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Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

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Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#201

Post by scarface74 »

partiallypro wrote: post #193
scarface74 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GCP may catch up on “features” but with Google’s horrible reputation for both poor customer support, and abandoning products, any decision maker should have second thoughts on choosing GCP over AWS or Azure.

I don't disagree, I think Google will suffer in the Cloud game because of their reputation to 180 and kill products. But I do think they will continue to gain ground in both customers and features. As I said though, Azure will likely benefit the most. The main reason Google will remain in the race...imo is because there is still a deeply seeded hatred of Microsoft amount a big enough part of the community.

Decision makers spending five and six figures per month on infrastructure don’t generally make decision based on “hatred” of a company.

Decision makers more often than not make choices based on some variant of “No one ever got fired for buying $x” and $x rarely equals “anything made by Google.”

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#202

Post by GuiA »

Stratoscope wrote: post #192
GuiA wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being pro/anti specific companies in a very binary way, like you point out, is a false path. However, placing all companies in the same bucket is committing a similar mistake. There is definitely a “gradient of morality” amongst companies, despite all of them doing things because they think it is what will make them the most money in the long run. A company building products that end up aiding the carrying out of gen…

> A company building products that end up aiding the carrying out of genocides, for instance, is clearly on a more extreme end of the spectrum... Couldn't that describe just about any company or open source project? A database and office software end up helping you manage and track your genocide. A camera company's products and photo/video editing software end up helping people create beheading videos and child porn.…

That's fair.

But perhaps you'd agree with me that there's a line between a company making products like cameras - which can certainly be used to cruel ends, but typically easily replaced by any of your competitor's products, and not pivotal to such efforts - and a company building a product that has no real replacement, is central to anti-human practices, and routinely ignores the criticisms and suggestions of human rights groups around the world.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#203

Post by nacs »

scarface74 wrote: post #161
exelius wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Apple had the foresight to see the next big thing in tech was going to be privacy. But I think it’s reflective of a larger societal problem: we don’t know who to trust anymore. It seems like every company is trying to scam its users, so Apple is betting that there is a valuable segment of the market willing to pay a premium to do business with a brand that has no ulterior motives past selling you a device at a…

Apple being big into privacy is just a benefit of their business model - they don’t need to make money off a data as a hardware company.

It's also a conscious decision in the way they build their products. If they wanted to, they could also continue being a hardware company and add data-mining/ads on top of that -- but they choose not to.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#204

Post by rotrux »

stupidcar wrote: post #174
bovermyer wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where humans are involved, mistakes will happen. Trusting someone but verifying their work is a safe and sane pairing.

How is verifying everything because you don't trust people not to make a mistake operationally different from verifying everything because you suspect bad faith? To the supposed trusted party, the result is the same: you not taking them at their word and instead checking whatever they do. Even if you're being honest about only verifying to avoid mistakes, you can never prove it. This definition of "trust but verify"…

@stupidcar we've reached the depth-limit, so I'm responding here.

> In the case of "trust but verify", how does this trust manifest in a provable way?

Good point. "provable" is the problem here since we don't know eachother, and frankly I can't prove you're trustworthy initially; that's why the question this addresses (namely "trust-or-misstrust?") arises in the first place. Assuming we don't have dossiers on everyone we're going to meet and work with, we have to decide on an initial point on the trust-scale you mentioned with which to begin interaction.

"Trust but verify" is about having faith that people are generally good, and treating strangers that way while protecting yourself. It indicates balance between treating strangers like data-points and getting walked all over is important, and it provides a suggestion about how to approach the situation.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#205

Post by spectramax »

scarface74 wrote: post #161
exelius wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Apple had the foresight to see the next big thing in tech was going to be privacy. But I think it’s reflective of a larger societal problem: we don’t know who to trust anymore. It seems like every company is trying to scam its users, so Apple is betting that there is a valuable segment of the market willing to pay a premium to do business with a brand that has no ulterior motives past selling you a device at a…

Apple being big into privacy is just a benefit of their business model - they don’t need to make money off a data as a hardware company.

Correct, it is also important to recognize that they could have exploited their user base (500 million iPhones sold) to serve ads or collect data and sell it - that is a real business expansion idea. "They don't need to make money as a hardware company" sidesteps the investor-company relationship: Public companies are obligated to expand under investor pressure, but the strategy is always in the hands of the executives. Apple didn't succumb under the pressure.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#206

Post by jillesvangurp »

scarface74 wrote: post #148

Microsoft’s “performance” wasn’t bad by any objective metric during the Ballmer era. If the stock market were rational, MS stock would have been doing a lot better under Balmer than it did. But then again, if the stock market were rational, Lyft would have never been able to go public and Tesla would basically be worthless.

MS was basically making money no matter what given the highly lucrative office + windows franchise that Bill Gates left behind. I wouldn't credit Balmer with that too much he just basically kept on milking that. The problem by the time he left was that there was increasingly less to squeeze.

Shareholders tend to look forward rather than backward and it was getting very clear that windows and office were increasingly less critical to users and that there were some serious revenue issues around that going forward. Windows on the server was basically getting less relevant by the day. Windows desktop was feeling a lot of pressure from Apple and increasingly Google. Office sales were suffering when companies started using alternative office tools from e.g. Google. Windows Phone was not working that great either and struggled to gain market share on Apple and Google. The Nokia acquisition that Balmer pushed through was sort of the nail in the coffin here. That was an expensive failure and that is 100% on Balmer.

The keyword in those strategies was windows. Under Balmer it absolutely had to be windows everywhere. Server, desktop, mobile, IOT, and all the rest. It wasn't working. That's why Balmer 'left' (i.e. was pretty much fired but in a nice face saving way).

Nadella killed that windows everything strategy and turned things around. Office is now liberated from Windows and making a lot of money for MS again. Cloud is growing more important as well, courtesy of mostly non windows software running on Linux in Azure. Meanwhile windows on the desktop seems pretty cool now that MS has added Linux integration, a non MS browser, and a few other things that make it a lot more attractive for developers and users and now that they are no longer forced to be in this windows everything walled garden. Even mobile is doing great for MS now that they can focus on treating IOS and Android as first class citizens.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#207

Post by stupidcar »

scarejunba wrote: post #195
stupidcar wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've just restated the original post and ignored my question. Again: how does this definition of supposed trust differ from distrust in any verifiable way?

It affects our interaction. Because I assume you'll act in good faith, I only add verification in the range of errors not in the range of malice.

It seems to me that the range of human error is rarely smaller than that of malice, so again I'm not sure there will be much apparent difference between an exhaustive verification of either sort.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#208

Post by ksec »

calvinbhai wrote: post #93

Having read Nadella's book Hit Refresh as soon as it went on sale, Microsoft performance since then doesn't look surprising at all. Having listed what's wrong (with their product focus, company culture etc), and where they plan to head, its' almost like the book informs the reader where puck is going to be (from Satya's POV). It's funny that 15 years back I was so anti MS and pro Google and now I think it's the other…

I am Pro Apple, but that is only because for most of the time they have stick to their words. That was Steve's Apple then, Tim Cook doesn't seems to be quite as trust worthy at least according to Qualcomm's case. I was Anti MS, I guess I am neutral on them now. But I never trusted Google in the first place, and found it odd every one jumps to Google's hype. From Gmail to Google Docs. And now I found it funny they are Anti Google again.

The only explanation I found plausible, is that people like David and not Goliath. They always prefer the underdogs to win, and the titans to lose.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#209

Post by fbarred »

stupidcar wrote: post #188
scarejunba wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trust part is me trusting you to want to do the right thing. The verify part is me checking that nothing went wrong - either through a mistake on your part, a misunderstanding on mine, or just the signal loss from the fact that human communication is imperfect.

You've just restated the original post and ignored my question. Again: how does this definition of supposed trust differ from distrust in any verifiable way?

Trust but verify: I will trust you will do X, and will do Y in return, but I will verify that you are actually doing X. Example: mutual disarmament treaties with Soviet Union, Iran nuclear deal.

Don't trust: I will not even engage with you and will not do Y. Example: the belief by some that US should not engage in high-level diplomatic talks with North Korea on disarmament because North Korea has no incentive to follow through on its promises.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#210

Post by leesec »

scarface74 wrote: post #148

Microsoft’s “performance” wasn’t bad by any objective metric during the Ballmer era. If the stock market were rational, MS stock would have been doing a lot better under Balmer than it did. But then again, if the stock market were rational, Lyft would have never been able to go public and Tesla would basically be worthless.

Rational according to you I guess. The market has it's own rationality.
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