71–80 of 237 posts
What is this telling us about the stuff he writes with full conviction today?
Todays Microsoft is not the same as 2007, back then it was windows, excel, exchange etc. Nowdays its Azure and cloud services.
The only thing they tried and failed, that would make them a real dangerous company was mobile.
More proof Hackernews is completely isolated from game development.
> 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…
That's only counting the latest version, if you include all Windows versions, it was in the high 90%. Today it's in the mid 90%.
https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk...
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.
> 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…
Is this true? Did Paul Graham have outside money to fall back on that was given to him to sustain him through all his failures?
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.
Many "regular" folks have Mac machines because they no longer "have" to use Microsoft-specific software. Also, Microsoft doesn't have any phone OS (anymore) either - that's all Apple and Google.
That definitely doesn't mean Microsoft is truly "dead", but they're no longer the giant that you can't avoid. Companies can afford to ignore them, and that's a far cry from the absolute and total utter market dominance they had in the nineties (which is how I read this article).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The teenagers at the time (me included) were all using google sheets and google docs instead of MS products for _years_ before being introduced to the workforce. So the "trained on Office" argument was just an obstacle, not a breaking point if they kept at it for years.
> There is no way a competitor could sustainably price a competing product against a low monthly or annual cost Excel/Office/OneDrive SAAS option
If google had taken on microsoft heads-on they could have sued them into oblivion for anti-competitive practices in pricing if they tried that.
No, they just decided to not execute on the strategy, they did start but didn't finish. Arguably it was to focus on mobile and Android, but I see no reason why google couldn't do both considering all the wasted products they had over the years.
> 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…
It is an common theme with PG to write confidently about technology while also demonstrating that he has absolutely no understanding of what he's talking about. I've been commenting about this here for YEARS with constant pushback and excuses for him from the community. "He's a billionaire so he must be smart", "He personally wrote the entire HN codebase", "Nobody really needs a valid SSL cert on their website in 202…
I appreciate there are people out there who have chosen PG to emotionally glom onto, positively or negatively, and perhaps you're probably an extreme case of the latter, so I would have to challenge a little. "Criticising someone loads" isn't a good thing. Just neutrally challenging their ideas individually is all that's needed.
Those toxic companies have billions of cash, then backed by the tens of thousands of billions from funds like vanguard and blackrock. This money is sort of "weaponized". If you are not "them", if you stick to the basic "economic rules", you are already gone as you cannot exist.
The real difference with tech is that this isn't true. If you make something people want you can sell it. When I started our company 4 years ago I'd have considered $1m ARR a massive achievement. Now I'm here in my heart I feel a need to grow and raise or we'll die - but In my head I don't think this is actually true. I don't think there has been a time in human history before where a company of our size (30x median…
If you want to exist in that case:
1 - you must have the will to resist them (for how long, since they will always be around in some shape due to unlimited funding).
2 - you must have some kind of mechanism to be 'outside of the basic economic rules' (usually subsidies or similar).