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Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#61

Post by aleph_minus_one »

doppp wrote: post #18
baxtr wrote: post #9

What is this telling us about the stuff he writes with full conviction today?

That just because someone is a plutocrat doesn't make them experts in all things. We should not idolize celebrities and not accept their hot takes wholesale. Be wary of ultracrepidarians.

> That just because someone is a plutocrat doesn't make them experts in all things.

Of course. This is why you go to a university to learn to analyze the evidence for a claimed statement as scientifically as possible instead of practicing hero worship.

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#62

Post by lotsofpulp »

DanielHB wrote: post #54
gadders wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think google are in the enshittification phase of their corporate development and are currently in a cycle of making 0.1% more revenue on search changes at the expense of making it 5% shittier for users each time.

To be fair in 2007 it really did seem like google could completely destroy microsoft monopoly on enterprise software with google docs, google sheets and google workspace. And then they just didn't? They just gave up, only small companies use google workspace these days and excel is as entrenched as ever. I suppose the google meet/google talk/google hangouts explains a lot of why this hypothetical future didn't happen…

I think Google leaders were smart to not take on Excel, especially after it was clear Microsoft was moving things to the cloud and spinning up Office 365.

There is no way a competitor could sustainably price a competing product against a low monthly or annual cost Excel/Office/OneDrive SAAS option, since the majority of the workforce was already trained on Office products, and everyone is using an edge feature that a new competing product might be missing.

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#63

Post by jvanderbot »

dijit wrote: post #25
buran77 wrote: post #14

> Their [n.b Apple's] victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops So nearly all of the (relatively) very few people that are funded by YC have Apple and that's proof of Apple's complete victory over a dead MS. In a year when MS was still on an upward trend, growing by 20% market cap to become double that o…

Think of it in the inverse. If you're a person who is at one end of a funnel (in this case; new tech companies) and you see a 100% adoption which is contrary to the mainstream: you would think you have good insight. You might forget that you're looking at: A) A cargo culture B) a homogeneous cohort. This is the same way that people knew ahead of time that Microsoft Office would kill off Lotus notes. Since all school'…

So you're saying that new AAA game companies use macs or linux?

I can't resolve the cognitive dissonance of that making a ton of sense or none.

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#64

Post by PetitPrince »

JohnHaugeland wrote: post #48
buran77 wrote: post #14

> Their [n.b Apple's] victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops So nearly all of the (relatively) very few people that are funded by YC have Apple and that's proof of Apple's complete victory over a dead MS. In a year when MS was still on an upward trend, growing by 20% market cap to become double that o…

I’ve been hearing people say this since this incorrect essay was written almost 20 years ago Microsoft had 74% of the desktop then and has 72% today Microsoft had 0% of hosting then and has the world’s second largest share, 23%, today Microsoft had, in 2007, 18% presence share in console gaming. Today they have 65% They were one of the four tech orgs present at the presidential inauguration They have grown enormously…

> Microsoft had, in 2007, 18% presence share in console gaming. Today they have 65%

Source for this ? Also what do you mean by "presence" ? I had the impression that Sony was in a way better position than Microsoft, and they were both dwarfed by Nintendo by a substantial margin.

(not that this invalidate your overall point).

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#65

Post by ethbr1 »

virgilp wrote: post #41
baxtr wrote: post #9

What is this telling us about the stuff he writes with full conviction today?

Read all of it. Go beyond just the title, and it should tell you that Paul Graham was more right than wrong with this one. - Google was, for a while, the "gorilla in the room" - their decline is recent. But Paul Graham got it right, that Google was more scary than MS. - Microsoft was "dead" in 2007, same as Apple was before Steve Jobs came back. The revival started with Satya Nadella, 7 years later. It is still a sha…

The problem with "all use Macs" is that Apple has always been a great hardware company with an underfunded software side.

MacOS has so many problems or unsupported features it isn't funny, while Windows was fine.

>> I never used Microsoft software, so it only affected me indirectly

Hmm. The lesson here is probably don't assume you understand a competitor's strengths and weaknesses via secondhand experience.

And the things MacOS historically did better, having a shell and integrating with unix-like software, have been evened with PowerShell/.NET, WSL2, and HyperV.

Furthermore, a few companies started making Windows laptops that weren't bricks. While Apple's software budget is now mostly iOS/device-focused.

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#66

Post by ghc »

It's interesting to read comments about this today, written through the lens of the present. I suspect many commenters were too young to really understand the level of dominance Microsoft had in the market circa from 1995-2005. Just look at this chart:

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/143277-microsofts-shar...

In 2004, outside of education and desktop publishing it was extremely rare to see an Apple computer at all. Apple was the iPod company by that point. Almost all software of note ran only on Windows, and Office was required for all documents.

That Microsoft is dead, killed off by antitrust remedies and the web. That today Microsoft is a giant company is irrelevant...it's not the same company at all. In fact, there is no company today even fractionally as dominant. Google's search monopoly or Apple's App Store monopoly just don't compare.

It appears all the critical commenters think PG was unaware of these facts, but they critically misunderstand the truth on the ground. There was no way for PG to not know that Microsoft was dominant everywhere because Windows ran everything (even digital signage) and Word documents were a more accepted interchange format than even PDFs. He was invoking Gibson's observation that the future is unevenly distributed, and he was right: The movement of almost all applications to the web absolutely annihilated Microsft's ability to dictate what software smaller companies could or could not publish.

Edit: Also, it seems unthinkable today, but back then we all had a large number of devices like printers and digital cameras that only shipped with Windows drivers. Microsoft essentially dictated what hardware you could buy too.

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#67

Post by stuaxo »

I remember reading this at the time, and thinking how much of a bubble he seemed to be in.

Macs weren't something I saw that often at this time, just like now most computers were PCs.

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#68

Post by wink »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #29
buran77 wrote: post #14

> Their [n.b Apple's] victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops So nearly all of the (relatively) very few people that are funded by YC have Apple and that's proof of Apple's complete victory over a dead MS. In a year when MS was still on an upward trend, growing by 20% market cap to become double that o…

That quote is so out of touch. It was never that complete. Gamers used pcs. Paul grahams surprise missed an entire segment of the market. Additionally Mac usage statistically never exceeded windows. Paul lived a bit in a rich persons world and he’s around a lot web developers who like osx because it’s unixy without the issues of old Linux.

And don't forget location. In 2007 not even the majority of developers in Europe had adopted the 'default developer mac', that only came a couple years later than in the US (afaik) and it never even reached that adoption rate (that is now in general, not only developers). If I look at my non-tech friends in Germany there is still just a tiny percentage using macs, and even iPhones are way outnumbered by Android.

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#69

Post by wink »

ethbr1 wrote: post #65
virgilp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read all of it. Go beyond just the title, and it should tell you that Paul Graham was more right than wrong with this one. - Google was, for a while, the "gorilla in the room" - their decline is recent. But Paul Graham got it right, that Google was more scary than MS. - Microsoft was "dead" in 2007, same as Apple was before Steve Jobs came back. The revival started with Satya Nadella, 7 years later. It is still a sha…

The problem with "all use Macs" is that Apple has always been a great hardware company with an underfunded software side. MacOS has so many problems or unsupported features it isn't funny, while Windows was fine. >> I never used Microsoft software, so it only affected me indirectly Hmm. The lesson here is probably don't assume you understand a competitor's strengths and weaknesses via secondhand experience. And the t…

> have been evened with PowerShell/.NET, WSL2, and HyperV.

I'm gonna need a source for that quote because no, no one besides a couple of Windows admins ever acknowledged parity, just "meh, if I have to".

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