I don’t think they want a repeat of missing out on web and then mobile again.
Lots of low hanging fruit in optimizing browser rendering and JavaScript. Google engineers plucked these fruit. Pichai took all the credit.
In an alternate universe, some IE PM focused on making a great, fast browser, Chrome would’ve been killed by Google after not taking sufficient market share to deem worthwhile, and Pichai would be working at Oracle as an L5 TPM.
You also missed the GPs point, the reason Microsoft could be “sleepy dormant” on the web was because they had already won the browser wars and because the dominant platform for a decade. And that wasn’t by accident, it was very much a strategic move to conquer the browser market.
We ended up with Xanadu's vision of walled gardens. Without all that pesky Xanadu technological innovation. Two-way links, OIDs & tumblers (zippers? Now I forget.), transclusion, micropayements, etc.
Another example of worst is better.
Things moved so fast at the time, it left the impression that Microsoft was slow to react. But actually everything happened within just a few years.
MS missed the tpc/ip train completely and ended up just copy pasting the stack from one of the BSDs in Windows 95 I think, or it wasn't a default install, I forget which.
They were late to the http train and had to give away explorer for free. You can tell how desperate they were since they didn't do the same thing with office.
Then between 1999 and 2012 they completely dominated.
Then they missed the mobile train completely and lost the browser wars. And here we are.
I blame IE being free for the state of the internet we have today. If people were trained to pay for it then we wouldn't have spyvertisment as the only model for it.
By the time WP came around, this was already been done. Phones were costing near a $1000 and a 2 year contract, and opinions have been made. No real amount of people was going to risk a windows phone when you'd have to fork over that much money and that much of a contract term.
Doesn't this statement contradicts itself? Nobody buys an iPhone because cheap Android phones suck(ed) - you would have to shell over ~10 times the money. Android still dominates the European market (~65 % market share).
Good Windows Phone were 120 to 250 € and WP8 was optimized for low-end hardware so that was no problem. You got a cheap phone without an annoying expensive locked-in contract. I saw a lot of people using a Windows Phone exactly ten years ago. I had a brand new Lumia 535 myself and only paid 130 €.
Windows Phone came too late to dispel this problem. I still run into people who remember their first and only Android and switched to Apple and never looked back. WP never had a chance to wins those customers.
This is not a good take. Android was a highly fractured ecosystem that didn't really have good unified product experience until Nexus and Galaxy S3 rolled around. You don't go to a $1000 phone because a $100 phone sucks.
Really makes you think about the structure of mega corps and how powerful the “defender’s advantage” is. These giants knowingly sleep on disruption and wait to time their entry, and are generally rewarded. I dont know if its good or bad, it probably depends, but I think the capitalism game devs need some balance tweaks.
History is littered with out-innovated companies that are gone or clinging to relevance. Xerox, IBM, cable companies, telephone companies, every train company ever. All had a huge opportunity to disrupt their own business model and make even more money, almost none of them managed it.
It's becoming too expensive and too much of a hassle. On top of plane tickets, the airport rental car system is also absurdly expensive. Flying, while fast, is full of inconveniences that make it less worthwhile.
The first airline that rebrand itself as (1) from your door to (2) your real destination, and starts including effective ways to get to/from airport while having faster security lines will become dominant.
E.g. if Delta started connecting ATL to the local region by rail or fast buses