Microsoft is Dead • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#411

Post by mmiller » Thu, Apr 26, 2007, 10:18 AM UTC

Your thesis is based on the idea that Microsoft is dead because nobody fears them anymore. I think this is the wrong way to look at it. Does fear = relevance? It can, but how many people fear IBM? I doubt many. IBM is not dead. It's come back from the ashes of the late 1980s. They used to be feared, but I don't think that's the case anymore. Probably the only company that does fear them is Sun.

I think one reason people are less afraid of Microsoft is they're doing things that are less scary. I agree with one commenter that customers might fear them more than entreprenuers do. They're gradually making their client technologies more cross-platform, not Windows specific. Customer requests were probably a big part of that, but it may reflect a change of consciousness on the part of Microsoft's workforce, too.

I think Microsoft will remain relevant, just less scary.

I think Google's gotten a little scary with the deal they made to censor search results in China. They found an exception to their "don't be evil" motto.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#412

Post by hhall » Thu, Apr 26, 2007, 1:31 PM UTC

Microsoft feels secure because of its momentum. How many complacent companies have lost their markets to more agile and inventive competitors?

Microsoft is not a technology inventor; it notices a growing market and comes in late. This worked in the past because its operating system and office systems lived on virtually every desk top and because it could undercut competitor prices.

Now they are facing a competitor that is also on every desktop and offers its products for free. Hard to undercut that. Even worse, this competitor is very inventive and is a comparable size.

"Take away their oxygen" is the phrase Bill Gates once described as the way of handling competitors. Whose oxygen is going to be taken away this time?

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#413

Post by krischan68 » Thu, Apr 26, 2007, 2:45 PM UTC

I didn't read all 411 comments, but I think saying that the desktop was dead in a general sense (due to AJAX) and cite Apple with OS X (core asset besides the iPod is OS X as desktop!) as a nail in Microsoft's coffin seems somewhat contradictory to me.

Btw.: I don't think that desktop apps are really dead. System file assets/album/playlist integration (iLife suite) or the comfort of a desktop UI (e.g. better shortcut integration - which pro doesn't work with time-saving Photoshop shortcuts) will be hard to mimick in an AJAX, browser-based setting.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#414

Post by bobb » Thu, Apr 26, 2007, 3:02 PM UTC

This is really silly stuff. Microsoft is successful because they deal with all the messy stuff around a platform - 3rd party vendors, APIs, integration, training, blah blah blah...Just take a look at Google's online software and you will see that it sorely lacks competitive features. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Google says "I give up" when it comes to providing a platform for the proliferation of devices that will not end soon. Add to it the scattershot nature of their search engine (still based on text search, unable to find stuff such as "middle aged female authors from the 13th century") and you see Google for what it is - a company that has made a huge amount of money from advertising - period. Do they have some cool technology - yes. So did Ashton Tate - does anyone remember the company that was the worlds largest software vendor in 1990? Not really...

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#415

Post by bobb » Thu, Apr 26, 2007, 3:05 PM UTC

dhpeterson wrote: post #219

Old news! I've been using Linux since 1993, been involved in startups since 1999, and about the last time that I paid any attention to Microsoft was when they launched .NET (around 2003). In fact, the .NET implementation (a belated catch-up in many ways to Java) was about the only semi-innovative development effort I have seen come out of MS in the last 10 years. Even so, it was little more than a tarted-up virtual m…

C# is so much better than Java it's not funny - sorry - I guess you would have to try it out to know...

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#416

Post by malkia » Fri, Apr 27, 2007, 4:31 PM UTC

BrandonM wrote: post #328

bongokarl wrote: post #247

all the game-developers and 3d-technology-people use windows. they are pretty strong in this field. thats because osx and linux dont natively and fully support the gfx-hardware...

...and of course, with that reply you actually mean that the gfx-hardware doesn't natively support osx and linux :). I, for one, marvel at the sheer number of drivers that have been written for free for hardware manufactured by companies who still think Windows is the only OS.