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Comment by rlanday | Hacker News Reader

> Microsoft is a relative underdog now (among the tech giants).

Microsoft is currently the largest company in the world by market cap.

Hmm, that's surprising. It has a dodgy foothold in mobile, Amazon (and possibly also Google?) has it beat in cloud services, Google Docs has taken a chunk of Office's territory, Chrome OS is overtaking Windows in education, Mobile+Apple+Chrome OS are swallowing it in personal computing and (I believe) gaining some ground even in enterprise. It doesn't seem like Microsoft has dominance in anything but desktop OS right now.

It's just a general perception, as a casual observer, that Microsoft has been ceding lots of territory lately and not really gaining much.

Microsoft used to be a boxed software business, now they're transitioning to saas. It's really that simple.

Right, but Amazon and Google are arguably better than them at SaaS. AWS is second to none for cloud hosting, and Google is second to none for AI.

Only if you ignore the categories of software where Microsoft leads -- Active Directory and Office 365 are SaaS offerings that Microsoft has that are seeing massive adoption, and Microsoft is using that to leverage businesses onto their other cloud offerings.

Google is second to none for AI.

Definitely going to disagree there. While Google has done more work on commercializing piss-poor AI, MS Research has been at the forefront of AI research since before Google learned how to make money. Google is definitely the second fiddle when it comes to AI research, and it's not even close.

What metric are we basing on here?

Since I'm arguing from the research standpoint, published research or citations by other research.

Really? Try Office 365 vs Google Docs and get back to me! There's no comparison. Microsoft is better.

I think Microsoft is the best SaaS provider overall. Google has some quirky offerings with GSuites that honestly arent comparable to other enterprise offerings from a quality perspective- especially if you are used to Office, Outlook and AD. And when it comes to cloud computing Google is a distant third.

Microsoft understands customer service though, and Google refuses to learn. Surely that’s relevant to SaaS.

Cloud hosting isn't SaaS. Think productivity, CRM, business apps ...

Maybe it's just better diversified than its competitors, and it's only an underdog in each individual product category (except desktop OS, for now at least), and not as a whole.

They have shown a remarkable ability to survive complete paradigm changes, keep growing and stay profitable. The FAANGs still have to prove that.

It's not surprising if you pay attention.

> Amazon (and possibly also Google?) has it beat in cloud services

No, not google.

I think of them as the trust fund babies among the tech giants. A lot of people who have actually worked on both Azure and AWS/Google Cloud remark that Azure is awful in comparison, but its their only option because (some reason which ties back to Microsoft's dominance 15+ years ago). In search, after MSN Search, Windows Live Search, Bing Rewards and what not, Microsoft still didn't really put a dent into Google's marketshare. In mobile, they are an also ran. They had to do a 180 on their open source policy to come back to relevance. In other words, if you took away their OS/Office stronghold, it is hard to see them actually competing and winning in any business which has strong competitors.

Which reminds me. I knew some folks who worked at Microsoft who used to talk about open source as if it was cancer - in 2005. Now they display equal enthusiasm for the opposite view. If you have actually seen it, it looks quite like a comedy scene from one of those movies which spoof corporate life, where all employees act gung-ho no matter what.

I'll just provide.an anecdotal counterpoint in that I've used GCP, AWS, and Oracle cloud, and Azure is night and day a better experience.

Where are your casually observing eyes focused? If Hacker News is your main internet watering hole, maybe expansion is called for...

I just... I miss the old Hacker news... This isn't reddit...

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