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Nadella did have a few softballs lined up for him, but they were likely no more than a few years old. Don't overestimate what can be done in two years, but don'

Nadella did have a few softballs lined up for him, but they were likely no more than a few years old. Don't overestimate what can be done in two years, but don't underestimate what can be done in three. Let's not paint Ballmer as an Ozymandias, though, secretly architecting the salvation of the company for 10 years while on the face it looked like they were teetering toward annihilation. You're right, he wasn't an idiot; he was a well-educated and successful executive that made strategic decisions informed by 80's and 90's business thought and practice. Half a decade earlier he'd have done wonders. But in emerging technology markets those decisions cost Microsoft its industry superpower status. In tablets, mobile that cost Microsoft early market dominance and possibly locked the company out of future hopes at regaining their title. In Web servers, numbers from Netcraft[1] last summer showed that since Windows Server 2008 essentially what had been a healthy uptick turned disastrous for Microsoft's share of active web properties (half way down the page), and over the last 15 years a steady decline in Microsoft's market share in traffic volume handled. 1: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2014/02/03/february-2014-web-server-survey.html http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2014/02/03/february-2014-w...

frik 12y ago
"Microsoft’s most recent growth in hostnames since mid-2013 has, for the most part, been caused by a large number of Chinese linkfarms (泛站群). The sites in question provide advertising for gambling sites, online product listings, and normally make use of affiliate schemes. Yet they are hosted in the USA, on generic TLDs such as .com and .net to bypass China’s TLD and internet content provider (ICP) license requirements. Unusually, each linkfarm makes use of a reasonably large number of domains and IP addresses, presumably making them harder for search engines to evade. This would normally be cost prohibitive for this kind of activity, however hosting and domain packages can be found advertised on auction sites specifically for this purpose, with packages of (random/unspecified) .com domains available for as little as ¥17 (~ £2 / $3) each, guaranteed to remain yours for at least a month. It is not clear why IIS has been chosen for these sites, however it does have a considerably higher market share (for all of our metrics) in China compared to worldwide - for example 59% of domains hosted in China use IIS compared to just 29% worldwide." source: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2014/07/31/july-2014-web-server-survey.html http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2014/07/31/july-2014-web-s...

frik 12y ago

"Microsoft’s most recent growth in hostnames since mid-2013 has, for the most part, been caused by a large number of Chinese linkfarms (泛站群). The sites in question provide advertising for gambling sites, online product listings, and normally make use of affiliate schemes. Yet they are hosted in the USA, on generic TLDs such as .com and .net to bypass China’s TLD and internet content provider (ICP) license requirements. Unusually, each linkfarm makes use of a reasonably large number of domains and IP addresses, presumably making them harder for search engines to evade. This would normally be cost prohibitive for this kind of activity, however hosting and domain packages can be found advertised on auction sites specifically for this purpose, with packages of (random/unspecified) .com domains available for as little as ¥17 (~ £2 / $3) each, guaranteed to remain yours for at least a month. It is not clear why IIS has been chosen for these sites, however it does have a considerably higher market share (for all of our metrics) in China compared to worldwide - for example 59% of domains hosted in China use IIS compared to just 29% worldwide." source: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2014/07/31/july-2014-web-server-survey.html http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2014/07/31/july-2014-web-s...