8 ms·
> This person called the company "the biggest and slowest" of all the major tech companies Could not be further from the truth.
by Laaas 3y ago
> This person called the company "the biggest and slowest" of all the major tech companies
Could not be further from the truth.
- gwern 3y agoIt doesn't need to be true, just needs to be what a nontrivial number of OAers think. And given how many people I still see putting down 'M$', I can absolutely believe a dislike of Microsoft is widespread.
- Clubber 3y agoIt was in vogue to make fun of M$ in the late 90s and aughts; the Gates/Ballmer era. Even for people using M$ products for a living. I think the moniker just stuck. I don't dislike M$ more than I dislike Google or any other similar tech leviathan.
- soulbadguy 3y agowhy ?
- Nthringas 3y agobecause IBM is both bigger and slower?
- satvikpendem 3y agoIBM is not "major" anymore in the sense of major tech companies that the person above meant.
- nostrebored 3y agoI don't think IBM is something that comes to mind when people are talking "Major tech companies" anymore.
- zlg_codes 3y agoThey ought to, considering they acquired Red Hat a while back.
- xcv123 3y agoThe Red Hat deal was relatively small at $34B. Microsoft has a market cap of $2.8 Trillion. IBM is only at $146 Billion. But IBM still has a higher head count.
- zlg_codes 3y agoI mean, that's one way of viewing it, yes, but considering how influential they are in spaces other businesses are struggling in (free software), having a $34B market cap isn't shabby performance. IBM getting an easy-in to free software via a respected (by business, anyway) partner is a big opportunity, but they'd have to play their cards right and I can't think of the last big thing IBM was behind. They might be able to sell Red Hat to everyday people if they pair it with hardware and have reasonable pricing for personal or self-hosting support licenses. I'm not savvy enough on IBM's history to know if their current staff are good picks to develop a more complete product on top of RHEL, but I can see it having value and success if priced well. As I understand it though, both IBM and RH seem more interested in cloud stuff. You'd have to be blind to consider Red Hat not influential in its sphere.
- xcv123 3y agoYes Red Hat is significant in its niche of enterprise server operating systems, but it's not in the same league as Microsoft as a company overall. Red Hat would typically be deployed on AWS or Azure where they rake in all the money. While Microsoft makes $73B profit, IBM makes $2B profit.
- zlg_codes 3y agoSo IBM/RH can't be big because the biggest makes more money...? We've had two exchanges and I'm still trying to understand why this matters.
- eikenberry 3y agoNot after the Redhat acquisition.
- soulbadguy 3y agoI don't think IBM is a "major tech companie" in the modern lingo
- airstrike 3y agoHard to argue IBM is bigger
- Nthringas 3y agoI'm factoring in their legacy and history i.e. since they're older they're bigger
- xcv123 3y agoMicrosoft is now 20x bigger than IBM in terms of market cap.
- Nthringas 3y agothe only way to settle this is to sum the market cap of both companies over their entire history while adjusting all values for inflation keep in mind that IBM[0] is over a hundred years old, and microsoft isn't even half of that [0] [0] wikipedia
- blackmesaind 3y agoThis could be a product of your own PoV & history with IBM. Not many consider IBM's legacy noteworthy, they became complacent and got beat out the market.
- CyberDildonics 3y ago
- ethbr1 3y agohttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3t6L-FlfeaI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3t6L-FlfeaI
- hughesjj 3y agoIMHO, today, Google takes the cake for slowest. Meta is still probably the most agile, and Amazon is super hit or miss (so most variance) Idk where Microsoft would fit in that hierarchy, like Amazon it's kind of hit or miss but with less variance and extrema. From what I've seen and heard, both Gaming and Azure are pretty darn competent these days from an engineering and product perspective. Not perfect of course, but nothing is.
- a_wild_dandan 3y agoHuh, I've heard several people refer to Microsoft as a "retirement home." Maybe that's just an ageism thing.
- hughesjj 3y agoI've heard the same about Google. It's definitely not untrue at MSFT today either. My hot take is that 2018 Google was late 90s MSFT more or less (juggernaut resting on their laurels and cashing in on their monopoly). Today, they're more like mid 2000s MSFT. Here's hoping 'tomorrow' they'll have a similar comeback.
- VirusNewbie 3y agoDo you think Microsoft would have a competitive foundational model if not for OpenAI? Cause Google and Meta seem like they’re top of the pack there, with AWS at the very least releasing some.
- vitorgrs 3y agoMicrosoft already had competitive models, especially Megatron-Turing. They were even using on Bing Chat before... I'm pretty sure they still use their model on Bing Chat today (Balanced mode). It was a competitive model for the time, it was made in 2021 if I recall in cooperation with Nvidia. The largest model at the time (and still remains one of the largest models ever made). https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/using-deepspeed-and-megatron-to-train-megatron-turing-nlg-530b-the-worlds-largest-and-most-powerful-generative-language-model/ https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/using-deepspeed-and-megatr... The thing here is that OpenAI managed to create GPT4 - that no one matched yet.
- valine 3y agoSounds about right to me. They missed the entire smartphone revolution because they were too slow to adapt their OS (literally their main product) to run on mobile devices.
- Laaas 3y agoThey didn't miss the cloud revolution, and certainly not the AI revolution either. Microsoft is doing absolutely great under Satya Nadella.
- soulbadguy 3y ago> and certainly not the AI revolution either. The AI revolution is still underway, we don't know who missed what yet. In term of research output. Most of the ground breaking work did "not" come from msft. They just bough they way in. Valid strategy, but definitely not novel.
- valine 3y agoThat’s more down to dumb luck partnering with OpenAI. You have a point with the cloud computing. I’d hesitate to call it a revolution though. I’d never willingly use a microsoft cloud product if I wasn’t forced to by my employer.
- scarface_74 3y agoAnd until you get into a position where you can control the direction of a large corporation it doesn’t matter. Microsoft doesn’t care about the random idealistic developer?
- ipaddr 3y agoThey were not first in either areas. They leveraged existing products like office to catch up.
- Infinitesimus 3y agoApple has taught us time and time again that you rarely have to be first to the market. Executing well and keeping people locked in are pretty important
- tfehring 3y agoMy impression is that it's pretty true of Microsoft in general, but not of the AI research teams I'm familiar with. As with any tech company of its size, there's lots of variation from team to team.
- baz00 3y agoYeah I mean I can think of a fair few better nouns that are applicable to MSFT than biggest and slowest...