4 ms·
Microsoft is uniquely special in that they've built an empire on making second-rate versions of things other companies have done well. Internet Explorer, Windo
by astrodust 12y ago
Microsoft is uniquely special in that they've built an empire on making second-rate versions of things other companies have done well.
Internet Explorer, Windows Server, Windows itself. Apart from BASIC, which they built independently, everything else has been ripping on someone else. DOS, their first big success, was actually a crappy clone of CP/M. Design decisions in that haunt Microsoft to this very day.
It's like the adage "good artists copy, great artists steal". Microsoft is firmly in the copy department.
In any case, this recent missive from Microsoft shows, at best, a tiny shift in strategy. They're still doomed to obscurity. They'll be around for decades to come, they might even be fairly profitable, but nobody will care about Microsoft. They'll use their products for lack of choice.
Few people today are choosing to use Microsoft and this couldn't be any clearer than their nearly complete failure in the tablet and phone market.
Until they reinvent themselves, divest themselves of all the baggage anchoring them to the past, they're stuck. IBM unloaded an awful lot to get to the place they are today. Imagine how crippled they'd be if they were still making PCs and printers.
- mkr-hn 12y agoMicrosoft ICE is pretty solid. Also: https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/about/our-research/default.aspx https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/about/our-research/defa... My understanding is that Microsoft does a lot of cool stuff, but until recently most of it got shut down for conflicting with Windows/Office-centric priorities.
- astrodust 12y agoIt's interesting to see the contrast between Google, Apple and Microsoft. Google: Does tons of crazy things, launches a lot of them, many fail. Apple: Does tons of crazy things, tells nobody, launches a select few that turn into huge hits. Microsoft: Does tons of crazy things, tells some people, launches almost none of them, instead sells perpetually boring but massively profitable Office + Windows suite. The few break-out hits that Microsoft has had, Bing and Xbox, are both renegade projects that succeeded only because the teams were exceptionally determined and fought tooth and nail to avoid being sucked into the "Microsoft" world. Others, like Kin, were given weak support and pulled almost immediately after launch. The rest never see the light of day other than through papers and glimpses in tech demos.
- icantthinkofone 12y agoBing is not a "break-out hit". It loses $1 billion every year for Microsoft last I checked about a year ago. It's relatively little used and rarely do any of my client sites get search referrals from them (I own a web dev company).