11–20 of 137 posts
Can you think of a project, a product or a company that succeeded with a somewhat negative-sounding name (even if meant somewhat ironically or as sort of a renegade mentality)? I'm drawing a blank.... It's odd that I can't think of a single one though. Even among game studios, etc.
Before succumbing to schadenfreude just remember that this will eventually happen to your favorite tech company in the future, be it HP, Dell, Apple, Google, Yahoo, Fog Creek, Amazon, Y Combinator, etc. Companies have ups and down. Hopefully MS will see this as a learning experience, become a better competitor and then we as consumers will benefit.
Possibly they could form a partnership with the aim of bringing other products to a platform. They could support Android, build it into there development tools and release mobile versions of their software there, integrate with xbox ect. Would probably be a bigger opportunity than the dead end that is windows mobile.
I think there would be a lot of businesses at Microsoft that could be cut in order to regain some focus. Although the same could be said about Google and they seem to be doing pretty well at the moment.
Can you think of a project, a product or a company that succeeded with a somewhat negative-sounding name (even if meant somewhat ironically or as sort of a renegade mentality)? I'm drawing a blank.... It's odd that I can't think of a single one though. Even among game studios, etc.
Before succumbing to schadenfreude just remember that this will eventually happen to your favorite tech company in the future, be it HP, Dell, Apple, Google, Yahoo, Fog Creek, Amazon, Y Combinator, etc. Companies have ups and down. Hopefully MS will see this as a learning experience, become a better competitor and then we as consumers will benefit.
Yes, but most companies can't rely on the revenue from two gigantic monopolies to keep the zombie alive. It will take a lot more than the failure of the Kin (which it appears was set up to fail all along) to change the corporate and engineering culture at MS.
I'll grab my popcorn and enjoy it thoroughly.
It looks like pg was right 3 years ago: http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
Since then, Linux or OS X have become the OS' of choice for many techies, and open software has eaten the lunch of MS when it comes to internet development.
MS are on life support (though in a quite comfortable state!) kept alive by a HUGE installed and locked-in base. There are flickers of life in Office and Windows 7, but they may be fighting a losing battle in future markets, likely to be more cost sensitive than the high productivity and high-priced US.
Isn't there a way to run a big company? Is anything known on how Apple does it? How big are their development teams, even?
Would it make sense to manage internal teams a bit like startups, that is they would have to succeed on their own and pitch for investments?
You'd have to think they would be better off giving up on owning the mobile platform, given that they are up against Android and iOS/iPhone I don't think they could possibly come up with something compelling enough to get mobile companies to pay for a license over the free Android OS which iterate much faster. Possibly they could form a partnership with the aim of bringing other products to a platform. They could sup…
They can't afford that. Their strength comes from the lack of viable options - each of their product lines reinforces the dependency on other product lines. If you use Exchange, you probably won't be able to use anything other than Outlook, which runs on Windows and is part of Office, which makes using Sharepoint more or less painless, which runs only on top of Windows servers and requires Microsoft's database...
Their value proposition is based on dependency loops. Break the loops and the value disappears (or becomes negative).
Before succumbing to schadenfreude just remember that this will eventually happen to your favorite tech company in the future, be it HP, Dell, Apple, Google, Yahoo, Fog Creek, Amazon, Y Combinator, etc. Companies have ups and down. Hopefully MS will see this as a learning experience, become a better competitor and then we as consumers will benefit.
/ did happen in the past (Apple)
Apple's products were always highly regarded. Their problem was pricing - they charged too much for boxes Dell sold for much less.
Can you think of a project, a product or a company that succeeded with a somewhat negative-sounding name (even if meant somewhat ironically or as sort of a renegade mentality)? I'm drawing a blank.... It's odd that I can't think of a single one though. Even among game studios, etc.