How Microsoft Plans to Beat Google and Facebook to the Next Tech Breakthrough
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I'm an apple household in general, but have multiple devices.
Cortana is superior to Siri, Google is still better.
But you make a post with no actual facts.
But, trying to understand here. My experience over a number of years is that experienced individuals are transitory...People move around. Depending on the group in MSFT and Satya's mandate, churn may make sense.
A decade is multiple tech lifetimes...Someone stellar 10 years ago may be on it now or may not...
This level of general MS bs on HN gets a little tiring when there are no facts.
Admittadely, the prestige probably has a lot to do with the previous circumstances (work on whatever, don't worry about the company), but it seems like this will be a very beneficial move for Microsoft.
But I kind of fail to see what any of this has to do with Microsoft. :-)
It's good but average engineering, at average, moving slow but steady.
Skype Translate reminds me of the Star Trek universal translator but it can only do several languages. I remember when Babelfish came out and some translations didn't take too well. There has always been a need for a computer to translate foreign languages and to translate accurately as well.
I think Apple is trying to do the same things as Microsoft for their iPhone and Macintosh series. So Microsoft has to compete with Apple too to get new ideas to market.
It is a shame that Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple can't work together to share ideas and see which ones does them best.
Is something like HHVM considered a tech breakthrough?
Automated self driving cars considered a tech breakthrough? (most probably)
A largely backwards source-compatible, JIT'ed interpreter for one of the world's shittiest designed but most widely deployed languages? That runs the frontend fleet for the #2 site on the Web? While supporting new core language features and extensions? Yes, I would say that's a breakthrough in interpreter implementation, and thus tech.
The best I could say was that it was a way for lots of applications writing their own complex datastores (like outlook) to share an OS-level platform so that it could be exposed to other applications with a unified API. It was way more a developer tool than a user-facing feature, but that's not how it was marketed.
http://www.metafilter.com/134799/WinFS-what-it-could-have-be...
Is that available anywhere?
They were very accommodating with bringing us in to see/try the Hololens and we have been really happy with Azure since switching from AWS.
I'm looking forward to seeing what Microsoft's "next" is; they've tried a lot of "nexts" that didn't always pan out.
That is the biggest change in Microsoft IMHO. Talking from personal experience - in the past whenever we worked with MS they always put in stupid requirements such as we had to support X or Y (with X and Y being some new Microsoft technology/platform/product).
It was abuse of their position so I am glad to see this is changing.
When Google released maps/street view, or apple announced the iphone, those were the kinds of things that built excitement because they were big ideas, and it was the kind of future we wanted to live in. Microsoft doesn't really do that, and from this article they still don't get it.
Isn't that kind of the point of having a research division? Let the research people go crazy with new ideas, then sift through them and figure out what to make of that, product-wise?
It's not like MS Research hasn't delivered some cool stuff, but Microsoft was either not capable or not interested in turning that stuff into products. At least that is the impression I get.
Now just look at VR on the other hand... there's many big companies investing in that and there's a lot of hype around it. Heck even Facebook is on board and Microsoft is nowhere to be seen. There's yet another technological revolution that they're missing out on.
I don't think that Microsoft is missing out on the VR revolution: I think that all this time Microsoft has been trying to baby step/bootstrap their way towards some very cool things. I think it's useful to take a step back and appreciate the incremental/evolutionary approach Microsoft has been taking here. I still think it's kind of brilliant that MS/MSR was able to use gaming to commoditize the Kinect (what was a lab's worth of sensors is now available in every Wal-Mart for a reasonable cost).
Such a tool might revolutionize international, distributed workforces. With a sufficiently good translator, an engineering firm in the US might quintuple the set of people in the world who are suitable to work for them.
Or maybe not. I'm no futurologist.
I take it you weren't in the industry when the Halloween documents leaked, or the antitrust case was prosecuted. MS was (and probably still is) every bit as ruthlessly capitalistic as the new 800lb gorillas in town.
Halloween documents was 1998, Microsoft's antitrust case was 2001. If you want to neg a company, find examples in the last decade. (They exist. Windows 10 privacy issues are a great example of them still getting some things wrong.)
What????MS sues everyone that dare to use pirate copy of Windows just like 10 years ago and keep hostile to OSS until only recently.
It is much more hated before, now since they retreat more from consumer market, it looks like it tries and probably will become the new IBM, while Google is more like the new MS.
I would have agreed prior to the release of Windows 10.
figure out how to execute on your ideas, the generation of ideas themselves aren't the issue.
Process for finding out is not fixed. Generally a simple "View Source", look at <script> tags, read script files and look for obvious clues is the best first port of call (and worked easily here). If there's a lot of indirection and pre-compilation being done it gets harder.
If CEOs are micro-managing tactics like this, it means they are failing to hire and delegate.
Operative phrase: "Plans to."
Two words Microsoft needs to learn before it tries anything: "Strategy tax."
The term has been used inside Microsoft since the 1990s (and maybe before that time).
If your strategy is "Protect the crown jewels at all costs" while your competitors have discovered a diamond mine, no one needs to care what cutlery you're supposed to use.
Of course that sounds ludicrous, but the impression I get is that that kind of strategic confusion has been endemic at MS since Gates moved on.
Clever innovations like Skype Translate or even Hololens are not a strategy. Selling lots of good individual solutions still isn't a strategy.
You can't play defence on strategy (Office 2026? Windows Infinity?) You need a kick-ass plan for the 5-10 year future, and I see no evidence that anyone at MS is capable of designing a product plan for consumer markets that don't exist yet, and then wondering how to market them - while Google, FB, Apple and even Amazon are at least thinking about it.
Gates was directly responsible for imposing strategy tax during his time at Microsoft.
Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft.
Yahoo is faced with a similar problem; they can't shake who they are, no matter how cool or different they try to rebrand themselves. They're still Yahoo. And nobody is interested.
I say this because MS seems to think that if they get a slamdunk on technology, everything else will fall into place. And maybe there is some truth to that. But you can't escape who you are and what you've done, especially when it's become your M.O.
Facebook has an advantage in this space: they're still a new name in tech. They're "hipper" although still have their own baggage; but it remains to be seen how that permeates throughout what they do. So far it hasn't looked good though.
Really, I think there is too much talent locked up in this major companies. I think the world would be better off if more engineers and creatives were forging their own paths, chasing their own dreams and coming to market themselves. We need less whales and more/bigger fish.
The review of the the pixel book got me thinking...
What do FB and GOOG have to prop up their valuation beyond advertising? In both cases the user is the product, advertisers the customer.
Amazon, MSFT, and Apple have other avenues. It's always interesting how a past reputation glosses of a legacy name is used to gloss over the behaviors of "a new name".
Their view is of a company who makes great games and consoles and a phone that no one wants. Show them Active Directory, Office365 and they're a little taken aback that Microsoft does other stuff.