4 ms·

He lost me at "[Microsoft] has never had a single brilliant idea in its entire history". Criticizing the company is one thing. Pointing out the flaws fine. Ang

by madair 17y ago

He lost me at "[Microsoft] has never had a single brilliant idea in its entire history". Criticizing the company is one thing. Pointing out the flaws fine. Anger at bad behavior fine. Even laughing at dumb mistakes, that's not gonna rile me. But denying the brilliance of the company and people who built the powerhouse that is Microsoft? That, my friend is a far better candidate for number one in the list of top ten geek business myths.

brlewis 17y ago
I don't get why so many people see Microsoft as antonymous to innovation. When it comes to innovative companies, nobody's bought more of them than Microsoft.
TJensen 17y ago
My read of that was not that Microsoft wasn't a brilliant company, they just did not have any brilliant product ideas. Instead, they took ideas from others and did brilliant marketing. The point being that a really amazing idea is a very small percentage of what it takes to make a really successful business.
- madair 17y ago
  All I did was quote what he said. The paragraph is about ideas. If he meant product ideas I would hope he would say so, but no, he includes "Page rank, text-only ads, massive parallel implementation on cheap hardware" in the brief bit of Google worship. Only one of those is a product in the simplistic sense. Hate on Microsoft all you want, but failing to recognize their ideas is gonna be a little limiting is what I gotta say.
  - 10ren 17y ago
    Here's a simple way to disprove him: name one brilliant idea that Microsoft has had.
    - DanHulton 17y ago
      Licensing DOS to IBM instead of selling it.
      - jimbokun 17y ago
        That is indeed brilliant, but I think it is pretty clear from context that Rondam was referring to brilliant technology and product ideas. The Google ideas he cites fall into those categories. Microsoft's most brilliant ideas were always about how to sell their products and maximize profits. A fascinating example of this is Gates' memo to Apple about licensing the Mac. http://www.scripting.com/specials/gatesLetter/text.html http://www.scripting.com/specials/gatesLetter/text.html Common wisdom is that Windows became the standard because Apple did not license Mac technology. Very early on, Gates explained the rationale for this to Apple and even suggested potential partners for licensing agreements. So it seems the "ideas" behind Mac OS were not as valuable as Gates' and Microsoft's business sense. (If you want to cite Apple's resurgence as a refutation, I would argue that the maturation of Jobs' business sense is behind that. He has been brilliant in negotiating deals that favor Apple since his return, has done a better job competing on price than people realize, and has undeniably manufactured customer demand for Apple products.)
        10ren 17y ago
        "text-only ads" are not really a technology or product idea. It's really closer to clever marketing, in terms of delivering what people want. I think the most brilliant non-technical idea of Google is its PR. They seriously spend on it - not on telling people that Google is good, but in doing things that people will think are good and cool. Like free GMail. I think they genuinely like to do it; but you can't run a billion dollar company without having a business justification for it - which is that people can switch search engines so easily, you better make them like you (it works on me). It's not just a nice to be - it's crucial for the very existence of the company, and it's justifiable to spend actual money on it. Other companies provide cool free stuff - but not to the extent that Google does. They are exceptional in this. Microsoft could make billions even when hated by many; Google can't.
        17y ago
  - TJensen 17y ago
    I'm not MS-hating. I tend to agree with the article that very few companies do something completely new, including MS and Google. MS did a brilliant job marketing. Regardless of whether you agree with their tactics, they executed on them in an amazing way. Google had a really good technology that by itself would have amounted to nothing. However, they executed very well on the business side. Now people say "Alta-who? Isn't Vista from Microsoft?" The point is that, as technologists, we get really wrapped up in the cool technology we are building, but that is a minuscule part of making a successful business. I've even been involved in a startup where it was actually detrimental, because everybody patted themselves on the back so often, they forgot they needed customers.
    - whacked_new 17y ago
      One need look no further than recent history to find evidence of this better than anyone can hypothesize about: VHS vs. Betamax. Tesla vs. Edison. Vision is important. A good example of someone who deftly handles both tech and business is like Wolfram, but he's out of our league; most of us, anyway. Fascinating read about Wolfram's embarkation into business: http://www.stephenwolfram.com/interviews/88-fortune/ http://www.stephenwolfram.com/interviews/88-fortune/
- madair 17y ago
  Besides, that's just changing the argument, it's pretty dumb to think they don't have great product ideas too, lol, e.g. Microsoft Research? But then we get into that happy place where there is no new idea under the sun. After all, we can take apart just about any 'new' idea and find a rich lineage. It is in only the most rare of cases that anything is truly new. It's the fruition of an idea that's usually the thing that is recognized at large, and that is often not at the origin anyway. Hacker News articles cast an eye on the fruition of business ideas often enough to say it's predominant here. And that's what this post wants to be about. No matter which way you put it, FAIL ;-)
  - apsurd 17y ago
    sorry , there is content here, but had to mod you down because of that last word. I actually have NEVER seen that word here in all my reading, to the point where i took it for granted. Please keep that word off HN. Thanks.
    - madair 17y ago
      LOL, FAIL!
10ren 17y ago
Microsoft has marketed many brilliant ideas. But the brilliant ideas that they marketed were not theirs; and the brilliant ideas that were theirs they didn't market.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
lisper 17y ago
It's important to distinguish between being brilliant and having a brilliant idea. They are not the same. The folks at MS are undoubtedly brilliant (and ruthless and unethical, but that's another matter). But Microsoft as a company has not once produced what I would consider a brilliant innovation. In fact, it's arguable that Microsoft has been successful precisely because it has not tried to be innovative, but has instead followed the less technologically risky strategy of preying on the innovation of others. If you want to dispute this, the most effective way would be to cite a counterexample. I've had this discussion with an awful lot of people over the years and so far no one has been able to come up with one.
- dantheman 17y ago
  Some good microsoft stuff: 1. C# -- Despite all its faults, it's a hell of a lot better than java and they've done some really interesting things with the CLR and type systems... 2. Photosynth & Seadragon are pretty cool. 3. XMLHTTP Request (what powers all this ajax stuff, that's microsoft) 4. Microsoft's birds eye view in their map applications. 5. A lot of the features that got dropped from VISTA were cool (new command line and the new file system) 6. The Microsoft intellimouse (best mouse ever made) That's just a few off the top of my head... sure office & windows don't innovate too much; but microsoft access is a pretty important product because it solves a real business need (never really used it, but know tons of companies rely on it).
  - lisper 17y ago
    I agree these are "cool" but IMO they don't rise to the level of "brilliant". I suppose reasonable people could disagree. But I think everyone would agree that these ideas, whether they are "brilliant" or merely "cool" are not the source of Microsoft's success.
    - dantheman 17y ago
      Well Microsoft's success comes from windows and office. I want to see anyone's brilliant innovations in those domains? The original spreadsheet, WYSIWG editing, and powerpoint all found the dominant design early on and have been going through refinement for years.

by madair 17y ago

brlewis 17y ago

I don't get why so many people see Microsoft as antonymous to innovation. When it comes to innovative companies, nobody's bought more of them than Microsoft.

TJensen 17y ago

My read of that was not that Microsoft wasn't a brilliant company, they just did not have any brilliant product ideas. Instead, they took ideas from others and did brilliant marketing. The point being that a really amazing idea is a very small percentage of what it takes to make a really successful business.

madair 17y ago
All I did was quote what he said. The paragraph is about ideas. If he meant product ideas I would hope he would say so, but no, he includes "Page rank, text-only ads, massive parallel implementation on cheap hardware" in the brief bit of Google worship. Only one of those is a product in the simplistic sense. Hate on Microsoft all you want, but failing to recognize their ideas is gonna be a little limiting is what I gotta say.
- 10ren 17y ago
  Here's a simple way to disprove him: name one brilliant idea that Microsoft has had.
  - DanHulton 17y ago
    Licensing DOS to IBM instead of selling it.
    - jimbokun 17y ago
      That is indeed brilliant, but I think it is pretty clear from context that Rondam was referring to brilliant technology and product ideas. The Google ideas he cites fall into those categories. Microsoft's most brilliant ideas were always about how to sell their products and maximize profits. A fascinating example of this is Gates' memo to Apple about licensing the Mac. http://www.scripting.com/specials/gatesLetter/text.html http://www.scripting.com/specials/gatesLetter/text.html Common wisdom is that Windows became the standard because Apple did not license Mac technology. Very early on, Gates explained the rationale for this to Apple and even suggested potential partners for licensing agreements. So it seems the "ideas" behind Mac OS were not as valuable as Gates' and Microsoft's business sense. (If you want to cite Apple's resurgence as a refutation, I would argue that the maturation of Jobs' business sense is behind that. He has been brilliant in negotiating deals that favor Apple since his return, has done a better job competing on price than people realize, and has undeniably manufactured customer demand for Apple products.)
      - 10ren 17y ago
        "text-only ads" are not really a technology or product idea. It's really closer to clever marketing, in terms of delivering what people want. I think the most brilliant non-technical idea of Google is its PR. They seriously spend on it - not on telling people that Google is good, but in doing things that people will think are good and cool. Like free GMail. I think they genuinely like to do it; but you can't run a billion dollar company without having a business justification for it - which is that people can switch search engines so easily, you better make them like you (it works on me). It's not just a nice to be - it's crucial for the very existence of the company, and it's justifiable to spend actual money on it. Other companies provide cool free stuff - but not to the extent that Google does. They are exceptional in this. Microsoft could make billions even when hated by many; Google can't.
      - 17y ago
- TJensen 17y ago
  I'm not MS-hating. I tend to agree with the article that very few companies do something completely new, including MS and Google. MS did a brilliant job marketing. Regardless of whether you agree with their tactics, they executed on them in an amazing way. Google had a really good technology that by itself would have amounted to nothing. However, they executed very well on the business side. Now people say "Alta-who? Isn't Vista from Microsoft?" The point is that, as technologists, we get really wrapped up in the cool technology we are building, but that is a minuscule part of making a successful business. I've even been involved in a startup where it was actually detrimental, because everybody patted themselves on the back so often, they forgot they needed customers.
  - whacked_new 17y ago
    One need look no further than recent history to find evidence of this better than anyone can hypothesize about: VHS vs. Betamax. Tesla vs. Edison. Vision is important. A good example of someone who deftly handles both tech and business is like Wolfram, but he's out of our league; most of us, anyway. Fascinating read about Wolfram's embarkation into business: http://www.stephenwolfram.com/interviews/88-fortune/ http://www.stephenwolfram.com/interviews/88-fortune/
madair 17y ago
Besides, that's just changing the argument, it's pretty dumb to think they don't have great product ideas too, lol, e.g. Microsoft Research? But then we get into that happy place where there is no new idea under the sun. After all, we can take apart just about any 'new' idea and find a rich lineage. It is in only the most rare of cases that anything is truly new. It's the fruition of an idea that's usually the thing that is recognized at large, and that is often not at the origin anyway. Hacker News articles cast an eye on the fruition of business ideas often enough to say it's predominant here. And that's what this post wants to be about. No matter which way you put it, FAIL ;-)
- apsurd 17y ago
  sorry , there is content here, but had to mod you down because of that last word. I actually have NEVER seen that word here in all my reading, to the point where i took it for granted. Please keep that word off HN. Thanks.
  - madair 17y ago
    LOL, FAIL!

10ren 17y ago

Microsoft has marketed many brilliant ideas. But the brilliant ideas that they marketed were not theirs; and the brilliant ideas that were theirs they didn't market.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

lisper 17y ago

It's important to distinguish between being brilliant and having a brilliant idea. They are not the same. The folks at MS are undoubtedly brilliant (and ruthless and unethical, but that's another matter). But Microsoft as a company has not once produced what I would consider a brilliant innovation. In fact, it's arguable that Microsoft has been successful precisely because it has not tried to be innovative, but has instead followed the less technologically risky strategy of preying on the innovation of others. If you want to dispute this, the most effective way would be to cite a counterexample. I've had this discussion with an awful lot of people over the years and so far no one has been able to come up with one.

dantheman 17y ago
Some good microsoft stuff: 1. C# -- Despite all its faults, it's a hell of a lot better than java and they've done some really interesting things with the CLR and type systems... 2. Photosynth & Seadragon are pretty cool. 3. XMLHTTP Request (what powers all this ajax stuff, that's microsoft) 4. Microsoft's birds eye view in their map applications. 5. A lot of the features that got dropped from VISTA were cool (new command line and the new file system) 6. The Microsoft intellimouse (best mouse ever made) That's just a few off the top of my head... sure office & windows don't innovate too much; but microsoft access is a pretty important product because it solves a real business need (never really used it, but know tons of companies rely on it).
- lisper 17y ago
  I agree these are "cool" but IMO they don't rise to the level of "brilliant". I suppose reasonable people could disagree. But I think everyone would agree that these ideas, whether they are "brilliant" or merely "cool" are not the source of Microsoft's success.
  - dantheman 17y ago
    Well Microsoft's success comes from windows and office. I want to see anyone's brilliant innovations in those domains? The original spreadsheet, WYSIWG editing, and powerpoint all found the dominant design early on and have been going through refinement for years.