Splitting Microsoft into 3 companies would have helped. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Penfield_Jackson
In retrospect, not splitting it will prove to make it fail faster.
Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond
111–120 of 137 posts
Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond
#112It looks like pg was right 3 years ago: http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
About the comment on Microsoft being evil like Commodus - I've been listening to the excellent "History of Rome" podcast and it points out that the real Commodus was quite a bit nastier/madder than the character in Gladiator.
http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/the_history_of_rome/2010...
Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond
#113Before 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.
It happened already to HP. All the cool people quit en masse and formed Agilent.
Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
IBM has been bleeding for a long time and they still haven't died yet.
I've always been amazed looking back at how IBM embraced open source back in the early 90s with a vengeance. I wonder if this saved the company.
IBM makes its money from hardware sales and consulting. You need new hardware to run Linux. You need armies of consultants to post your "legacy" code. IBM is perfectly happy to save money on its software bill!
Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it both saved and killed the company. It saved the company in that it stopped the hemorrhaging of cash and gave them an actually profitable business model. Without this, they would've gone out of business entirely sometime in the early-mid 90s. It killed them as a center of innovation. IBM hasn't invented anything worthwhile since the IBM PC in 1981. (No, I don't count Eclipse: IntelliJ idea came out first an…
> IBM hasn't invented anything worthwhile since the IBM PC I have to disagree. The PC was not innovative at all - it was little more than a repackage of existing stuff. It's architecture was hugely successful in the market thanks to IBM's muscle and its poor judgement that allowed Microsoft to sell MS-DOS to clone makers. But nobody should say the PC is innovative. The Apple ][, the Atari's (both 8-bit and the STs),…
I would be willing to bet your Atom notebook has a chipset in it that would support an ISA device were it present on a non-existent ISA slot. But it does not actually have an ISA bus in the sense of something actually connected to those pins.
Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond
#116It's all a symptom of too much money and too many resources, I think. Focus get's completely lost. 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?
Apple has a product-driven leader at the very top. Microsoft has a marketing-driven leader at the very top. That's definitely part of it. Micro-startups inside MS would be a killer idea. Small teams of 2-5 people, isolated, given time and necessary resources to create idea's. The challenge would be to keep entrepreneurial types tethered to MS, rather than watching them leave to start a company on their own (be their…
> They're missing a much-needed feedback loop. Alpha users, and beta users.
That's true, but they've learned. Windows 7 is a massive success and Office 2010 is a great product. Both had extensive testing and user feedback.
Windows Phone is getting a lot of traction before it's release as well. Developer tools, getting devices into the hands of developers, releasing information very early long before it's release and getting it out there.
MS in the past few years has started to ramp up it's outreach to developers and the community, and it seems like they are working that way with their consumer oriented products.
And let's not forget that they have gone into markets not #1 and taken the spot. Linux was supposedly going to be the Netbook OS, but then in practically one year, MS took over that market.
It's not like Apple doesn't ever release underperforming products (see Apple TV for a recent example).
MS is struggling, but struggling from a good position.
Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it both saved and killed the company. It saved the company in that it stopped the hemorrhaging of cash and gave them an actually profitable business model. Without this, they would've gone out of business entirely sometime in the early-mid 90s. It killed them as a center of innovation. IBM hasn't invented anything worthwhile since the IBM PC in 1981. (No, I don't count Eclipse: IntelliJ idea came out first an…
> It killed them as a center of innovation I'm not so sure. Thinkpad laptops are legendary. They've been spun off to Lenovo but they pretty much set the standard for quality business-grade notebooks. Steve Jobs even used them as inspiration for the updated Powerbook line upon his return to Apple. They pioneered SOI manufacturing, BlueGene TeraFLOP super-computing, and several other major advances. Also, their consult…
That is true (and I am very happily typing on one right now. Yeah IBM) but lets face it - they were sold to Lenevo because IBM couldn't make a profit on them.
Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond
#118Before 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.
Companies have their ups and downs (thats the funny thing about the runway start ups usually talk about, there is normally another in the end that you go down on).
But Fog Creek and Y combinator aren't near big enough for them to collaps like that, so I doubt that they will fall that far.
Remember the bigger they are, they harder they fall. And lets face it - Microsoft is insanely big.
Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't tell anyone, but I think it's happening to Google right now . It's just early stages (like MS in 1995), and Google still has more good products than bad, so it isn't exceptionally noticeable. But the recent, high-profile launch disasters, the clutter that's slowly creeping into the result pages, and stuff like the search page background goofiness...they sure feel like early MS-style mistakes.....
MS in 1995 still had many, many years of good work ahead of it. Remember that they won the browser wars, after everyone had written them off as being too big and clumsy to adapt to change. That was also when we got Win2k and WinXP (arguably the best versions of Windows ever) and their Office product matured into its familiar form. I'd say Microsoft started going downhill after 2002, when they disbanded the IE team an…
Sorry but I doubt that holds - MS produced their worst software even during that time, Windows Me.
And Win7 is miles ahead of XP, although XP is better than Vista.
Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not the history as I remember it. Windows 95 came before NT4, and it was the first to introduce the famous "start button" visuals. 95 however was still based on the old kernel and it crashed a lot. NT4 came later, with the same visuals, but due to the NT kernel it was remarkably stable.
Windows NT4 was much more stable than the previous Win3.11->95->98->Me line, but - primarily due to moving Graphics drives into the kernel for performance - was considerably less stable than its immediate predecessor in the NT line, Windows NT 3.51.
Also, NT4 had zero impact on mainstream users. It wasn't until Windows XP that the NT kernel became mainstream.
And even after that, you could see users committed to their 98 installs for a long time.