91–100 of 218 posts
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The market returns should be adjusted for dividends. The market capitalization is what it is, simply a reflection of price and shares outstanding.
The contact form on investy seems to be broken so I guess I'll leave this here instead. Just a headsup. www.investy.com works correctly. investy.com seems to be directed to the IIS7 splash page.
The world will be a little better off with a decline of Microsoft. 90% desktop market share is too much. More diversity will be healthier. Chromebooks should take some market share. Microsoft can own 50-70% market share and still be very profitable. They might even be more innovative in other areas.
Chromebooks as they are now are not attractive. Apple's mobile platform, MacBook, IPad, IPhone, is significantly eating into MS share.
Which is precisely what Google is now doing.
Whereas I agree that Microsoft's performance and innovation over the past decade has been abysmal, I'm not sure it's just Ballmer to blame. It all started with the Google brain drain - and that happened while Bill Gates was very much involved at Microsoft. Once the brain drain begins, you lose talent at a rapid clip and no matter how great an idea you may have, it's very hard to execute. So then if you can't build it…
Bing search is another good move Microsoft has made. Adcenter, on the other hand is an embarrassing disaster on its own two feet and an ugly nightmare in comparison to Adwords. Adcenter is like a buggy crashing version of Adwords in 2005. Given that Microsoft provides the only real alternative search engine to Google that is pretty damn pathetic.
I think you hit the nail on the head with the brain drain. The fact is even with a brain drain companies have assets. Apple was effectively a dead company in the late 90s. Microsoft needs this same type of brutally intense focused leadership right now -- not attention deficit disorder look at me showmanship.
I'm sorry, he lost me at comparing Microsoft stock to Apple and Google over the past 10 years. In retrospect, those are two of the most successful publicly traded tech companies of the period--not a fair comparison. Not to mention those were small companies in 2000. For Microsoft stock to have increased 1200% (as Google's did) it would have probably had to grow into some very significant portion of the world economy.…
If he had started his graph at 1986, when MSFT first went public, it would be more of a fair comparison.
The world will be a little better off with a decline of Microsoft. 90% desktop market share is too much. More diversity will be healthier. Chromebooks should take some market share. Microsoft can own 50-70% market share and still be very profitable. They might even be more innovative in other areas.
I'm sorry, he lost me at comparing Microsoft stock to Apple and Google over the past 10 years. In retrospect, those are two of the most successful publicly traded tech companies of the period--not a fair comparison. Not to mention those were small companies in 2000. For Microsoft stock to have increased 1200% (as Google's did) it would have probably had to grow into some very significant portion of the world economy.…
You are correct in that perspective, but Microsoft is supposed to be the smartest kid in the class. They've said so. And taking them on their word, analysts are supposed to compare it against the other brilliant companies in the sector. Even so, look at the comparison this way. Google and Apple both created and captured new markets; Google with online advertising and Apple with mobile devices. This proves that there…
I'm sorry, he lost me at comparing Microsoft stock to Apple and Google over the past 10 years. In retrospect, those are two of the most successful publicly traded tech companies of the period--not a fair comparison. Not to mention those were small companies in 2000. For Microsoft stock to have increased 1200% (as Google's did) it would have probably had to grow into some very significant portion of the world economy.…
> I'm sorry, he lost me at comparing Microsoft stock to Apple and Google over the past 10 years. In retrospect, those are two of the most successful publicly traded tech companies of the period--not a fair comparison. Apple and Google are Microsoft's biggest competitors. Is he not supposed to compare Microsoft to its direct rivals?
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Can you expand on that comment? I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Should this change how we interpret the stock price growth comparison between Microsoft, Apple, and Google? Just thinking about it, I only see two ways in which that would change the stocks valuation. On the one hand, it must reduce the capital that Microsoft has on hand, which might reduce the price of the stock. On the other hand, I would…
You can make money by buying a stock, having the business get more valuable so the stock goes up, and selling the stock at a higher value. Or you can make money by buying a stock, having the business make money and pay it out to you in dividends. At the end of the day, what matters here is how much money you make and how long it took you to get it, which is a function of sell price - buy price + dividends received -…
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If you look at Microsoft's words and actions in regards to their competitors, they are clearly completely clueless. In fact, "Microsoft people" are often completely blind to everything not made by Microsoft. Reading HN you may never know, but if you've met actual .NET stack developers, or MSCE's or anyone else similar, and you'll find people who make websites and don't know what apache is. Or they'll dismiss open sou…
There are certainly company men in the, ahem, company, but one of the problems is that MS makes so many tools that are good enough that using open source tools is really hard to do. Internally, we're told to use MS technology whenever possible. Using open source tools is also a nightmare from a legal perspective, and there are some non-trivial process because of that. It's not hard , but it requires due diligence on…
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Having Windows users be able to call each other and every other Skype user right out of the box could be pretty interesting.
You mean instead of those out-of-the-box Windows users having to just go to www.skype.com? It's pretty easy to install.