It sounds surprisingly like how I've traditionally viewed Microsoft. Microsoft has always had a lot of really great technologies, but they've traditionally stru

It sounds surprisingly like how I've traditionally viewed Microsoft. Microsoft has always had a lot of really great technologies, but they've traditionally struggled to leverage them in a cohesive way. You'd see them completely reinventing the wheel between different groups while simultaneously turning around and shoehorning in MS tech places where it just didn't make any sense. Throw in all the in-fighting between different groups and you have a recipe for the company's malaise through the 2000s. One of the clearest examples I can think of is Microsoft's acquisition of Danger and the disaster that became the Kin: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/07/a-post-mortem-of-kins-tragic-demise/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/07/a-post... tl;dr - Microsoft buys out existing, successful mobile company, scraps their existing technology stack to rebuild with MS technology while building multiple, competing mobile platforms internally, internal turf wars ensue, and in the meantime their carrier partner basically loses patience with the whole thing and seals the fate of the entire project.