4 ms·

Microsoft has done quite well financially, but where they look bad is when you see how much Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, etc. have grown in the same period

Microsoft has done quite well financially, but where they look bad is when you see how much Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, etc. have grown in the same period. One thing I learned in business school is the measure of a CEO is not whether or not they did a good job, but rather if they did a better job than someone else in the same position. It's hard to look at Microsoft in the last 10 years and think that they have done as well as they could.

throwawaykf 13y ago
Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon? That is a woefully inadequate list of competitors. Here's a slightly more (but by no means fully) complete list, including some companies that are no longer around: Oracle Salesforce Mozilla Sony Nintendo Samsung Blackberry IBM Heroku Rackspace Sun Novell Red Hat Jetbrains Not to mention, open source projects like Apache, Linux, Open Office, etc that attempt to commoditize their products. That is an incredibly huge list by any standard, and many on that list are giants themselves. Now, given that Microsoft has competed, on average, successfully against all these rivals, many of whom give away competing products for free, would you still consider their lack of success against a select few to be a huge shortcoming? (Edit: typos, fixes, adding more rivals as I think of them)
adventured 13y ago
It's a false premise to think that Microsoft could have owned everything (such that they could have had all that other growth too). They were going to do $60 billion in retail revenue (Amazon.com)? Why? They were going to run a social network? Why? Indeed many of Microsoft's mistakes were to fire off far too many arrows mindlessly (from Slate to Expedia). Even those that produced a return likely diverted attention away from better results at their core. They have no business being in social as one example. And why would anybody presume that an operating systems and productivity software company would dominate Web search? Or that they could have even if they had wanted to and had seen it all coming.
clarky07 13y ago
That's silly. Google, Facebook, and Amazon barely existed at the beginning of this timeframe, and Apple was near death. Microsoft on the other hand was a several hundred billion dollar company. To expect similar growth rates is absurd, and only one of these companies is actually a direct competitor.

throwawaykf 13y ago

Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon? That is a woefully inadequate list of competitors. Here's a slightly more (but by no means fully) complete list, including some companies that are no longer around: Oracle Salesforce Mozilla Sony Nintendo Samsung Blackberry IBM Heroku Rackspace Sun Novell Red Hat Jetbrains Not to mention, open source projects like Apache, Linux, Open Office, etc that attempt to commoditize their products. That is an incredibly huge list by any standard, and many on that list are giants themselves. Now, given that Microsoft has competed, on average, successfully against all these rivals, many of whom give away competing products for free, would you still consider their lack of success against a select few to be a huge shortcoming? (Edit: typos, fixes, adding more rivals as I think of them)

adventured 13y ago

It's a false premise to think that Microsoft could have owned everything (such that they could have had all that other growth too). They were going to do $60 billion in retail revenue (Amazon.com)? Why? They were going to run a social network? Why? Indeed many of Microsoft's mistakes were to fire off far too many arrows mindlessly (from Slate to Expedia). Even those that produced a return likely diverted attention away from better results at their core. They have no business being in social as one example. And why would anybody presume that an operating systems and productivity software company would dominate Web search? Or that they could have even if they had wanted to and had seen it all coming.

clarky07 13y ago

That's silly. Google, Facebook, and Amazon barely existed at the beginning of this timeframe, and Apple was near death. Microsoft on the other hand was a several hundred billion dollar company. To expect similar growth rates is absurd, and only one of these companies is actually a direct competitor.