Yes, they missed the mobile boat and were late to IaaS/PaaS, but to dismiss them for nearly two decades is perhaps unfair.
IMO their biggest failure was losing their developer base. DevDiv really seems to have fallen asleep at the wheel - or to have been neutralized by the OS group.
[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global...
The biggest years of profitability for most tech companies come after their innovation heyday (when they've already established their market position and no longer reinvest large amounts of cash into new product development), but without continued innovation a tech business eventually fades away into irrelevance.
Not that I’m complaining - the surface line revitalized laptop and stylus tech for windows.
Azure also kind of just plays better with the whole Active Directory / Office 365 / Sharepoint ecosystem and many Azure products are substantially cheaper than AWS.
No. Microsoft didn't IPO until 1986. So after the mid 80s to the early 90s.
> when they were both microscopic compared to anything today?
Well, both apple and microsoft were "microscopic" in the 90s compared to what they are now. But still apple was the star tech company of the 80s and microsoft was the star tech company of the 90s.
> Not really a valid comparison.
It actually is if we are being honest. But that wasn't my point. Was just pointing out that once Apple was the big success compared to microsoft because microsoft became the big success. But you can cherrypick dates to fit whatever narrative you wish.
Gmail is basically synonymous with email today, and no one wants to use email now. What does that really say about Gmail, then? Never mind the fact that they pretty much killed off non-Google mail servers.
In my opinion, HN is better off. You have a good underlying point (that Inbox was exactly what GP wanted), but why write it that way?
It's certainly not still funny after the 1000th (or even 2nd) time reading it, and it's harder to understand for people who aren't in on the joke or speak English as a second language.
Thank you for having an open mind.
Maybe someone that has been there more recently can attest or counter my point, but it seemed to at least leave a surface wound on the culture.
Perhaps because the natural organizational tendency was to conspire to create user lock-in and other nefarious practices? 95% of software companies (I am guessing here) don't need to consult their lawyers during software development.
> review cycles became slower
"Q: But why can't I force the users to also install Internet Explorer?
A: You just can't Johnny, you'll have to rewrite this component."
> and execs became complacent
... after being really sharp and on-it before.
Bottom line: Cry me a river.
I’m not suggesting that he’s lying, but it’s important to remember that the anti-trust action likely had a financial impact on him, particularly if he had a lot of comp tied up in company stock.
Here we are 20 something years later and Microsoft looks to be just doing just fine to me.
Microsoft made plenty of money between 1998 and 2014. They also basically ceased innovating. I was a child and teenager during Microsoft's glory days from 1985-2000. They were basically unstoppable: if you thought you had a good software-related idea, Microsoft was already doing it, doing it better, and bringing some nasty market-power tricks to bear (much like Google in their glory days from ~2000-2015). I started my career soon after the DoJ consent decree, and Microsoft became a joke. They were the 800 lb. gorilla that sat in the corner milking their Windows/IE/Office monopolies (and eventually losing them) while the web became a bigger platform than Windows ever was.
Losing them? Nearly all the business workspace I know is Windows-only. Maybe not in Silicon Valley or top tech schools, but Windows is the norm for most businesses. It's not a competitive marketplace.
Quite often, I see wealthy, influential members of the tech community speak out against regulatory function citing things like lost innovation, when the reality is that they were pretty financially motivated to disparage government action in the first place. Again, that’s not to say that this executive was lying, but he clearly makes negative statements around the antitrust case and had a clear financial reason for doing so. He’s not a neutral party making an objective observation here.
/r/selfawarewolves
That is not to say it is not worth sending Google through a similar period of moribundity until they find new leadership and markets to pursue.
As they should be at a large corporation that was known for abusing its market power. It's not like engineers are experts in whether a feature breaks the law or not -- nor are they supposed to be.
> review cycles became slower
Oh come on, legal approval is just one more checkbox along with 20 others. And if it's slowing down reviews for a few important features or products, that's the point -- that legal considerations actually get considered rather than ignored or steamrolled over. The same way there are approvals for privacy, security, accessibility, and so on that are "slower" -- again, that's the point.
> execs became complacent
I don't believe this for a second. Execs at every company want to meet/beat metrics, get promoted, and make more salary. Nobody's complacent ever. The idea that execs become "complacent" because of a single highly targeted regulation is baloney. It's a total fiction invented for political lobbying purposes. Remember: removing monopoly abuse means a company has to work harder to to compete, instead of resting complacently on lazy market dominance. If anything, these execs were forced to be less complacent. But it's a nice lie they're trying to tell.
"Full stack engineer" gets ever more all-encompassing.
> If anything, these execs were forced to be less complacent.
An alternative explanation would be that the hypercompetitive win-at-all-costs types left for less regulated pastures, leaving the more complacent ones.
Google has been stagnating for more than one decade. What have they created since 2010 that is even remotely interesting, let alone in the interest of society?
And Amazon is Rube Goldberg machine of human suffering. Who cares?
You can make your substantive points thoughtfully without damaging this place in the process. Please do it that way instead.
Translate has gotten a hell of a lot better and it's been helpful for humanity, for one thing.
Also, it seems to have a bias in favor of the larger websites generally, but this is an anecdotal observation of mine, there may or may not be evidence to support it.
- Google Assistant is advanced magic. Much better than Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa, IMO.
- Google Photos is great.
- TensorFlow is close to its industry's standard.
- Chromebooks and Chrome OS are a hit.
- The Pixel line of phones is great, especially their industry leading camera innovations.
Sounds doubtful. I would guess there are more people here who have already been there done that at one of the big tech companies then there are people sitting around jealous.