.
      • netizen-936824 5y ago
• ho_schi 5y ago
  This article seems to admire capitalism? And focus only on economics. Aside from that. It is impressive how it missed the MS-DOS deal with IBM, subsequent dropping OS/2 and finally WinNT. How Microsoft was never forced to compete with UNIX - but Linux - because the Reagan administration allowed AT&T to leave monopoly control and ruin UNIX. It doesn't talk much about developers and actual ecosystems. Buying and investing is a necessity but the core is information technology.
• fbn79 5y ago
  Looking to compare Micro$oft to Roman Empire I see Gates more similar to Caeser than Romulus. Gates/Caesar transformed the company to an empire from a little republic (Allen(Octavian) initial period). Satya looks more like Costantine the great, who became emperor on a crisis period and rebuild the empire around a new credo: Cristianity/Azure
• nvmletsdoit 5y ago
  I mean, I use microsoft tools even for compile on Linux nowdays. It's hard to forget. :D
• jbergens 5y ago
  One main obstacle for their cloud business in general and specifically Azure is that the latest GDPR rulings in Europe basically says that it is illegal for European companies to use Azure (or AWS or GCP) if you store any personal information. This may be a hindrance for both MS and Amazon for the next 1-2 years. Search for "schrems ii ruling" to read more about this.
  • PretzelPirate 5y ago
    This seems rather easy to solve if they approach it like they approach China. In China, US companies don’t run their own datacenters, they’re run by a Chinese company. If there’s a problem in that datacenter, the US on calls can tell the Chinese employee how to fix it, but the US person never gets access to the environment.
• cosmiccatnap 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
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• mkaufman 5y ago
  Author doesn't give Ballmer enough credit. Ballmer built out Microsoft's enterprise business - primarily SQL Server, Exchange. Not only did this give Microsoft deep in-roads into enterprises (as author notes), but it gave microsoft insight into just how fast AWS was growing. The rumor is Ballmer saw the rapidly growing license fees being paid by Amazon for running Windows Server and SQL Server. When he didn't see enough traction being made on cloud initiatives, he replaced Bob Muglia (then head of the Microsoft's Server and Tools Division) with Satya Nadella.
• mark_l_watson 5y ago
  Even though I moved on from using Windows years ago, I am still a happy Microsoft customer. My wife and I really like the Office 365 family plan. She likes having up to date Word on her MacBook, and we both like the OneDrive cloud storage for backups. A very good deal. I don’t know if they still do this, but about ten years ago I got accepted I in the BizSpark program and was given $150/month for three years to start a business. I ended up giving that up in a year, but really appreciated the support and thought it was a clever way to get people on Azure.
• deleted 5y ago
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• rawgabbit 5y ago
  This reads like a defense of Bill Gates and Microsoft. Comparing Microsoft to the Roman Empire is hubris. I don't trust anything from Microsoft and the blue screen of death is still too real. Many parts of Azure, especially its data offerings, are vapor ware and/or cr*pware. In return for the initial low low price, the number of developer hours required to keep all the moving parts moving is ridiculous. The fact that Azure doesn't cap you off so you don't get billed for runaway processes screams Azure is an untrustworthy platform.
• samylvrsnfrnds 5y ago
• chernevik 5y ago
  Let us pause for a minute and remember that, if it were not for Linus and Linux, we'd all be paying a computation tax to Bill Gates to cross the street.
  • minusf 5y ago
    if there were no linus we'd be in bsd paradise
• mcdermott 5y ago
  I think of Microsoft as a legacy, business oriented tech company. Other than the second string XBox product, they don't really have any consumer juice anymore, they are all about locking in businesses and forcing technology top down via company leaders. My nephews and nieces use Google products at school and iPads at home, by the time their generation is in the workforce, Microsoft will be like IBM, still rakes in money but pretty much a has-been. The only reason I still use Windows is I'm forced to on the desktop at work, but Linux has already taken the server market.
• am3101 5y ago
  I think this article drastically underestimates how hard it is to build and acquire new businesses. It reads like a caricature of a first-year management consultant’s recommendation—step 1, acquire adjacent businesses. Step 2, profit. (Edit: former management consultant) Set aside the culture piece, which is well described in the thread. First, MSFT struggles a lot with keeping innovation going and a big piece of this is that in order to get the full value out of vertical integration with your existing product portfolio (and customer base), you need to build full integration with other products, which often handicaps the new product with old protocols. Teams is a great (organic) example. The concept of slack+zoom+Dropbox is awesome. I think if it was executed well, it would be the market leader (or the other three would consolidate). But my experience doing anything with files in it has been very poor (it eats my files constantly!!!), and I think that is because it’s stuck using SharePoint as the backend, which was great for its time but was not intended for modern use cases. On the flip side, MSFT has also done a great job of acquiring / building _noncore_ products that don’t struggle with this. GitHub is a good example—there aren’t a lot of legacy core dependencies. But I find it hard to believe that if they bought airtable they wouldn’t try to merge it with excel and get stuck with the .xls/xlsx limits. By the way, if you don’t… how do you sell to legacy clients, which is their advantage? Second, Microsoft’s history has made it quite fearful of regulatory intervention. Yes, positioning themselves as “we’re not evil like Amazon, stealing your ideas” is a strategy, but it is also because they are terrified that they will be caught doing something like Amazon because everyone there remembers the ‘90s. It is amazing how often the phrase “we have to stay neutral” comes up in my meetings with my (multi year relationship) Microsoft sales reps. Third, related to this… Microsoft probably would get slammed with antitrust action if they started buying every company with a $100mn market cap! Fourth, I think this article drastically overestimates network effects. Actually, I think it misunderstands them. Zoom does not have network effects. If a client or vendor (or my boss) sends me a WebEx link, I am going to (begrudgingly) download the WebEx client and use it. There is no additional value to having more users (which is the definition of a network effect). This article is conflating scale with network effect. As an aside, I thought some of the advice to startups was funny. Capital may be a nice moat, but it seems hard to action on (“ah, I realized what I was missing… I will go raise $5bn for my series A SaaS business!”) as does the concept of cross-selling, which requires multiple (compelling) products, a large and very capable sales force, and years of trust with the client. I think the core insight here is spot on—it is Microsoft’s sales team that is the special sauce here. Finally, another aside—I think share buybacks are extremely appropriate for large tech companies. I get that people think about them in % terms, but we have _trillion dollar companies_ now. It’s very hard to imagine that the last marginal dollar of profit goes as far in innovation at a trillion dollar company as it does as a billion dollar company. I would much rather a firm like Microsoft return some of that capital to shareholders rather than spending every last penny on innovation, at least in its current form and structure.
• benkaiser 5y ago
  > Airtable Microsoft does have a play here. It's Microsoft Lists. The consumer version was even announced yesterday[0]. Sure it's not at the same level as Airtable yet, but the value of that market space is not lost on people at Microsoft. [0] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/try-microsoft-lists-with-your-microsoft-account-preview/ba-p/3083390 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/tr...