4 ms·
Microsoft makes decisions like this ALL the time, ones that 1) appear ridiculous to the casual observer; 2) turn out to actually be rational if you think very h
by jcheng 15y ago
Microsoft makes decisions like this ALL the time, ones that 1) appear ridiculous to the casual observer; 2) turn out to actually be rational if you think very hard about it and have enough background information (which is almost never available to anyone but MS employees); and too often, 3) in the end have unforeseen consequences that make Microsoft end up looking foolish or incompetent.
Every day when I worked at Microsoft another "look how stupid MS is" story would come out, and there would invariably be a large thread on the internal mailing list about it. The first 50 posts would be by people saying "You idiots in division X, this was a stupid idea and anybody could have told you that for the following 6 obvious reasons!" Then the folks from the responsible division would reply to each post to explain why they did what they did. And almost without fail these turned out to be decisions made by smart people who had very defensible reasons for doing what they did.
In the end I think what frustrated me most was that there was nobody at the top, no Steve Jobs, to say, "I get that you've done a lot of detailed analysis on why having 14 editions of Windows is a good idea, but I'm the boss, and this feels wrong, and we're not doing it."
- freehunter 15y agoWell there is a reason Apple is great at Apple stuff and Microsoft is great at Microsoft stuff. I wouldn't have it any other way. The true problem is that the media/forums pick up on MS news and run the controversy without actually thinking. It gets page views and upvotes, why stop? MS bashing is the tabloid news of the tech world. Doesn't make a lot of sense most of the time, but damn is it a hot seller.
- r00fus 15y agoYou're correct that brand proliferation is a Microsoft problem (actually Cisco is a bigger offender here - but they don't sell directly to consumers all that much). But it's not like they have to be like this. Make the business brands profligate and ensure the consumer brands are simple and to the point, and cut out weak brands (mac.com? me.com? all getting thrown away).
- freehunter 15y agoI don't know if you meant to reply to someone else or if you misread what I was saying, but I don't see Microsoft's brands as a particularly troubling subject. I'm glad they're consolidating their Windows Live stuff to a nicer name and format, but I'd say on everything else they market just one option to the consumer and multiples to the business. It's harder for Microsoft to throw away some brands because they have massive amounts of users who only know the name. Apple hasn't had millions of users on me.com over a decade and a half. Harder to throw out hotmail.com.