Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 237 posts

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#81

Post by bkfunk »

ghc wrote: post #66

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…

“That today Microsoft is a giant company is irrelevant...”

I am not too young to remember the old Microsoft. To say that Microsoft is “irrelevant” is so myopic. Despite Tesla, GM is still relevant. Despite AWS, DB2 mainframes are still relevant. Heck, I have to work with EBCDIC data, a format designed to not produce holes in punchcards that are too close together. Even when we eventually move to a modern db, decades of archival data is not going to be converted from EBCDIC.

Windows might be irrelevant to FAANG or MANGA or GAMMA or whatever, but how many Fortune 500 companies don’t have a significant Microsoft presence?

Apple computers are pretty nice, but they’re expensive, and the vast majority of employees do fine with a cheap PC and Microsoft 365—why would a company pay more for unnecessary hardware that also requires rebuilding a bunch of IT systems, not to mention retraining thousands of employees.

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#82

Post by saalweachter »

bsnnkv wrote: post #37

It's quite impressive to see how much the Windows experience has improved for developers since this was written. I love being able to both do all of my web application work in a deeply integrated NixOS WSL VM and develop my own desktop environment power tools against a stable DWM using an officially supported Win32 API crate in Rust. Honestly I dread booting up my M1 MacBook Pro for work, the experience feels sluggis…

I too love the WSL, but at the same time--

If you needed to buy software, my entire life, chances are the software you needed was made for Windows.

I use Linux for a desktop, use it professionally, but I keep a Windows laptop around because every time a hobby butts up against software -- for instance, the control software for a CNC -- that software is written for Windows. (Yes, yes, there are open source alternatives, it's just codegen and largely generic APIs, but the software everyone uses runs on Windows.)

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#83

Post by matwood »

behnamoh wrote: post #38
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…

> Reading rich people's blogs reminds me every time that there's a reason wealth is also called "fortune". Because it's more about luck than anything else. At some point they lose touch with reality. I've found their "advice" often doesn't work for young people who wanna become successful like them. Another example is Jensen: "Nvidia doesn't have a long-term strategy, we just think about what to do next. I don't wear…

> At some point they lose touch with reality.

See every rich person telling young people to follow their passion.

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#84

Post by hajile »

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…

Xbox One sold 57.9M and Series family has sold 28.3M by mid 2024.

PS4 sold 117M and PS5 sold 61.7M by mid 2024.

Nintendo claims 150.9M Switch consoles sold as of the end of 2024.

That puts Microsoft at around 20.7%, Sony at 43%, and Nintendo at about 36.3%.

Even if you exclude Nintendo with a "no-true-gamer" fallacy, Microsoft still has just 32.5% of the market.

Windows was over 90% in 2007 and is just 72% today. If you include the super-important mobile market, Windows actual marketshare is something like 10-15% and even less if you include servers (where even most Azure servers run Linux).

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#85

Post by foul »

RIMR wrote: post #46
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…

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 guess the inflection point was PG turning to X to screech about "wokism" in support of oligarchs like Trump and Musk to snap this community out of it's pro-PG trance. Watching a billionaire cheer on the billionaire class as we plummet into technofeudalism is a hell of a wake up call.

In hindsight his (and Andreessen's techno-bullshit) have won a bet with Trump, those tweaker writings are very much aligning with the zeitgeist that's being imposed by Trump, Musk and their lackeys, they may even brag about having get there earlier than every other rich techbro.

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#86

Post by cb321 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #44
bediger4000 wrote: post #19

Not only is Microsoft not dead, they're almost never included in the "Big Tech" that gets shouted about and cursed. Which is weird, Microsoft makes an OS that has a 90+% desktop share, no real competitors, and pretty much extract money at will for its software.

Microsoft has long been included, they just didn’t happen to be in the catchy FAANG acronym that a tv show used for a set of companies with increasing stock prices all the way back in 2013. Netflix dropped out of that a long time ago, but FAANG is still sometimes used since it is catchier than MAMAA or whatever a 7 letter acronym would be if including Nvidia and Tesla. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Tech

How about MANTFANG (for microsoft, apple, nvidia, tesla, facebook, amazon, netflix, google)? If you drop Tesla, you can have "MANFANG" which fits 2025 Hollywood's year of the werewolf or if you reorder them you could have "FATMANNG", a bit like the infamous FatMan and Little Boy. Or "GFATMANN". If you go by Google's "Alphabet" you could do "MANTAFAN". And probably many others WAY catchier AND slightly more complete than "FAANG", IMO.

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#88

Post by intermerda »

roenxi wrote: post #31
baxtr wrote: post #9

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

Nothing. It is a well written essay and makes some interesting points about how Microsoft was defanged. What frame are you trying to put here? Do you think there is something wrong with the essay?

Of course not, as we all know dead companies add trillions in market cap all the time.

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#89

Post by throwway120385 »

wink wrote: post #69
ethbr1 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I'm a fair hand with the Linux shell and utilities, and I can say that PowerShell provides a lot of useful analogous capability in the Windows environment. I don't totally understand the model for PowerShell but the times I've had to dip into it it's been pretty good.

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#90

Post by jasode »

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…

>I’ve been hearing people say this since this incorrect essay was written almost 20 years ago Microsoft had [...list of significant statistics...]

Whenever someone writes a provocative article about something being "dead", they are almost always talking about influence and mindshare -- rather than business statistics.

Yes, Microsoft is still a huge behemoth being a $3+ trillion cap company with a overwhelming marketshare of Windows & Office installations but the apex of their "industry influence" was the 1990s during the "Wintel" days before the internet came along. That 1980s/1990s was the time period when Bill Gates was CEO and "everybody was scared of Microsoft". Since, then they ... lost the browser wars (both old IE and new IE with Trident engine failed), lost the mobile shift (Windows phones failed), is a distant #2 in search engine market. Microsoft is somewhat back in the influence game with AI but that's because they partnered with OpenAI rather than build something internally. Arguably, it's Meta that gets more noise with LLAMA, and China's High-Flyer getting everybody's attention with DeepSeek-R1. That's the type of "alive vs dead" PG is writing about.

The "dead" being a writer's rhetorical flourish rather than a business status is the same when applied to "IBM is dead". In pure business metrics, IBM is still a giant company with $65 billion in revenue and $7 in profits. The airlines, major banks, and credit-card companies still run millions of transactions through IBM Z mainframes. Companies are still buying and upgrading expensive new Z mainframes. But the rhetorical "dead" means IBM's apex of influence was 1960s & 1970s. The later IBM trying to relevant with the newer tech like Watson and blockchain service doesn't matter to people.

Maybe writers should stop using "dead" as rhetorical technique because it just confuses readers. E.g. saying something like "DirecTV is dead" makes people scratch their head when they just watched a game on the satellite service last night. How would that be possible if it was truly dead?!?

Post reply on HN