5 ms·

Microsoft Dumps MS Money: Yes, Web Apps Had Something to do With It

17 points by transburgh 17y ago

jsdalton 17y ago
What surprises me about this, and perhaps where I disagree with the article, is that personal finance is hardly a solved problem -- particularly by web 2.0 apps. I do use Mint and I actually love it. But it's mostly just for checking my balances in one place and maybe checking out some of my transactions. I used to use MS Money, and before that Quicken, before the applications themselves devolved into bloatware and banks limited their access. I guess I just find it surprising that MS didn't see this as an opportunity to compete as a web application against what's actually a pretty weak field. Not that I would personally give MS high odds at winning such a competition, mind you...
- maukdaddy 17y ago
  Definitely agree. There is no "Web 2.0" app that allows me to do the advanced reporting and graphing I can do with Money. The web-based apps definitely don't allow any detailed review of historical transactions.
- spoiledtechie 17y ago
  I know, why didn't MS Money try and compete? They could have pulled a ton of leverage with many banks. They already had the backbone. They should have just flexed a bit of muscle... No innovation in this area shows what will happen in other areas. And that will inevitably mean MSoft might just fail big time if they don't innovate like the start ups are doing.
TallGuyShort 17y ago
>> they want widgety, simple applications that do one thing well. Oh my - THAT is a familiar phrase! I think as the general population become more tech-savvy and networking becomes vastly more important, that philosophy will be a big deal. Go UNIX!
- maukdaddy 17y ago
  Um what does simple, widgety applications have to do with UNIX?
  - dhs 17y ago
    From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy Doug McIlroy, the inventor of Unix pipes and one of the founders of the Unix tradition, summarized the philosophy as follows: This is the Unix philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.
  - TallGuyShort 17y ago
    It's part of the "UNIX philosophy" - to write programs that do one thing, and do it well. They also encouraged the use of text interfaces so that it was easy to connect pieces together with pipes. Text was seen as a "universal" way to transmit data. Such a universal protocol is another concept I think will become more important as the web continues to grow.
chollida1 17y ago
> How can applications like Mint (Mint reviews) and Quicken, which Microsoft is now chasing to replace MS Money, come years after MS Money, and take away its market share? Umm Quicken came before Microsoft Money. 1991 is the first year I can find for Money 1.0 vs Quicken which was already a product by 1988. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuit
edave 17y ago
I think the article makes some good points in general, but largely misses the fact that MS Money was not that great of a program in many aspects, nor did it innovate. Likewise with Encarta- it seems that these programs were designed in the 90s and then tried as much as possible to keep that mindset, even as they introduced new features.
- TomOfTTB 17y ago
  You are absolutely wrong about this. MS Money was a great program that innovated quite a bit. The Money team was one of the first Microsoft Groups to realize the web was a paradigm shift. They did two things that are noteworthy. First, they very early on integrated themselves with banks (sort of a Proto Programmable Web). Most people don't realize Money was connecting to banks a year before Quicken (who offered imports of files but no direct connect) Second, they realized the web was also a UI shift and wrote a shrinkwrapped app as a web application (I suspect not making it a shrinkwrapped app was beyond their power). In fairness they were clearly inspired by Quicken's use of hyperlinks in program but they took what Quicken did and went one better. You can see a lot of that from this screenshot (note it's 2002): http://images.sudhian.com/articles/ShuttleLinux/PartIV/MSMoney.jpg http://images.sudhian.com/articles/ShuttleLinux/PartIV/MSMon... MS Money was actually a revolutionary product in many ways. So much so that people didn't realize how revolutionary it was at the time.
  - psranga 17y ago
    You're partially right. I tried both Quicken and Money last year. As a s/w developer, I could immediately see that Money was suffering from years of neglect. I predicted that it would soon be cancelled and that was one of the reasons I stuck with Quicken (though it too sucks). Due to the reasons you articulate re: Money's early web focus and my hunch about years of neglect, I think that Money's cancellation had much more to do with internal Microsoft priorities than with the rise of the web finance software companies. For financial information, I want multi-decade records. With a web startup, I have no assurance that all the time I spend entering and categorizing stuff will pay off if the web guy goes under with my data. With a desktop program, at least I can keep going on for a long time with the old version (I'm still using Quicken 2007).
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
nopassrecover 17y ago
I used to work in a software store in Australia and we had people always looking for Money but the latest version was 2005 and never developed beyond then.

17 points by transburgh 17y ago

What surprises me about this, and perhaps where I disagree with the article, is that personal finance is hardly a solved problem -- particularly by web 2.0 apps. I do use Mint and I actually love it. But it's mostly just for checking my balances in one place and maybe checking out some of my transactions. I used to use MS Money, and before that Quicken, before the applications themselves devolved into bloatware and banks limited their access. I guess I just find it surprising that MS didn't see this as an opportunity to compete as a web application against what's actually a pretty weak field. Not that I would personally give MS high odds at winning such a competition, mind you...

maukdaddy 17y ago
Definitely agree. There is no "Web 2.0" app that allows me to do the advanced reporting and graphing I can do with Money. The web-based apps definitely don't allow any detailed review of historical transactions.
spoiledtechie 17y ago
I know, why didn't MS Money try and compete? They could have pulled a ton of leverage with many banks. They already had the backbone. They should have just flexed a bit of muscle... No innovation in this area shows what will happen in other areas. And that will inevitably mean MSoft might just fail big time if they don't innovate like the start ups are doing.

TallGuyShort 17y ago

>> they want widgety, simple applications that do one thing well. Oh my - THAT is a familiar phrase! I think as the general population become more tech-savvy and networking becomes vastly more important, that philosophy will be a big deal. Go UNIX!

maukdaddy 17y ago
Um what does simple, widgety applications have to do with UNIX?
- dhs 17y ago
  From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy Doug McIlroy, the inventor of Unix pipes and one of the founders of the Unix tradition, summarized the philosophy as follows: This is the Unix philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.
- TallGuyShort 17y ago
  It's part of the "UNIX philosophy" - to write programs that do one thing, and do it well. They also encouraged the use of text interfaces so that it was easy to connect pieces together with pipes. Text was seen as a "universal" way to transmit data. Such a universal protocol is another concept I think will become more important as the web continues to grow.

chollida1 17y ago

> How can applications like Mint (Mint reviews) and Quicken, which Microsoft is now chasing to replace MS Money, come years after MS Money, and take away its market share? Umm Quicken came before Microsoft Money. 1991 is the first year I can find for Money 1.0 vs Quicken which was already a product by 1988. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuit

edave 17y ago

I think the article makes some good points in general, but largely misses the fact that MS Money was not that great of a program in many aspects, nor did it innovate. Likewise with Encarta- it seems that these programs were designed in the 90s and then tried as much as possible to keep that mindset, even as they introduced new features.

TomOfTTB 17y ago
You are absolutely wrong about this. MS Money was a great program that innovated quite a bit. The Money team was one of the first Microsoft Groups to realize the web was a paradigm shift. They did two things that are noteworthy. First, they very early on integrated themselves with banks (sort of a Proto Programmable Web). Most people don't realize Money was connecting to banks a year before Quicken (who offered imports of files but no direct connect) Second, they realized the web was also a UI shift and wrote a shrinkwrapped app as a web application (I suspect not making it a shrinkwrapped app was beyond their power). In fairness they were clearly inspired by Quicken's use of hyperlinks in program but they took what Quicken did and went one better. You can see a lot of that from this screenshot (note it's 2002): http://images.sudhian.com/articles/ShuttleLinux/PartIV/MSMoney.jpg http://images.sudhian.com/articles/ShuttleLinux/PartIV/MSMon... MS Money was actually a revolutionary product in many ways. So much so that people didn't realize how revolutionary it was at the time.
- psranga 17y ago
  You're partially right. I tried both Quicken and Money last year. As a s/w developer, I could immediately see that Money was suffering from years of neglect. I predicted that it would soon be cancelled and that was one of the reasons I stuck with Quicken (though it too sucks). Due to the reasons you articulate re: Money's early web focus and my hunch about years of neglect, I think that Money's cancellation had much more to do with internal Microsoft priorities than with the rise of the web finance software companies. For financial information, I want multi-decade records. With a web startup, I have no assurance that all the time I spend entering and categorizing stuff will pay off if the web guy goes under with my data. With a desktop program, at least I can keep going on for a long time with the old version (I'm still using Quicken 2007).

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

nopassrecover 17y ago

I used to work in a software store in Australia and we had people always looking for Money but the latest version was 2005 and never developed beyond then.