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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

To become IBM 2.0, Microsoft would have to kill its R&D budget, outsource everything to India, and focus on short term gains. Really, Microsoft is really far away from that, you could say they are even more forward thinking than Apple with one of the last industrial research labs in place (IBM and its consultants has basically killed IBM Research). Disclosure: Microsoft employee.

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Yes, I think MS still has room to avoid the fate of pandering to the enterprise. MS research continues to shine, but I recall that IBM research shone brightly in the 80's.

I hope that MS can stay primarily focused on people who make their own buying decisions, but I'm worried (eg [1]). "A computer in every home" would have translated very nicely to "a device in every hand." Alas, I'm not really sure what MS stands for these days beyond "backward compatibility" with its understandably addictive revenue streams -- which is also eerily reminiscent of IBM in the 80's.

[1]:http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-Says-No-to-a-Comput...

Yes, that is now. But if Surface and a few more extremely expensive attempts fail, sooner or later MS will have to close the lab, fire many developers and concentrate on extracting value from it's existing shrinking markets.

Or Microsoft could do a reset like Apple did in the late 90s. That would still involve closing the lab, firing many workers, and focusing purely on a narrow set of products that it can make lots of money on.

Yes in a hypothetical future where microsoft loses massive amounts of money it may need cut spending and double down on it's existing competencies.

But that's a pretty damn facile statement.

It can be said of any company that has a revenue stream. The only ventures that's not true for are governments with sovereign currencies (and even then there are limits)

Well the future is hypothetical by definition, isn't it? MS has two choices now - invest in R&D and try to secure new markets or make maximum profits for it's shareholders from exiting markets. MS may not "need" to cut spending but every billion they spend on projects like Kim, Bing, Surface is a billion that could've been dividend or share's buy in.

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