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Microsoft's corporate structure and company culture is actively hostile to innovation of any kind. This was true in Ballmer's era and is equally true today, no

by paxys 2y ago

Microsoft's corporate structure and company culture is actively hostile to innovation of any kind. This was true in Ballmer's era and is equally true today, no matter how many PR wins Nadella is able to pull off. The company justifies its market cap by selling office software and cloud services contracts to large corporations and governments via an army of salespeople and lobbyists, and that is what it will continue to be successful at. It got lucky by backing OpenAI at the right time, but the delusion of becoming an independent AI powerhouse like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta etc. will never be a reality. Stuff like this is simply not in the company's DNA.

slt2021 2y ago
you are right, Microsoft is a hodge podge of legacy on-premise software, legacy software lifted and shifted to the cloud, and some innovation pockets. Microsoft bread and butter is Enterprise bloatware and large Enterprise deals where everything in the world is bundled together for use-it-or-lose-it contracts. Its not really much different from IBM like a two decades ago
- feyman_r 2y ago
  It does seem though that this legacy-cloud-pocket-innovation combination continues to work without slowing down. It also what was said for Microsoft 15 years ago too (not really much different from IBM..), which is correct from one perspective, but not turning out true from revenue, market cap, growth terms. My thinking is that Lindy Effect runs strong in a lot of Big Tech, and with deep pockets, they can afford to not be innovators but build moats on existing frameworks.
feyman_r 2y ago
How does one define an AI powerhouse? If its building models, a smart business wouldn't bank on that alone. There is no moat. If the definition of an AI Powerhouse is more about the capability to host models and process workloads, Amazon (the other company missing in that list) and Microsoft are definitely them.

by paxys 2y ago

slt2021 2y ago

you are right, Microsoft is a hodge podge of legacy on-premise software, legacy software lifted and shifted to the cloud, and some innovation pockets. Microsoft bread and butter is Enterprise bloatware and large Enterprise deals where everything in the world is bundled together for use-it-or-lose-it contracts. Its not really much different from IBM like a two decades ago

feyman_r 2y ago
It does seem though that this legacy-cloud-pocket-innovation combination continues to work without slowing down. It also what was said for Microsoft 15 years ago too (not really much different from IBM..), which is correct from one perspective, but not turning out true from revenue, market cap, growth terms. My thinking is that Lindy Effect runs strong in a lot of Big Tech, and with deep pockets, they can afford to not be innovators but build moats on existing frameworks.

feyman_r 2y ago

How does one define an AI powerhouse? If its building models, a smart business wouldn't bank on that alone. There is no moat. If the definition of an AI Powerhouse is more about the capability to host models and process workloads, Amazon (the other company missing in that list) and Microsoft are definitely them.