21 ms·

Microsoft is Dead (2007)

182 points by sharjeel 13y ago

sekm 13y ago
IMO Microsoft is still one of the scariest companies when it comes to the gaming industry. I'm overjoyed to see tricklets of sanity rise up (the PC market)through Valves efforts, but MS is still a very big, very scary beast in AAA gaming.
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- kendalk 13y ago
  My guess is that Valve is being watched by every other game maker. I wonder what is being said behind closed doors in meetings with a lot of suits. If Valve is successful, I don't think they will be alone for long.
paulScholes 13y ago
'Microsoft's biggest weakness is that they still don't realize how much they suck. ' right on the spot.
adamconroy 13y ago
It is an insightful piece but nothing annoys me more than sensationalism. Its click bait and I am annoyed I got sucked into reading it and annoyed that I feel compelled to waste time commenting. Anyway, if it isn't obvious, the article's credibility is killed by the use of the word dead. Microsoft clearly isn't dead it just isn't the biggest player on the internet, and isn't really a player in the start up space.
- caiob 13y ago
  Microsoft isn't dead. ------ . They aren't big players on the web, start up space, mobile nor hardware. A bit contradictory, no?
  - Ironballs 13y ago
    Not really. They're still immense players in desktop and corporate IT. That alone accounts for an immense amount of revenue, a sizeable chunk in the whole world of computing. On top of that, Azure is competitive and is gaining more and more traction, and the person who headed the Azure department is now the new CEO. Their gaming division (Xbox) is profitable, which is mostly a hardware field, and they're slowly getting a foothold in mobile and have purchased a big mobile hardware manufacturer. Their development tools (Visual Studio and .NET) are immensely popular and they've managed to capitalize on the whole JavaScript thing by making it easy to develop with VS. They're anything but dead. Of course things like Bing aren't a success yet but if MSFT figures out what do with that they'll have something other than people just Google stuff on.
  - ddeck 13y ago
    I don't see why. Microsoft had $77bn in revenue last year, with net income of ~$22bn. Revenue has grown every year for the last five years and last year's was their highest ever. Not being large players in the areas mentioned doesn't imply that they are somehow "dead".
    - aeturnum 13y ago
      No one means 'dead' like RIM, they mean 'dead' like IBM. IBM is doing great - they're making lots of money in the service industry, they have a good research division, etc. They also haven't made an impact in the consumer space for years, and they probably never will again. They're just a different animal now. When PG wrote this, that's what Microsoft was. They were irrelevant in all the areas where interesting things were happening. Are they more relevant now? They seem like they might be, but it's hard to say. The essay is not about profit, it's about mindshare.
      - Goopplesoft 13y ago
        The fact that a large number of comments here are clarifying what he means by 'dead' is indicative of this baity nature of it. He specifically chose to say "Microsoft is dead" not "Microsoft has lost mindshare", and now its conveniently providing him protection by interpretation.
- jey 13y ago
  PG addresses this criticism here: http://paulgraham.com/cliffsnotes.html http://paulgraham.com/cliffsnotes.html
  - tshile 13y ago
    Yeah, he was right, people that design software no longer had to worry about Microsoft. Except that it's 2014 and Microsoft is still relevant. The techy bubble on the west coast may all be using Mac's but microsoft products can still be found throughout the rest of the world. I like PG, and love his essays, but this one was just bad. I'm not even talking about his prediction, just the way he puts it out there. It's just a very pathetic read. For ~20 years Microsoft was a bully and received much criticism for it. Now they're just another tech company that's successful at the end of the day and has a lot of products out there being used by a lot of people. Now they're dead? Give me a break. The whole Microsoft-hate bandwagon is absolutely pathetic to watch. It's just like the Apple-hate bandwagon.
    - saturdaysaint 13y ago
      How are they still relevant exactly? They're doing some interesting things, but I know dozens of people that rarely if ever touch an MS operating system every day, unthinkable a decade ago, and they're missing out on nothing. I can't think of a must use piece of software that launched on an MS platform (outside Xbox) in the last 5 years. That puts them pretty low on the relevance totem pole.
      - tanzam75 13y ago
        > They're doing some interesting things, but I know dozens of people that rarely if ever touch an MS operating system every day, unthinkable a decade ago, and they're missing out on nothing. I knew plenty of Mac users in 2004. They didn't feel like they were missing out on anything back then. The recent past does not represent the normal state of affairs. Microsoft was not going to retain a monopoly forever, any more than IBM could've retained a monopoly. Yet IBM is larger today than it ever was as a monopoly. Markets grow, and new markets open up. Microsoft doesn't need a monopoly in every market. What it needs is something that it doesn't yet have in the various consumer markets -- 20-30% share. Large enough to matter.
- spaceborn 13y ago
  > the article's credibility is killed by the use of the word dead How? The author clearly doesn't mean "out of business" when he says "dead". He means that what Microsoft once was, or what it represented, is dead. The idea once conveyed by the word "Microsoft" is dead. It's not sensationalist clickbait, it's a metaphor.
  - TwoBit 13y ago
    Well he may mean that, but that's not what comes to mind when most people think of the word "dead." And picking that particular word to use as liberally as he does comes across as overly dramatic.
    - spaceborn 13y ago
      I suspect this article may have been written for an audience with a collectively higher level of reading comprehension than what you describe.
  - adamconroy 13y ago
    If they were really dead he wouldn't need to say it, it wouldn't be of interest to say it, and he wouldn't have bothered saying it. Microsoft only needs to be concerned when people stop banging on about them. It would have been better if had said he wished they were dead because he doesn't like them, or because he thinks they are bullies or he thinks they are ruining the web or something of that nature. I would respect that.
- ballard 13y ago
  Reduced to not fearing is dead. Computer Associates eeks out a living on obsolete enterprise apps that some people. And the city of San Francisco contains a direct current power utility. Edge cases are the opposite of dominance. APPL may soon be the next MSFT if they don't have another full-sized iPad up their sleeves to wow us with very soon. A solar powered flying watch that reads your mind and predictively orders groceries. :)
  - chronic25 13y ago
    By that logic, every startup or small business is already dead.
mehwoot 13y ago
Microsoft as the concept of an all powerful dominating IT company is dead, and nothing has or will replace it. The company itself is still doing fine- they still make roughly twice the profit google did last financial year.
- yzzxy 13y ago
  Is that just net profit, or does it account for growth? Net profit is not always a good metric for a large company's performance, as there are a lot of incentives to keep that number down and invest money back into the business (such as taxes). Amazon, for example, almost always operates near or at a loss from a quarterly or yearly perspective, but makes huge growth as business.
  - mehwoot 13y ago
    True, I haven't looked deeply into the financials so I don't know what they are doing with their money. Microsoft's profit margin looks a lot better than google's so maybe google is reinvesting a lot.
  - codeulike 13y ago
    This Ballmer slide from a few months ago compares Microsoft financials to some of the other big players. https://twitter.com/janettu/status/380824535714377728 https://twitter.com/janettu/status/380824535714377728 Pretty interesting: they are still big, and they are arguably much more diversified than any other the other big players.
    - teh_klev 13y ago
      "and they are arguably much more diversified than any other the other big players" "Diversified"...that's the keyword here and I guess the key to their continued success at putting money in the bank.
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- dragonwriter 13y ago
  Its a misuse of "because", but a fairly common one -- specifically, the use of "because" to mean "and this is evident because".
  - DigitalJack 13y ago
    well the op deleted their post to stop the downvote flood, but the real issue is that it was pg stating that he knows they "seemed" dangerous. That "seemed" means, "my opinion of them." You could read it as pg saying "I know that my opinion of microsoft in 2001 was they were dangerous because I wrote an essay about it back then."
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > but the real issue is that it was pg stating that he knows they "seemed" dangerous. That "seemed" means, "my opinion of them." That makes no sense at all, since PGs argument wasn't that they seemed dangerous to him, it was that it was his opinion that they were less dangerous that they seemed to other people. His more recent claim is saying that he was aware of the general perception of Microsoft's danger in 2001, and that this awareness is evident in the post he wrote at the time, which acknowledged that perception and argued that it was exaggerated.
      - DigitalJack 13y ago
        you completely misread that.
eldavido 13y ago
It's really interesting how in 2007, I believed (as did pg, seemingly) that the web would eventually overtake desktop software. Fast forward seven years, and some of the biggest names in software (Instagram, Lyft) have completely abandoned the web for "desktop" (really, native) software. That so much code ships directly to mobile devices says a lot about the power of centralized app stores and truly sandboxed installations where one app can't trash the entire system. We've come a long way.
- anoncow 13y ago
  Will there be a move towards decentralization of apps again or are we locked in? The inertia that app store and play store have is formidable. If Windows Phone fails, some part of the blame will be on the availibility of apps.
- joeguilmette 13y ago
  Instagram and Lyft are the biggest names in software?
  - blntechie 13y ago
    It's not. But clearly there is a momentum towards native apps again. Surprising is that this momentum is happening even in desktops. You just have to see how many popular services one used to do from browsers are being done from mobile/tablet apps now. Email, chat, social, weather etc. And I'm not even including non-web apps like Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, Uber, Lyft etc. here.
    - robmcm 13y ago
      Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, Uber, Lyft are mobile apps because they suit the context of mobile or rely on their features (camera/video). I think they are obviously mobile first because without mobile they wouldn't exist.
- beefman 13y ago
  The critical characteristic of the desktop here isn't its use of native code. It's more the local filesystem. Many mobile apps use network data. From this perspective they have more in common with web apps than with desktop software. Despite this, I'm inclined to agree that the web is threatened. The desktop may be defined by local files but the web wasn't defined by remote ones. It was more about the culture. More about anyone-can-publish. To me, that's the baby at risk in the mobile bathwater. That, and any aspect of personal computing that can't be performed on a phone. Which is most of them. I'll stick with the hemorrhoids and circadian disruption, thanks. My wife and I were talking about this the other night: It's not that people who learned to compute on the desktop are abandoning it for mobile. It's that most people couldn't handle desktop computing in the first place. It's too abstract (dare I say difficult?). So the mobile revolution is really about the unwashed masses computing for the first time. Perhaps that's why mobile apps and operating systems eerily remind me of soap operas and reality TV.
LordHumungous 13y ago
Ehhh Microsoft still has a lot of talent they are just plagued with entrenched bureaucracy.
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- SwellJoe 13y ago
  And, what do you imagine will solve the problem of entrenched bureaucracy? Given that bureaucracy tends to expand itself as a primary feature...saying a company is "just plagued" with it, is a pretty damning statement.
beerglass 13y ago
(sorry if I sound like a phony or worse suckup when I say this, but) PG is one of the smartest, ahead-of-his-times guy of our generation!
- djulius 13y ago
  Yes you do, but nevermind, you're just like the vast majority of commenters here. Btw thanks for your contribution, very interesting.
primitivesuave 13y ago
The most common form of Microsoft-hate usually centers around how a company of such gargantuan size makes such gargantuan fuck-ups. But this is to be expected of companies of gargantuan size, and is certainly not limited to Microsoft alone (although recently they've had more than their fair share). My qualm with Microsoft is all the little things that they let slip through. Little things like having a control panel with 100 different links with nondescript names. Is it really possible that not a single person at Microsoft tried changing a setting on their Windows machine and realized how difficult it was to even find the setting? Were they so entrenched in the Microsoft way of doing things that they were accustomed to a shitty user experience? Or did the aesthetically minded engineer have his voice drowned out by the bureaucracy? If the higher-ups were yelling down the food chain, "build an Apple-killing UI!", I can see how they would settle on what became the app-centric look of Windows 8. But blatantly idiotic decisions around the little things like control panels, choosing wireless connections, and the sheer difficulty of navigation, make me realize that somewhere at Microsoft something is really fucked up.
- nitrogen 13y ago
  I for one preferred the old control panel, and disable category view on any Windows machine I have to use.
  - ballard 13y ago
    Oh god, a million times yes. I really like the old windows way and prefer the osx pref panes. It seemed like MSFT confusing churn to say we changed something (and therefore "fixed" something) without knowing what made sense or what/if there was a customer problem. Instead it created a bigger problem of customer confusion (relearning). All companies including Apple have done this, but the takeaway is that not caring about customer impact is inevitably a recipe for strategic failure as others that do take marketshare (Zappos). It's also a dick move antithetical to providing quality product|service.
  - Wohui 13y ago
    I thought he was criticizing the icon view, fair enough.
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- xux 13y ago
  "I already know what the reaction to this essay will be. Half the readers will say that Microsoft is still an enormously profitable company..." Looks like he hit right on the spot.
  - parasight 13y ago
    Well that was quite an easy forecast writing an article condemning (hey, it's just a metaphor) a profitable company.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    "The Eart is flat. I already know what the reaction to this eassay will be. Half the readers will say that the Earth is round". Might not exactly be the case here (since he's talking for relevanece vs profits) but one can argue that continued and even increased profits must also show some kind of relevance. But, most importantly, I wanted to show that foretelling what your critics might say doesn't make what you said any more correct.
djulius 13y ago
tl;dr PG thinks the web/startup scene == the world. 7 years proved he's wrong.
- weixiyen 13y ago
  It's almost as if he had a stake in the web/startup scene or something.
spiderPig 13y ago
So are these the same thoughts the hacker community will have with Apple's iOS in the future (there'll inevitably be some missteps)? Or even OSX for that matter? I fail to see why in-principle the community that is so vocal about FOSS gives them a pass.
- visualR 13y ago
  Stallman doesn't. Apple did open source WebKit, which made the browser experience good.
Mustafabei 13y ago
I guess they don't see themselves as the community sees an all round and productive IT company. They had and do still have an abundance of market penetration (considering the business world in Europe and Asia and so on). They couldn't (maybe didn't) kill the desktop by replacing it with surface. They really could have, and the whole business world may be on tablets today, but they didn't do it. (and please don't tell me that the business world are on tablets today, tablets are still accessories to laptop and desktop computers) I understand if anybody says "hey! MS is not a company as you or others would prescribe to be and you don't get what surface is and what it is for!" Maybe that's true. But they had lots of chances of coming back as a competitive, innovative actor and they keep grounding their chances with products like Windows 8. Last month, may father, who is an author and do not get along well with any computer called me and said: "I just could not work with this Windows 8." To note, he barely learned to cope with the old fashioned windows interface. Loading a considerable amount of cognitive load to consumers upon whom your market penetration depends does not seem like good idea. It at least is not "innovation". We will see what the concept will be like in 5 to 10 years or so, when the planned obsolescence time of the currently available MS running hardware (and software for that matter) comes. But to replace things like Word, Excel? Quite possible, but difficult. When those can be replaced, I think we will see whether the company stands over a house of cards or not.
Beltiras 13y ago
I predicted Apple's death some months after Steve Jobs died. Why? Two things (both of them decisions of the CEO): Plastic iPhones and the iPad mini (both products Jobs had resisted) and the more damning fact that for the first time a dividend of a serious size was paid (http://investor.apple.com/dividends.cfm http://investor.apple.com/dividends.cfm). Jobs was adamant about growing the warchest. His assumption was that if a stockholder thought his/her investment was better placed elsewhere, stock could be sold and reinvested. The act of paying a dividend states that the board thinks the investor can do better elsewhere with that money. Apple is no longer hungry, nor foolish.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >I predicted Apple's death some months after Steve Jobs died. Why? Two things (both of them decisions of the CEO): Plastic iPhones* You mean like the plastic Cube, G3, G4, Macbook and iPod's that preceded them during Jobs tenure? Only with even better and novel quality plastics used? >and the iPad mini (both products Jobs had resisted) Jobs probably knew about the mini all along, it takes more than a year to prototype and ship such a device. Besides, what jobs "resisted" or not is mere speculation, unless there are actual sources of him rejecting them. But even then, Jobs, according to witness accounts, changed ideas about lots of things he once rejected (e.g the iBooks). >and the more damning fact that for the first time a dividend of a serious size was paid. Jobs was adamant about growing the warchest. At a time when the warchest was still small. When Jobs died it rivalled the US economy. After some point it's silly to ammass even more money. >His assumption was that if a stockholder thought his/her investment was better placed elsewhere, stock could be sold and reinvested. The act of paying a dividend states that the board thinks the investor can do better elsewhere with that money. Only, whatever the board thinks, the invester CAN go elsewhere with that money, and that would have an effect on stock, morale etc. Better throw a bone and keep investors happy too.
- fredsted 13y ago
  Apple has a long history of doing a 180 and releasing products Jobs said publicly he didn't like...
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jaseemabid 13y ago
Good news for Satya Nadella to start with
- CmonDev 13y ago
  Do you enjoy your life-style of reading news delayed by 7 years?
jmnicolas 13y ago
It's a good thing Microsoft is "dead" so now when appropriate we can use MS tech without having to endure the critics. As far as evil goes, to me, Google is much more scaring than MS.
- SwellJoe 13y ago
  "As far as evil goes, to me, Google is much more scaring than MS." You've said more about your knowledge of the history of computing than you have about Google or Microsoft. Edit: I think it would be interesting and amusing to know the ages of people downvoting this. Microsoft has such an incredible history of anti-competitive behavior that I'm surprised anyone believes Google is even in the same league of evil as Microsoft.
  - jmnicolas 13y ago
    I don't think you are downvoted because your answer is wrong but because it looks like a bit condescending. But let me explain why I fear Google more than I would fear Microsoft if it was still "alive". When they were at the top (let's say 1995 to 2005) Microsoft was always about controlling people's software (everybody should use Windows and Office ...). However Google is about controlling people's information : the information you give them knowingly (in your Google Docs, Youtube videos etc) and the informations they gather in your profile / "dossier" (what searches are you doing, what videos are you watching, how long are you connected ...) whatever they call it. And to me, my data is much more important than the computing platform I'm using. I can't delete what Google know about me but I can still wipe my hard-drive and install any BSD or Linux I want.
- polymatter 13y ago
  I think you mean "Google is much more scary than MS". The gerund doesn't make a lot of sense in this context. For bonus fluency points, it reads better if you say "I fear Google much more than MS". I apologize if feedback on your English was unwanted. --- On another note, I generally agree. Google has a lot more scope for evil than Microsoft does. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish applies to what appeared to some Google properties too (eg Reader).
dchichkov 13y ago
It would not be optimal for Microsoft to die. And it is kinda sad that DEC and Sun are no more. I liked that http://altavista.digital.com http://altavista.digital.com. It was good.
- royprins 13y ago
  That is not the definition of death that the article uses. He argues that Microsoft died as a monopolist, as the bully of the schoolyard. DEC and Sun never had that position to lose. IBM did, but now I keep paraphrasing the article. Read it :)
LeicaLatte 13y ago
Pretty terrible title considering Xbox 360 had taken off in 2006. Not one mention of Xbox in the whole post, indicating how much PG is out of touch. Xbox took gaming to next level, especially online gaming and managed to build a great ecosystem for games. The younger ones, in the last line, are all actually playing on Xbox. Microsoft has greater identification among younger people as brand than say, Apple given their decade long presence in console and PC gaming.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >Pretty terrible title considering Xbox 360 had taken off in 2006. Not one mention of Xbox in the whole post, indicating how much PG is out of touch. Yes, clearly he's not a 17-something gamer. He also focused on things that matter. In Microsoft's bottom lime, the Xbox is marginal at best. For ages it has not even be profitable. Every gamer could as well only use an Xbox, and it still wouldn't matter much for the kind of discussion we're having about Microsoft. To put it in another way. Gaming (put together): not much of an industry, compared to IT/mobile sales.
  - ksk 13y ago
    >To put it in another way. Gaming (put together): not much of an industry, compared to IT/mobile sales. Why are you comparing gaming to IT/mobile? It should be compared to other entertainment industries. It has already surpassed Hollywood in terms of revenue in the US ($17bil vs $9bil in 2011). Having a dominant product in the gaming industry begets a lot of influence. Worldwide, The VG industry generates around $70 billion in revenue (excluding mobile gaming). In comparison the movie industry - (all countries combined, not just hollywood releases) generates around 120 billion. >Every gamer could as well only use an Xbox, and it still wouldn't matter much for the kind of discussion we're having about Microsoft. Please explain what you mean..
    - coldtea 13y ago
      >Why are you comparing gaming to IT/mobile? It should be compared to other entertainment industries. Because we're discussing a company, Microsoft, that has most of its business and revenues in the IT/mobile space and a small part of it in gaming. And I want to see if the gaming market is as large and important as the main market the company is involved in. >Please explain what you mean.. I mean that even if Microsoft was the most succesful and relevant gaming company in the world, it would still not mean its relevant in the IT space. And MS's relevance in the IT space (compared to the nineties) is what Paul Graham's post we're discussing is all about.
us0r 13y ago
2007 - $51.12 billion 2013 - $77.85 billion I'd love to die like that.
- forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
  Giving the inflation levels of the years in between, I wont say they have grown so much.
  - FleshGordon 13y ago
    Adjusted for inflation they started at 59,03$bn. That's not startup levels of growth for obvious reasons but the growth is very real.
- simonh 13y ago
  People were saying that about BlackBerry right up until a few years ago. Where are the true mobile versions of Office or Outlook? When will Windows 8+ become anything other than a painful mess for ordinary users? Will anyone ever ship a Metro app anyone cares about? The old Microsoft isn't part of the computing platform of the future, mobile and services, but the server division is. For the division Nadella is from, their competition aren't Apple or Yahoo or even Google, it's Rackspace and AWS. For them Apple etc are customers and allies. The old Microsoft is dead in the water, but can a new Microsoft fully emerge from its shadow to take a valuable place in the future of the computing industry?
  - EpicEng 13y ago
    Do they need a mobile version, really? I wouldn't use it at work, and we all seem to get along with the native versions just fine. It's the corporate clientele that pays the big bucks for these products, and I'm not aware of them clamoring for a mobile version. (PS, I've only actually worked at startups which have grown into larger companies. At no time did I or anyone else I was aware of feel the need for mobile Excel.)
    - 72deluxe 13y ago
ilaksh 13y ago
Its a natural tendency of the system for proprietary efforts to grow in power and centralize. We need a more evolved paradigm because there is a fundamental antagonism between business (in its current form) and technology. One of the things that is starting to force this evolution is the growing realization that we must move from a server-based internet to a distributed data-based internet. We need to popularize new or better ways of achieving cohesion while maintaining decoupling, diversity, and freedom to evolve different solutions. I think there are a lot of ideas but the newest and best ideas for fundamental structural changes are not well known or tested. We need to test some radical changes to societal structures.
BlobbyLaMouche 13y ago
I tend to think the exact opposite to the "Microsoft is Dead". I'm nobody important (well not a PG anyway), just a consumer and a developer. And if anybody cares, I'm quite excited by Microsoft at the moment. As both a developer and a consumer, I have a complaint against Google. It's going in every direction. Google has no stable, coherent, ecosystem on which you can build your products. You don't know where they are going between Android and Chrome OS. Or between DART and javascript. Or Java and Go. Microsoft is trying to attack exactly that by trying to create, brick by brick, a coherent software ecosystem. Coherent from a development, design and user experience point of view. This direction makes sense to me. I'm just not buying at the moment as the quality and experience is just not there yet. But I could buy. Also I just watched Nadella speaking, and he says he wants to address the separation between consumer and business software. I think that's pretty cool. If you couple that with the fact more and more people work from home, or remotely, and the fact we have more and more devices around for both work and private usage, that begins to make sense. You could argue that we are tired of Microsoft trying. But they are moving all their products together, and it takes more time, obviously. And some skills in the execution. Hence Nadella's new role. Well that's my interpretation anyway. Now imagine he succeeds to make all these products marginally better. Microsoft doesn't need much, it's almost there. This could become an Apple-like come-back before even being gone.
ajcarpy2005 13y ago
Microsoft is lumbering and beurocratic but they do actually ship a lot of code and support the developer community. Xbox is also very successful obviously. Windows 8 was a huge flop in most people's opinion due to terrible user interface, despite the welcome creation of a Windows app store. They still have a lot of momentum behind them because of all the PC applications that only work with Windows. It's an interesting reality that Apple has their OS locked "officially" with their own hardware. In that respect, Microsoft seems more open to hardware competition. (IMO)
- 72deluxe 13y ago
  The strange thing is that with Windows XP, you could go online and search for software from within it. You could "get software" from within XP (somewhere in the Control Panel I think?) Perhaps it didn't take off due to the lack of wide-ranging Internet connectivity at the time. But they did at least attempt an online shop/store at the time. But everyone forgets this.
  - ajcarpy2005 13y ago
    Ah, I think I know what you're talking about. Was this where their games like "Motocross Madness" were available for trial or purchase? I see the convenience of a nice searchable, organized app store but the decision to bifurcate Windows 8 into two completely separate desktop environments and then hide all the useful controls off of the screen (in corners) seems completely asinine. There's probably keyboard shortcuts that make navigation easier but there needs to be a good GUI for those users who are used to using their PC that way.
    - 72deluxe 13y ago
      Precisely. Windows-C for the charm etc. isn't obvious. It isn't even obvious what this charm thing is either, or why I need to move the cursor over to the edge of the screen. This will completely confuse most Windows users who are used to clicking on things that they see, not magically waving the cursor around to make things appear and then clicking on non-obvious vague silhouette-style icons.
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sparky_z 13y ago
Funny how the links to the footnotes in the article are intercepted by the numbered list near the bottom. You'd think somebody would have caught that bug by now. The first time through, I thought they were the footnotes, and, oddly enough, they sort-of made sense. Especially the 2nd one, which came off as a strange joke (as in "We better make sure Microsoft doesn't catch the Apple bug").
mamby 13y ago
Keywords: - Web - Google, Apple - Startup Insight: Web: Infrastruture (Cloud) + Apps (HTML&co, Native) Are Apple & Goog better than MS @this ?
ppradhan 13y ago
this sounded like pandering then, it sounds like pandering now. he's in business, of course he's got a solid marketer in him!
ddmma 13y ago
why every time something new good happens some old sh8 must pop-up?
dandare 13y ago
Huh, sir, are you a prophet? This is clearly amazing :D
sharemywin 13y ago
A lot of start ups are making OSs, browsers, web servers, email clients or servers, productivity suites, game consoles,document servers. Nope. Sorry, still avoiding Microsoft's territory. And if Google or Apple gets kicked in the balls from the justice department they would become low key as well.
smoyer 13y ago
From my experience, girls liked Barry Manilow in the mid-to-late '70s ... he was hard to compete against in middle school.
Nilzor 13y ago
"no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway." That was a false statement in 2007 and is still today. I'm the evidence, if no one else. And I don't think I'm alone, although it does puzzle me when I see Microsoft evangelists at conferences holding speeches from Apple computers.
- higherpurpose 13y ago
  I do think Windows will become pretty irrelevant over the next 5 years, as Android and iOS get owned by billions of people. However, I agree that right now and for the past few years, there's a very strong bias towards Apple computers in Silicon Valley and in media offices, and they might think "Apple is everywhere", even though it's not.
  - fauigerzigerk 13y ago
    If Apple keeps curling up in their luxury niche it will be iOS that's going to be irrelevant in 5 years. And Microsoft will start to decline if they don't go after SAP's and Oracle's enterprise applications business before their server-side stuff becomes a low cost cloud based commodity. I think both Apple and Microsoft are going down. Linux will rule the server side and the client side in the shape of Android/Chrome OS.
    - visualR 13y ago
      Sounds bleak
NAFV_P 13y ago
> Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at startup school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway. Well, Apple's laptops, like their whole hardware range, look really nice and well made. My Toshiba Satellite is dusty, covered in bagel crumbs and stinks of roll-ups. I would be really embarrassed turning up in a public arena with a pig ugly piece of kit that looks like it has been used in a sewer. Windows is still used by many businesses in the UK. That is the main reason I still have it on my laptop, most CV's are only accepted as .doc/.docx/.txt files. The desktop no longer matters? Hell, the CLI is still alive and kicking. I find Vim works better in tty than in xterm.
dschiptsov 13y ago
Is this still a news for anyone?)
Thiz 13y ago
Microsoft wanted to destroy the web, and they lost. They tried to destroy linux, and they lost. They tried to destroy apple, and they lost. They tried to destroy android, and they lost. That's why we, web, linux, apple, android fans hate microsoft with a passion. While they succeeded in destroying so many other companies and technologies, we were there and we fought those fights. We never forget.
- jader201 13y ago
  But seriously, aren't all competitors just trying to destroy each other?
  - rivd 13y ago
    You're right of course, but the tactics they used (especially against oss/linux and the web) pissed off a lot of people. If destroying meant: making yet a better product and marginalizing the competition (with the product or through marketing) it would be business as usual, but it seems microsoft didn't understand that their embrace-extend-extinguish method would backfire in the internet age.
- guardian5x 13y ago
  I remember that they even saved Apple from going bankrupt back then. Its true that they dominated Apple, but i wouldn't say that they wanted to destroy them.
- us0r 13y ago
  "They tried to destroy android, and they lost." Actually they make more on Android then Google. I would call that #winning.
- dclara 13y ago
  You made the point. Although it was not that explicit, from IE destroyed Netscape, I can see the other intentions. Fortunately, Linux, Apple, Android survives. MS tried to play monopoly which hampered the competition. The same for Google now. Maybe once you are no.1, you will be like that, but it's near eye sighted.
headgasket 13y ago
C# and .net killed MS. The same virus killed Sun and will kill oracle. Technologies that try to isolate the coder from the machine by creating a funnelled dumbed-down common interface are inherently flawed because the HW evolves faster than the software.
- shadowfox 13y ago
  > Technologies that try to isolate the coder from the machine by creating a funnelled dumbed-down common interface are inherently flawed because the HW evolves faster than the software. By that count, web apps would die even faster?
- billyhoffman 13y ago
  You are seriously saying somehow that languages which abstract away hardware details are bad? "Assembly? Bad! you should know the instructions op codes." "C? Bad! you should know assembly! What are you trying to do? Write an operating system that is portable beyond the PDP architecture?" "Java? Bad! You should manage your own memory! And the STL should be good enough for anyone." Abstraction, by reducing complexity or making assumptions, allows developers to work faster or do more. Does this have negative side effects? Sure (see Joel's leaky abstractions article), but the benefits out weight the costs by several orders of magnitude. My evidence? The entire computer industry for the last 74 years.
  - headgasket 13y ago
    Sorry I did not formulate my though properly. Let's try this: Companies that try to use a language/platform combination to isolate the coder from the machine by creating a funnelled dumbed-down common interface and executing environment are pursuing a loose-loose path. 1. the HW evolves faster than the software 2. the coder wants to hack the most out of the hardware 3. the OpenSource community is a paradigm shift for software companies, you can't put the cat back in the bag. Cheers
tzury 13y ago
At the time this was written, it seemed as if Microsoft was dying, so calling it dead might be a "safe" prediction. However, even a dying wounded can get intensive care and get back to life...
shliachtx 13y ago
"One of the reasons "Web 2.0" has such an air of euphoria about it is the feeling, conscious or not, that this era of monopoly may finally be over." While it seems that there is no longer the complete monopoly that Microsoft had, the new monopoly that Google has is functionally similar. While not fully there yet, they are heading towards near-complete lock-in to Google services. Web 2.0 may have raised the bar for monopoly (or lowered the bar for competition), it definitely didn't do away with it altogether.
whistlerbrk 13y ago
Why can't people just acknowledge these things are cyclical? You love something, then everyone loves it, then it's not as cool and special, then people start to hate it, then they tear it down and find something else to love. Microsoft has completed that cycle and is now potentially going to be loved again, whereas Apple is nearing the end of their cycle and is started to be hated.
outside1234 13y ago
The most amazing thing about this essay is that even the smartest people amongst us (Paul Graham) can be bigoted and see things as black and white when they are grey. Microsoft has done some well documented evil things but imagine if IBM had won the OS wars? Talk about locked down and monopolistic! And has the ascendance of Apple and Google been uniformly good? I think not - we are in less control over our software and our data than when Microsoft was in charge. It kinda seems crazy stupid to not invite a company that makes $24B in income a year to your demo day. But then again, Microsoft has never been a company that is bamboozled by Nest Labs-style startup overvaluation bullshit, and maybe you knew that.
yread 13y ago
I don't think they are dead. Just look at design. WP7 brought forward the flat style. First everybody laughed at it. Now it's the new hip. iOS got converted into flat. Lots of websites are being redesigned for flat. How many examples of flat design would there be if MS didn't have any mindshare?
kbutler 13y ago
Paul Graham isn't saying that MSFT isn't a viable, powerful business, just that it no longer has the potential to use technology to change the world. As a dominant monopolist, MSFT had little incentive to change the world, and as a large, mature company, it is much more likely to be reactive to change than to be the source of change. There more interesting question to me now is, "Is Apple 'dead'?" Apple has similarly been reacting to change, rather than driving it since the iPad (yes, others may view this differently). Will they be able to create something new and revolutionary? Or will that be left to new, scrappy "startups"?
- wernercd 13y ago
  Microsoft is Dead! LONG LIVE MICROSOFT! Apple is Dead! LONG LIVE APPLE!
at-fates-hands 13y ago
Sometimes I wonder if people who write this stuff actually understand how businesses operate. Microsoft is dead because of competition? How does that even make sense? Like I've said many times before, competition actually makes a company and their products better, not make them die. MS has had to turn their huge ship around and its a slow process. Sure, they're making baby steps and getting there, but the hatred for them is beyond what I've seen for other companies. It's not just that they dominated and killed a bunch of competition in the 80's and 90's. Even now with the new products they're bringing to market, people are still hazing them and won't let them get off the mat. It's almost fashionable these days to hate MS. They can't do mobile like Android and Apple, they can't do cloud stuff like Amazon and Salesforce. .Net is dead, everybody loves Ruby. MS can't do anything right, blah, blah, blah. Nobody wants to see the small victories, they just want to pile on enough dirt and hope they go away.
VikingCoder 13y ago
Wow, reading an article saying that MSFT is dead, with this line, "And of course Apple has Microsoft on the run in music too, with TV and phones on the way." ON THE WAY. This article is before the iPhone came to dominate. Wow, did Microsoft miss that boat.
ohjeez 13y ago
Oh my. I remember reading this when it first came out in 2007. Does that make me an old fart?

182 points by sharjeel 13y ago

sekm 13y ago

IMO Microsoft is still one of the scariest companies when it comes to the gaming industry. I'm overjoyed to see tricklets of sanity rise up (the PC market)through Valves efforts, but MS is still a very big, very scary beast in AAA gaming.

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kendalk 13y ago
My guess is that Valve is being watched by every other game maker. I wonder what is being said behind closed doors in meetings with a lot of suits. If Valve is successful, I don't think they will be alone for long.

paulScholes 13y ago

'Microsoft's biggest weakness is that they still don't realize how much they suck. ' right on the spot.

adamconroy 13y ago

It is an insightful piece but nothing annoys me more than sensationalism. Its click bait and I am annoyed I got sucked into reading it and annoyed that I feel compelled to waste time commenting. Anyway, if it isn't obvious, the article's credibility is killed by the use of the word dead. Microsoft clearly isn't dead it just isn't the biggest player on the internet, and isn't really a player in the start up space.

caiob 13y ago
Microsoft isn't dead. ------ . They aren't big players on the web, start up space, mobile nor hardware. A bit contradictory, no?
- Ironballs 13y ago
  Not really. They're still immense players in desktop and corporate IT. That alone accounts for an immense amount of revenue, a sizeable chunk in the whole world of computing. On top of that, Azure is competitive and is gaining more and more traction, and the person who headed the Azure department is now the new CEO. Their gaming division (Xbox) is profitable, which is mostly a hardware field, and they're slowly getting a foothold in mobile and have purchased a big mobile hardware manufacturer. Their development tools (Visual Studio and .NET) are immensely popular and they've managed to capitalize on the whole JavaScript thing by making it easy to develop with VS. They're anything but dead. Of course things like Bing aren't a success yet but if MSFT figures out what do with that they'll have something other than people just Google stuff on.
- ddeck 13y ago
  I don't see why. Microsoft had $77bn in revenue last year, with net income of ~$22bn. Revenue has grown every year for the last five years and last year's was their highest ever. Not being large players in the areas mentioned doesn't imply that they are somehow "dead".
  - aeturnum 13y ago
    No one means 'dead' like RIM, they mean 'dead' like IBM. IBM is doing great - they're making lots of money in the service industry, they have a good research division, etc. They also haven't made an impact in the consumer space for years, and they probably never will again. They're just a different animal now. When PG wrote this, that's what Microsoft was. They were irrelevant in all the areas where interesting things were happening. Are they more relevant now? They seem like they might be, but it's hard to say. The essay is not about profit, it's about mindshare.
    - Goopplesoft 13y ago
      The fact that a large number of comments here are clarifying what he means by 'dead' is indicative of this baity nature of it. He specifically chose to say "Microsoft is dead" not "Microsoft has lost mindshare", and now its conveniently providing him protection by interpretation.
jey 13y ago
PG addresses this criticism here: http://paulgraham.com/cliffsnotes.html http://paulgraham.com/cliffsnotes.html
- tshile 13y ago
  Yeah, he was right, people that design software no longer had to worry about Microsoft. Except that it's 2014 and Microsoft is still relevant. The techy bubble on the west coast may all be using Mac's but microsoft products can still be found throughout the rest of the world. I like PG, and love his essays, but this one was just bad. I'm not even talking about his prediction, just the way he puts it out there. It's just a very pathetic read. For ~20 years Microsoft was a bully and received much criticism for it. Now they're just another tech company that's successful at the end of the day and has a lot of products out there being used by a lot of people. Now they're dead? Give me a break. The whole Microsoft-hate bandwagon is absolutely pathetic to watch. It's just like the Apple-hate bandwagon.
  - saturdaysaint 13y ago
    How are they still relevant exactly? They're doing some interesting things, but I know dozens of people that rarely if ever touch an MS operating system every day, unthinkable a decade ago, and they're missing out on nothing. I can't think of a must use piece of software that launched on an MS platform (outside Xbox) in the last 5 years. That puts them pretty low on the relevance totem pole.
    - tanzam75 13y ago
      > They're doing some interesting things, but I know dozens of people that rarely if ever touch an MS operating system every day, unthinkable a decade ago, and they're missing out on nothing. I knew plenty of Mac users in 2004. They didn't feel like they were missing out on anything back then. The recent past does not represent the normal state of affairs. Microsoft was not going to retain a monopoly forever, any more than IBM could've retained a monopoly. Yet IBM is larger today than it ever was as a monopoly. Markets grow, and new markets open up. Microsoft doesn't need a monopoly in every market. What it needs is something that it doesn't yet have in the various consumer markets -- 20-30% share. Large enough to matter.
spaceborn 13y ago
> the article's credibility is killed by the use of the word dead How? The author clearly doesn't mean "out of business" when he says "dead". He means that what Microsoft once was, or what it represented, is dead. The idea once conveyed by the word "Microsoft" is dead. It's not sensationalist clickbait, it's a metaphor.
- TwoBit 13y ago
  Well he may mean that, but that's not what comes to mind when most people think of the word "dead." And picking that particular word to use as liberally as he does comes across as overly dramatic.
  - spaceborn 13y ago
    I suspect this article may have been written for an audience with a collectively higher level of reading comprehension than what you describe.
- adamconroy 13y ago
  If they were really dead he wouldn't need to say it, it wouldn't be of interest to say it, and he wouldn't have bothered saying it. Microsoft only needs to be concerned when people stop banging on about them. It would have been better if had said he wished they were dead because he doesn't like them, or because he thinks they are bullies or he thinks they are ruining the web or something of that nature. I would respect that.
ballard 13y ago
Reduced to not fearing is dead. Computer Associates eeks out a living on obsolete enterprise apps that some people. And the city of San Francisco contains a direct current power utility. Edge cases are the opposite of dominance. APPL may soon be the next MSFT if they don't have another full-sized iPad up their sleeves to wow us with very soon. A solar powered flying watch that reads your mind and predictively orders groceries. :)
- chronic25 13y ago
  By that logic, every startup or small business is already dead.

mehwoot 13y ago

Microsoft as the concept of an all powerful dominating IT company is dead, and nothing has or will replace it. The company itself is still doing fine- they still make roughly twice the profit google did last financial year.

yzzxy 13y ago
Is that just net profit, or does it account for growth? Net profit is not always a good metric for a large company's performance, as there are a lot of incentives to keep that number down and invest money back into the business (such as taxes). Amazon, for example, almost always operates near or at a loss from a quarterly or yearly perspective, but makes huge growth as business.
- mehwoot 13y ago
  True, I haven't looked deeply into the financials so I don't know what they are doing with their money. Microsoft's profit margin looks a lot better than google's so maybe google is reinvesting a lot.
- codeulike 13y ago
  This Ballmer slide from a few months ago compares Microsoft financials to some of the other big players. https://twitter.com/janettu/status/380824535714377728 https://twitter.com/janettu/status/380824535714377728 Pretty interesting: they are still big, and they are arguably much more diversified than any other the other big players.
  - teh_klev 13y ago
    "and they are arguably much more diversified than any other the other big players" "Diversified"...that's the keyword here and I guess the key to their continued success at putting money in the bank.

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dragonwriter 13y ago
Its a misuse of "because", but a fairly common one -- specifically, the use of "because" to mean "and this is evident because".
- DigitalJack 13y ago
  well the op deleted their post to stop the downvote flood, but the real issue is that it was pg stating that he knows they "seemed" dangerous. That "seemed" means, "my opinion of them." You could read it as pg saying "I know that my opinion of microsoft in 2001 was they were dangerous because I wrote an essay about it back then."
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > but the real issue is that it was pg stating that he knows they "seemed" dangerous. That "seemed" means, "my opinion of them." That makes no sense at all, since PGs argument wasn't that they seemed dangerous to him, it was that it was his opinion that they were less dangerous that they seemed to other people. His more recent claim is saying that he was aware of the general perception of Microsoft's danger in 2001, and that this awareness is evident in the post he wrote at the time, which acknowledged that perception and argued that it was exaggerated.
    - DigitalJack 13y ago
      you completely misread that.

eldavido 13y ago

It's really interesting how in 2007, I believed (as did pg, seemingly) that the web would eventually overtake desktop software. Fast forward seven years, and some of the biggest names in software (Instagram, Lyft) have completely abandoned the web for "desktop" (really, native) software. That so much code ships directly to mobile devices says a lot about the power of centralized app stores and truly sandboxed installations where one app can't trash the entire system. We've come a long way.

anoncow 13y ago
Will there be a move towards decentralization of apps again or are we locked in? The inertia that app store and play store have is formidable. If Windows Phone fails, some part of the blame will be on the availibility of apps.
joeguilmette 13y ago
Instagram and Lyft are the biggest names in software?
- blntechie 13y ago
  It's not. But clearly there is a momentum towards native apps again. Surprising is that this momentum is happening even in desktops. You just have to see how many popular services one used to do from browsers are being done from mobile/tablet apps now. Email, chat, social, weather etc. And I'm not even including non-web apps like Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, Uber, Lyft etc. here.
  - robmcm 13y ago
    Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, Uber, Lyft are mobile apps because they suit the context of mobile or rely on their features (camera/video). I think they are obviously mobile first because without mobile they wouldn't exist.
beefman 13y ago
The critical characteristic of the desktop here isn't its use of native code. It's more the local filesystem. Many mobile apps use network data. From this perspective they have more in common with web apps than with desktop software. Despite this, I'm inclined to agree that the web is threatened. The desktop may be defined by local files but the web wasn't defined by remote ones. It was more about the culture. More about anyone-can-publish. To me, that's the baby at risk in the mobile bathwater. That, and any aspect of personal computing that can't be performed on a phone. Which is most of them. I'll stick with the hemorrhoids and circadian disruption, thanks. My wife and I were talking about this the other night: It's not that people who learned to compute on the desktop are abandoning it for mobile. It's that most people couldn't handle desktop computing in the first place. It's too abstract (dare I say difficult?). So the mobile revolution is really about the unwashed masses computing for the first time. Perhaps that's why mobile apps and operating systems eerily remind me of soap operas and reality TV.

LordHumungous 13y ago

Ehhh Microsoft still has a lot of talent they are just plagued with entrenched bureaucracy.

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SwellJoe 13y ago
And, what do you imagine will solve the problem of entrenched bureaucracy? Given that bureaucracy tends to expand itself as a primary feature...saying a company is "just plagued" with it, is a pretty damning statement.

beerglass 13y ago

(sorry if I sound like a phony or worse suckup when I say this, but) PG is one of the smartest, ahead-of-his-times guy of our generation!

djulius 13y ago
Yes you do, but nevermind, you're just like the vast majority of commenters here. Btw thanks for your contribution, very interesting.

primitivesuave 13y ago

The most common form of Microsoft-hate usually centers around how a company of such gargantuan size makes such gargantuan fuck-ups. But this is to be expected of companies of gargantuan size, and is certainly not limited to Microsoft alone (although recently they've had more than their fair share). My qualm with Microsoft is all the little things that they let slip through. Little things like having a control panel with 100 different links with nondescript names. Is it really possible that not a single person at Microsoft tried changing a setting on their Windows machine and realized how difficult it was to even find the setting? Were they so entrenched in the Microsoft way of doing things that they were accustomed to a shitty user experience? Or did the aesthetically minded engineer have his voice drowned out by the bureaucracy? If the higher-ups were yelling down the food chain, "build an Apple-killing UI!", I can see how they would settle on what became the app-centric look of Windows 8. But blatantly idiotic decisions around the little things like control panels, choosing wireless connections, and the sheer difficulty of navigation, make me realize that somewhere at Microsoft something is really fucked up.

nitrogen 13y ago
I for one preferred the old control panel, and disable category view on any Windows machine I have to use.
- ballard 13y ago
  Oh god, a million times yes. I really like the old windows way and prefer the osx pref panes. It seemed like MSFT confusing churn to say we changed something (and therefore "fixed" something) without knowing what made sense or what/if there was a customer problem. Instead it created a bigger problem of customer confusion (relearning). All companies including Apple have done this, but the takeaway is that not caring about customer impact is inevitably a recipe for strategic failure as others that do take marketshare (Zappos). It's also a dick move antithetical to providing quality product|service.
- Wohui 13y ago
  I thought he was criticizing the icon view, fair enough.

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xux 13y ago
"I already know what the reaction to this essay will be. Half the readers will say that Microsoft is still an enormously profitable company..." Looks like he hit right on the spot.
- parasight 13y ago
  Well that was quite an easy forecast writing an article condemning (hey, it's just a metaphor) a profitable company.
- coldtea 13y ago
  "The Eart is flat. I already know what the reaction to this eassay will be. Half the readers will say that the Earth is round". Might not exactly be the case here (since he's talking for relevanece vs profits) but one can argue that continued and even increased profits must also show some kind of relevance. But, most importantly, I wanted to show that foretelling what your critics might say doesn't make what you said any more correct.

djulius 13y ago

tl;dr PG thinks the web/startup scene == the world. 7 years proved he's wrong.

weixiyen 13y ago
It's almost as if he had a stake in the web/startup scene or something.

spiderPig 13y ago

So are these the same thoughts the hacker community will have with Apple's iOS in the future (there'll inevitably be some missteps)? Or even OSX for that matter? I fail to see why in-principle the community that is so vocal about FOSS gives them a pass.

visualR 13y ago
Stallman doesn't. Apple did open source WebKit, which made the browser experience good.

Mustafabei 13y ago

I guess they don't see themselves as the community sees an all round and productive IT company. They had and do still have an abundance of market penetration (considering the business world in Europe and Asia and so on). They couldn't (maybe didn't) kill the desktop by replacing it with surface. They really could have, and the whole business world may be on tablets today, but they didn't do it. (and please don't tell me that the business world are on tablets today, tablets are still accessories to laptop and desktop computers) I understand if anybody says "hey! MS is not a company as you or others would prescribe to be and you don't get what surface is and what it is for!" Maybe that's true. But they had lots of chances of coming back as a competitive, innovative actor and they keep grounding their chances with products like Windows 8. Last month, may father, who is an author and do not get along well with any computer called me and said: "I just could not work with this Windows 8." To note, he barely learned to cope with the old fashioned windows interface. Loading a considerable amount of cognitive load to consumers upon whom your market penetration depends does not seem like good idea. It at least is not "innovation". We will see what the concept will be like in 5 to 10 years or so, when the planned obsolescence time of the currently available MS running hardware (and software for that matter) comes. But to replace things like Word, Excel? Quite possible, but difficult. When those can be replaced, I think we will see whether the company stands over a house of cards or not.

Beltiras 13y ago

I predicted Apple's death some months after Steve Jobs died. Why? Two things (both of them decisions of the CEO): Plastic iPhones and the iPad mini (both products Jobs had resisted) and the more damning fact that for the first time a dividend of a serious size was paid (http://investor.apple.com/dividends.cfm http://investor.apple.com/dividends.cfm). Jobs was adamant about growing the warchest. His assumption was that if a stockholder thought his/her investment was better placed elsewhere, stock could be sold and reinvested. The act of paying a dividend states that the board thinks the investor can do better elsewhere with that money. Apple is no longer hungry, nor foolish.

coldtea 13y ago
>I predicted Apple's death some months after Steve Jobs died. Why? Two things (both of them decisions of the CEO): Plastic iPhones* You mean like the plastic Cube, G3, G4, Macbook and iPod's that preceded them during Jobs tenure? Only with even better and novel quality plastics used? >and the iPad mini (both products Jobs had resisted) Jobs probably knew about the mini all along, it takes more than a year to prototype and ship such a device. Besides, what jobs "resisted" or not is mere speculation, unless there are actual sources of him rejecting them. But even then, Jobs, according to witness accounts, changed ideas about lots of things he once rejected (e.g the iBooks). >and the more damning fact that for the first time a dividend of a serious size was paid. Jobs was adamant about growing the warchest. At a time when the warchest was still small. When Jobs died it rivalled the US economy. After some point it's silly to ammass even more money. >His assumption was that if a stockholder thought his/her investment was better placed elsewhere, stock could be sold and reinvested. The act of paying a dividend states that the board thinks the investor can do better elsewhere with that money. Only, whatever the board thinks, the invester CAN go elsewhere with that money, and that would have an effect on stock, morale etc. Better throw a bone and keep investors happy too.
fredsted 13y ago
Apple has a long history of doing a 180 and releasing products Jobs said publicly he didn't like...
- 13y ago

jaseemabid 13y ago

Good news for Satya Nadella to start with

CmonDev 13y ago
Do you enjoy your life-style of reading news delayed by 7 years?

jmnicolas 13y ago

It's a good thing Microsoft is "dead" so now when appropriate we can use MS tech without having to endure the critics. As far as evil goes, to me, Google is much more scaring than MS.

SwellJoe 13y ago
"As far as evil goes, to me, Google is much more scaring than MS." You've said more about your knowledge of the history of computing than you have about Google or Microsoft. Edit: I think it would be interesting and amusing to know the ages of people downvoting this. Microsoft has such an incredible history of anti-competitive behavior that I'm surprised anyone believes Google is even in the same league of evil as Microsoft.
- jmnicolas 13y ago
  I don't think you are downvoted because your answer is wrong but because it looks like a bit condescending. But let me explain why I fear Google more than I would fear Microsoft if it was still "alive". When they were at the top (let's say 1995 to 2005) Microsoft was always about controlling people's software (everybody should use Windows and Office ...). However Google is about controlling people's information : the information you give them knowingly (in your Google Docs, Youtube videos etc) and the informations they gather in your profile / "dossier" (what searches are you doing, what videos are you watching, how long are you connected ...) whatever they call it. And to me, my data is much more important than the computing platform I'm using. I can't delete what Google know about me but I can still wipe my hard-drive and install any BSD or Linux I want.
polymatter 13y ago
I think you mean "Google is much more scary than MS". The gerund doesn't make a lot of sense in this context. For bonus fluency points, it reads better if you say "I fear Google much more than MS". I apologize if feedback on your English was unwanted. --- On another note, I generally agree. Google has a lot more scope for evil than Microsoft does. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish applies to what appeared to some Google properties too (eg Reader).

dchichkov 13y ago

It would not be optimal for Microsoft to die. And it is kinda sad that DEC and Sun are no more. I liked that http://altavista.digital.com http://altavista.digital.com. It was good.

royprins 13y ago
That is not the definition of death that the article uses. He argues that Microsoft died as a monopolist, as the bully of the schoolyard. DEC and Sun never had that position to lose. IBM did, but now I keep paraphrasing the article. Read it :)

LeicaLatte 13y ago

Pretty terrible title considering Xbox 360 had taken off in 2006. Not one mention of Xbox in the whole post, indicating how much PG is out of touch. Xbox took gaming to next level, especially online gaming and managed to build a great ecosystem for games. The younger ones, in the last line, are all actually playing on Xbox. Microsoft has greater identification among younger people as brand than say, Apple given their decade long presence in console and PC gaming.

coldtea 13y ago
>Pretty terrible title considering Xbox 360 had taken off in 2006. Not one mention of Xbox in the whole post, indicating how much PG is out of touch. Yes, clearly he's not a 17-something gamer. He also focused on things that matter. In Microsoft's bottom lime, the Xbox is marginal at best. For ages it has not even be profitable. Every gamer could as well only use an Xbox, and it still wouldn't matter much for the kind of discussion we're having about Microsoft. To put it in another way. Gaming (put together): not much of an industry, compared to IT/mobile sales.
- ksk 13y ago
  >To put it in another way. Gaming (put together): not much of an industry, compared to IT/mobile sales. Why are you comparing gaming to IT/mobile? It should be compared to other entertainment industries. It has already surpassed Hollywood in terms of revenue in the US ($17bil vs $9bil in 2011). Having a dominant product in the gaming industry begets a lot of influence. Worldwide, The VG industry generates around $70 billion in revenue (excluding mobile gaming). In comparison the movie industry - (all countries combined, not just hollywood releases) generates around 120 billion. >Every gamer could as well only use an Xbox, and it still wouldn't matter much for the kind of discussion we're having about Microsoft. Please explain what you mean..
  - coldtea 13y ago
    >Why are you comparing gaming to IT/mobile? It should be compared to other entertainment industries. Because we're discussing a company, Microsoft, that has most of its business and revenues in the IT/mobile space and a small part of it in gaming. And I want to see if the gaming market is as large and important as the main market the company is involved in. >Please explain what you mean.. I mean that even if Microsoft was the most succesful and relevant gaming company in the world, it would still not mean its relevant in the IT space. And MS's relevance in the IT space (compared to the nineties) is what Paul Graham's post we're discussing is all about.

us0r 13y ago

2007 - $51.12 billion 2013 - $77.85 billion I'd love to die like that.

forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
Giving the inflation levels of the years in between, I wont say they have grown so much.
- FleshGordon 13y ago
  Adjusted for inflation they started at 59,03$bn. That's not startup levels of growth for obvious reasons but the growth is very real.
simonh 13y ago
People were saying that about BlackBerry right up until a few years ago. Where are the true mobile versions of Office or Outlook? When will Windows 8+ become anything other than a painful mess for ordinary users? Will anyone ever ship a Metro app anyone cares about? The old Microsoft isn't part of the computing platform of the future, mobile and services, but the server division is. For the division Nadella is from, their competition aren't Apple or Yahoo or even Google, it's Rackspace and AWS. For them Apple etc are customers and allies. The old Microsoft is dead in the water, but can a new Microsoft fully emerge from its shadow to take a valuable place in the future of the computing industry?
- EpicEng 13y ago
  Do they need a mobile version, really? I wouldn't use it at work, and we all seem to get along with the native versions just fine. It's the corporate clientele that pays the big bucks for these products, and I'm not aware of them clamoring for a mobile version. (PS, I've only actually worked at startups which have grown into larger companies. At no time did I or anyone else I was aware of feel the need for mobile Excel.)
  - 72deluxe 13y ago

ilaksh 13y ago

Its a natural tendency of the system for proprietary efforts to grow in power and centralize. We need a more evolved paradigm because there is a fundamental antagonism between business (in its current form) and technology. One of the things that is starting to force this evolution is the growing realization that we must move from a server-based internet to a distributed data-based internet. We need to popularize new or better ways of achieving cohesion while maintaining decoupling, diversity, and freedom to evolve different solutions. I think there are a lot of ideas but the newest and best ideas for fundamental structural changes are not well known or tested. We need to test some radical changes to societal structures.

BlobbyLaMouche 13y ago

I tend to think the exact opposite to the "Microsoft is Dead". I'm nobody important (well not a PG anyway), just a consumer and a developer. And if anybody cares, I'm quite excited by Microsoft at the moment. As both a developer and a consumer, I have a complaint against Google. It's going in every direction. Google has no stable, coherent, ecosystem on which you can build your products. You don't know where they are going between Android and Chrome OS. Or between DART and javascript. Or Java and Go. Microsoft is trying to attack exactly that by trying to create, brick by brick, a coherent software ecosystem. Coherent from a development, design and user experience point of view. This direction makes sense to me. I'm just not buying at the moment as the quality and experience is just not there yet. But I could buy. Also I just watched Nadella speaking, and he says he wants to address the separation between consumer and business software. I think that's pretty cool. If you couple that with the fact more and more people work from home, or remotely, and the fact we have more and more devices around for both work and private usage, that begins to make sense. You could argue that we are tired of Microsoft trying. But they are moving all their products together, and it takes more time, obviously. And some skills in the execution. Hence Nadella's new role. Well that's my interpretation anyway. Now imagine he succeeds to make all these products marginally better. Microsoft doesn't need much, it's almost there. This could become an Apple-like come-back before even being gone.

ajcarpy2005 13y ago

Microsoft is lumbering and beurocratic but they do actually ship a lot of code and support the developer community. Xbox is also very successful obviously. Windows 8 was a huge flop in most people's opinion due to terrible user interface, despite the welcome creation of a Windows app store. They still have a lot of momentum behind them because of all the PC applications that only work with Windows. It's an interesting reality that Apple has their OS locked "officially" with their own hardware. In that respect, Microsoft seems more open to hardware competition. (IMO)

72deluxe 13y ago
The strange thing is that with Windows XP, you could go online and search for software from within it. You could "get software" from within XP (somewhere in the Control Panel I think?) Perhaps it didn't take off due to the lack of wide-ranging Internet connectivity at the time. But they did at least attempt an online shop/store at the time. But everyone forgets this.
- ajcarpy2005 13y ago
  Ah, I think I know what you're talking about. Was this where their games like "Motocross Madness" were available for trial or purchase? I see the convenience of a nice searchable, organized app store but the decision to bifurcate Windows 8 into two completely separate desktop environments and then hide all the useful controls off of the screen (in corners) seems completely asinine. There's probably keyboard shortcuts that make navigation easier but there needs to be a good GUI for those users who are used to using their PC that way.
  - 72deluxe 13y ago
    Precisely. Windows-C for the charm etc. isn't obvious. It isn't even obvious what this charm thing is either, or why I need to move the cursor over to the edge of the screen. This will completely confuse most Windows users who are used to clicking on things that they see, not magically waving the cursor around to make things appear and then clicking on non-obvious vague silhouette-style icons.

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sparky_z 13y ago

Funny how the links to the footnotes in the article are intercepted by the numbered list near the bottom. You'd think somebody would have caught that bug by now. The first time through, I thought they were the footnotes, and, oddly enough, they sort-of made sense. Especially the 2nd one, which came off as a strange joke (as in "We better make sure Microsoft doesn't catch the Apple bug").

mamby 13y ago

Keywords: - Web - Google, Apple - Startup Insight: Web: Infrastruture (Cloud) + Apps (HTML&co, Native) Are Apple & Goog better than MS @this ?

ppradhan 13y ago

this sounded like pandering then, it sounds like pandering now. he's in business, of course he's got a solid marketer in him!

ddmma 13y ago

why every time something new good happens some old sh8 must pop-up?

dandare 13y ago

Huh, sir, are you a prophet? This is clearly amazing :D

sharemywin 13y ago

A lot of start ups are making OSs, browsers, web servers, email clients or servers, productivity suites, game consoles,document servers. Nope. Sorry, still avoiding Microsoft's territory. And if Google or Apple gets kicked in the balls from the justice department they would become low key as well.

smoyer 13y ago

From my experience, girls liked Barry Manilow in the mid-to-late '70s ... he was hard to compete against in middle school.

Nilzor 13y ago

"no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway." That was a false statement in 2007 and is still today. I'm the evidence, if no one else. And I don't think I'm alone, although it does puzzle me when I see Microsoft evangelists at conferences holding speeches from Apple computers.

higherpurpose 13y ago
I do think Windows will become pretty irrelevant over the next 5 years, as Android and iOS get owned by billions of people. However, I agree that right now and for the past few years, there's a very strong bias towards Apple computers in Silicon Valley and in media offices, and they might think "Apple is everywhere", even though it's not.
- fauigerzigerk 13y ago
  If Apple keeps curling up in their luxury niche it will be iOS that's going to be irrelevant in 5 years. And Microsoft will start to decline if they don't go after SAP's and Oracle's enterprise applications business before their server-side stuff becomes a low cost cloud based commodity. I think both Apple and Microsoft are going down. Linux will rule the server side and the client side in the shape of Android/Chrome OS.
  - visualR 13y ago
    Sounds bleak

NAFV_P 13y ago

> Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at startup school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway. Well, Apple's laptops, like their whole hardware range, look really nice and well made. My Toshiba Satellite is dusty, covered in bagel crumbs and stinks of roll-ups. I would be really embarrassed turning up in a public arena with a pig ugly piece of kit that looks like it has been used in a sewer. Windows is still used by many businesses in the UK. That is the main reason I still have it on my laptop, most CV's are only accepted as .doc/.docx/.txt files. The desktop no longer matters? Hell, the CLI is still alive and kicking. I find Vim works better in tty than in xterm.

dschiptsov 13y ago

Is this still a news for anyone?)

Thiz 13y ago

Microsoft wanted to destroy the web, and they lost. They tried to destroy linux, and they lost. They tried to destroy apple, and they lost. They tried to destroy android, and they lost. That's why we, web, linux, apple, android fans hate microsoft with a passion. While they succeeded in destroying so many other companies and technologies, we were there and we fought those fights. We never forget.

jader201 13y ago
But seriously, aren't all competitors just trying to destroy each other?
- rivd 13y ago
  You're right of course, but the tactics they used (especially against oss/linux and the web) pissed off a lot of people. If destroying meant: making yet a better product and marginalizing the competition (with the product or through marketing) it would be business as usual, but it seems microsoft didn't understand that their embrace-extend-extinguish method would backfire in the internet age.
guardian5x 13y ago
I remember that they even saved Apple from going bankrupt back then. Its true that they dominated Apple, but i wouldn't say that they wanted to destroy them.
us0r 13y ago
"They tried to destroy android, and they lost." Actually they make more on Android then Google. I would call that #winning.
dclara 13y ago
You made the point. Although it was not that explicit, from IE destroyed Netscape, I can see the other intentions. Fortunately, Linux, Apple, Android survives. MS tried to play monopoly which hampered the competition. The same for Google now. Maybe once you are no.1, you will be like that, but it's near eye sighted.

headgasket 13y ago

C# and .net killed MS. The same virus killed Sun and will kill oracle. Technologies that try to isolate the coder from the machine by creating a funnelled dumbed-down common interface are inherently flawed because the HW evolves faster than the software.

shadowfox 13y ago
> Technologies that try to isolate the coder from the machine by creating a funnelled dumbed-down common interface are inherently flawed because the HW evolves faster than the software. By that count, web apps would die even faster?
billyhoffman 13y ago
You are seriously saying somehow that languages which abstract away hardware details are bad? "Assembly? Bad! you should know the instructions op codes." "C? Bad! you should know assembly! What are you trying to do? Write an operating system that is portable beyond the PDP architecture?" "Java? Bad! You should manage your own memory! And the STL should be good enough for anyone." Abstraction, by reducing complexity or making assumptions, allows developers to work faster or do more. Does this have negative side effects? Sure (see Joel's leaky abstractions article), but the benefits out weight the costs by several orders of magnitude. My evidence? The entire computer industry for the last 74 years.
- headgasket 13y ago
  Sorry I did not formulate my though properly. Let's try this: Companies that try to use a language/platform combination to isolate the coder from the machine by creating a funnelled dumbed-down common interface and executing environment are pursuing a loose-loose path. 1. the HW evolves faster than the software 2. the coder wants to hack the most out of the hardware 3. the OpenSource community is a paradigm shift for software companies, you can't put the cat back in the bag. Cheers

tzury 13y ago

At the time this was written, it seemed as if Microsoft was dying, so calling it dead might be a "safe" prediction. However, even a dying wounded can get intensive care and get back to life...

shliachtx 13y ago

"One of the reasons "Web 2.0" has such an air of euphoria about it is the feeling, conscious or not, that this era of monopoly may finally be over." While it seems that there is no longer the complete monopoly that Microsoft had, the new monopoly that Google has is functionally similar. While not fully there yet, they are heading towards near-complete lock-in to Google services. Web 2.0 may have raised the bar for monopoly (or lowered the bar for competition), it definitely didn't do away with it altogether.

whistlerbrk 13y ago

Why can't people just acknowledge these things are cyclical? You love something, then everyone loves it, then it's not as cool and special, then people start to hate it, then they tear it down and find something else to love. Microsoft has completed that cycle and is now potentially going to be loved again, whereas Apple is nearing the end of their cycle and is started to be hated.

outside1234 13y ago

The most amazing thing about this essay is that even the smartest people amongst us (Paul Graham) can be bigoted and see things as black and white when they are grey. Microsoft has done some well documented evil things but imagine if IBM had won the OS wars? Talk about locked down and monopolistic! And has the ascendance of Apple and Google been uniformly good? I think not - we are in less control over our software and our data than when Microsoft was in charge. It kinda seems crazy stupid to not invite a company that makes $24B in income a year to your demo day. But then again, Microsoft has never been a company that is bamboozled by Nest Labs-style startup overvaluation bullshit, and maybe you knew that.

yread 13y ago

I don't think they are dead. Just look at design. WP7 brought forward the flat style. First everybody laughed at it. Now it's the new hip. iOS got converted into flat. Lots of websites are being redesigned for flat. How many examples of flat design would there be if MS didn't have any mindshare?

kbutler 13y ago

Paul Graham isn't saying that MSFT isn't a viable, powerful business, just that it no longer has the potential to use technology to change the world. As a dominant monopolist, MSFT had little incentive to change the world, and as a large, mature company, it is much more likely to be reactive to change than to be the source of change. There more interesting question to me now is, "Is Apple 'dead'?" Apple has similarly been reacting to change, rather than driving it since the iPad (yes, others may view this differently). Will they be able to create something new and revolutionary? Or will that be left to new, scrappy "startups"?

wernercd 13y ago
Microsoft is Dead! LONG LIVE MICROSOFT! Apple is Dead! LONG LIVE APPLE!

at-fates-hands 13y ago

Sometimes I wonder if people who write this stuff actually understand how businesses operate. Microsoft is dead because of competition? How does that even make sense? Like I've said many times before, competition actually makes a company and their products better, not make them die. MS has had to turn their huge ship around and its a slow process. Sure, they're making baby steps and getting there, but the hatred for them is beyond what I've seen for other companies. It's not just that they dominated and killed a bunch of competition in the 80's and 90's. Even now with the new products they're bringing to market, people are still hazing them and won't let them get off the mat. It's almost fashionable these days to hate MS. They can't do mobile like Android and Apple, they can't do cloud stuff like Amazon and Salesforce. .Net is dead, everybody loves Ruby. MS can't do anything right, blah, blah, blah. Nobody wants to see the small victories, they just want to pile on enough dirt and hope they go away.

VikingCoder 13y ago

Wow, reading an article saying that MSFT is dead, with this line, "And of course Apple has Microsoft on the run in music too, with TV and phones on the way." ON THE WAY. This article is before the iPhone came to dominate. Wow, did Microsoft miss that boat.

ohjeez 13y ago

Oh my. I remember reading this when it first came out in 2007. Does that make me an old fart?