Microsoft Is Fast Turning Into A Sideshow | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Is Fast Turning Into A Sideshow

forbes.com

48 pointsiProject42 comments

I’ve often pondered on why capitalism doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to when it comes to reallocating resources. ... A no-longer useful business should release its capital back into the marketplace. But institutions formed during their useful phase never seem to go away voluntarily.

This is a shallow and misleading characterization of capitalism and Microsoft's current place in the economy. To pretend that Microsoft is no longer relevant just because their mobile phone and Windows 8 haven't been successful is just lazy journalism. Look at how much software still runs on Windows machines. Microsoft software runs the modern corporate desktop and that will not change for a long time.

Does Microsoft have challenges? Of course. But to pretend like they should be wiped away because of a few bad years is the argument child makes, not a journalist.

I think the sentiment is that Microsoft now has an expiration date on it. You can't estimate it, but you could say that you are certain that they'll be closing their doors sooner or later. The OP is advocating that the company close their doors sooner, on their own terms, voluntarily. This would, according to the OP, good for the economy, though not good for Microsoft. I think we are seeing capitalism at work: Microsoft has run it's course, and is now just trudging along. It cannot pivot, and cannot turn back to a time when the software industry allowed it to flourish. In time, it will stumble, fall down and never get up. Then others will come along, take it apart, keep the useful parts going, and kill off the dead ends. This will happen slowly and organically. That's capitalism.

People could have said the same about Apple in the 1990s.

A company does not have to raise the white flag as long as it has some money in its bank account. Until it must declare bankruptcy, it always has some sort of chance to pivot and grow. It is after all just a group of people.

Michael Dell did say that about Apple circa 1999 I think.

Capitalism doesn't put an expiration date on companies though. Capitalism, in theory, is always there to provide new life for those who put the work in to make it happen.

Whether or not the current "renaissance" that's happening at Microsoft will be enough for that is hard to say... but to say that they are more-or-less finished and should just close up shop and disband is foolish.

> I think the sentiment is that Microsoft now has an expiration date on it. You can't estimate it, but you could say that you are certain that they'll be closing their doors sooner or later.

This much can be said of any company. It's called the Organisational Life Cycle:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_life_cycle

Microsoft has a lot of room to fall before it's too late to recover. Organizations as entrenched and resource-rich as Microsoft can't be taken out by a decade-long stumble.

Microsoft is still providing tremendous value, so why should they close their doors sooner? The capital will get reallocated once it's no longer sufficiently productive at Microsoft, and there's no reason to do it any sooner than that.

Also, it's conflating too much together. The problem is unlikely to be that Windows 8 will not be strictly successful. More likely is that it won't be as successful as it was expected to be. Which is a horse of a different color entirely.

Tens of millions of people are still going to buy and use Windows 8, and it will still generate billions of dollars of revenue for Microsoft. And hundreds of billions of dollars worth of 3rd party software will continue to be developed for and used on windows for the foreseeable future. But this current stage of the OS wars is very dependent on inflection points and momentum, so if Windows 8 is less successful than Windows 7 then that could mean that Microsoft will be faced with smaller and smaller successes until sometime way down the road they actually encounter an outright failure in the OS market.

TL;DR version: Steve Ballmer should leave, its all his fault, waaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Ok, so that may be a bit harsh but that is the gist of it. I would prefer it if the author said why he cared. By that statement I mean Microsoft mail fail, they may not. Steve may leave, he may not. Technology will change. But unless you're long on Microsoft in the market I'm not sure why you would invest so much time disparaging Ballmer.

Microsoft is a big place, it may land in the toilet it may not. I watched Sun fall from being the #1 server company in the world to an acquistion for a software product. Does it matter that they didn't make the right moves once the server market shifted? Wasn't it even possible?

"Confronting Reality" [1] is a good, although somewhat depressing, book about how organizations resist seeing things they don't want to see. As a companion to "Execution" (also by Bossidy) I think folks who want to manage companies should read both.

The key point in Confronting Reality is that even when "you" see things clearly, you are but one pixel of an image sensor of potentially damaged pixels. As a leader you have to understand how people become afraid of seeing an unpleasant reality and then just simply do not see it, like your eye doesn't see the big opaque circle in the middle of your vision.

Microsoft's world changed, the successful people got promoted but the stuff they were successful at became irrelevant. If they started again on their same project from the same place they would not be successful now. But that doesn't change the fact that they were successful and now they are calling the shots at some elevated place in the organization. There are so many things that shape an organization, some can be changed, some cannot.

I don't know if Microsoft will survive. I know they are not having the impact in the market they would like, but I'm not sure they know what market they are in. They need a mission, which is something Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple have but Microsoft does not. At least not obviously. No mission, no market, no way to measure your effectiveness. That is a sad place to be.

[1] www.amazon.com/Confronting-Reality-Doing-Matters-Things/dp/B001T0I7KA/

Microsoft is their own worst enemy. They stymie themselves with the bizarre pricing schemes and naming, confusing consumers (and IT buyers). Much of their problems seem to come from inertia.

When Microsoft does wipe the slate clean, it can perform very well: Xbox, Windows Phone 8, SkyDrive/Azure. However, they need to find greater courage and start sacrificing the current cash cows for future growth. The crazy pricing scheme for Windows 8 is proof positive that they need better ideas. Apple has been selling new OSs for $40 every time. MS should have had one price: $40. That's it. For everything. $40.

I was chided for suggesting that Microsoft leave Windows Desktop behind a couple of days ago, but I can't see any long-term future for it with consumers. Microsoft would do better by spinning off Entertainment & Devices into a new company, and having Microsoft solely focus on the enterprise customer where crazy pricing and naming and options for everything is commonplace.

That these two were so entwined in the first place was the idea that consumers want to use what they use at work, and vice versa. This worked, until consumers said "Actually, we all want iPads" and Microsoft is far too late to that game. Consumers aren't in a symbiotic relationship with what they use at work anymore.

Apple doesn't have to work with OEMs, resellers, retailers, or (generally speaking) enterprises. Basically, all of Apple's customers are the consumers themselves, so Apple has a single consumer price. Microsoft has various groups of customers, and it adjusts the prices and products accordingly.

Which is the problem: it tries to create singular pieces of software, then cater around all the different customers it has. No-one in the software business (with the exception of Google, sort of) is trying to do that anymore. Consumers hate it.

That's why I think MS should form two separate companies: one consumer facing and one enterprise facing. Then they can both focus on their customer.

Personally, I believe part of the problem is the artificial barriers to platform adoption that Microsoft continues to insist upon. For example, Windows Phone 8 is basically a good platform. But there's no support for OpenGL -- the graphics interface of choice in the mobile world today. If they wanted more "apps" (games) for the platform, then choosing to support OpenGL would have been a sign they actually care about that.

There's also a bit of "not invented here" going on. They could have embraced and contributed to webkit, and made the web better for everyone, instead they wasted millions of dollars recreating what someone else had already done in IE10 and then limited IE10 to the newest of platforms. While I'm not suggesting that they slavishly follow what everyone else does with webkit, they could have at least used it as a base and contributed meaningful changes back.

And finally, yes, as a Windows 8 user myself, I can tell you that while the underlying OS is clearly loads better, the Modern UI is a mishmash of UI ideas with razor-sharp usability edges.

This is partly the "innovators dilemma" taking over Microsoft and part mis-management by a bozo.

I have several friends who were/are at Microsoft - every single one of them has said some variant of this to me "we were not allowed to do X as it would compete with some key MS Office package" OR "that project was killed because it did not fit in with the Windows managers vision". Too afraid to innovate for fear of disrupting their Cash cows.

Bozo - Steve is clearly in over his head. Bill had the vision & the technical chops Steve is missing both. I was at a conference where he(Steve) was talking about cloud computing. It was was easily the worst 15 minute ramble I had heard on that topic - shockingly so.

however despite both points above - Microsoft will be around for a VERY long time. Just, not as dominant anymore.

Don't agree at all of what is said about Windows Phone 8. It's something new and fresh, and I feel people will get around to it. Have a Lumia920 and couldn't be happier. Win8 on the other hand... Different story :D

My Lumia 920 is going back as soon as I find the charger it came with. It's a well-built phone with a great screen, but it's not polished enough to be the game-changer that Nokia/Microsoft need it to be. It's huge (60% heavier than an iPhone), and the battery life is very questionable (despite a battery 40% larger than the iPhone 5). If I leave it on standby for two hours, I can never tell whether it will have blown through 2% or 20% of the battery in the meantime.

WP8 is slick in some ways, but it's not polished enough for prime time. Take for example the text messages app. Who decided that the chrome should take up so much space that you could only see 1 message in portrait mode (or zero in landscape) with the keyboard open? On a 4.5" screen?! There is no good app for Google Talk; the few that do have it on the Microsoft Store have weird issues (flashing while redisplaying content, logging out/in every time you switch to another app). There are no apps to access OWA accounts (if your Exchange server has ActiveSync off, tough luck). Integrating the "back" feature on your apps and on your browser is an idea that wears poorly. The "people" app is kind of cute, but jumbling Facebook/Linked-In/etc together with your contacts is an idea that sucks more the more you use it. I'd much rather be able to see peoples' timelines than be able to post the same message on Facebook and Linked-In at the same time... The UI is slick but lacks landmarks to help you figure out what's going on on-screen. There are weird and questionable choices throughout the UI. Who decided "+" was the right icon for a new e-mail? Etc.

Weighs as much as an iPhone 4 with a case :) Not a deal breaker. The iPhone 5 feels way too plastic to me.

As I always point out to my friends iOS and Android needed ~3 years to become competitive. It's getting there. The App argument is also kind of flaky... Other than Mint app, everything I use is there.

The iPhone 5 feels way too plastic to me.

?! Are you sure you didn't buy it from some guy in a trench coat behind a dim-sum dive in Shenzhen?

My iPhone 5 is the most solid, monolithic piece of consumer electronics I've ever seen.

The app argument used to be more of a "thing", but they've made great strides over the years to get competitive there, and as a WP7 user, it's just about at the point where I can feel comfortable recommending it to people without feeling any regrets.

The OS itself has always been pretty great though, in my opinion - they took a lot of lessons from what Apple and Google did and used those to build a platform that does a lot of stuff right out of the box.

I think your comment about the iPhone 4 + case is funny. I see people carrying around these ridiculous brightly colored foamy brick-ish things that are iPhones in cases, and I wonder why they would put up with that. It doesn't matter how beautiful and lightweight the device inside the case is if it can never come out!

The 920 may be brick like, but physics being what it is, it'll land harder on the ground than an iPhone 5. I don't use the 920 with a case but never used the 4 with a case either. Most people at my office don't have cases on their work-issue 5's from what I've seen.

I've got a Lumia 920 and I'm a bit disappointed with it. I don't know if this is a programming fault or something wrong with the OS itself but the best apps I could find for reddit and HN cut off text for story titles. This is a serious issue for me because these apps constitute 90% of my phone usage throughout the day. I also have problems with web pages not rendering at all (probably the web site's fault but still). Also, the phone is really heavy and not comfortable to hold, with the buttons on the side always getting pressed by accident, especially while reading. The only thing I like is the eReader I have, but it's not quite as good as Aldiko was on my Droid Incredible. I'm going to stick it out because I'd like to try my hand at developing for it.

Honestly, people will go where the apps are and buy what their friends have.

The apps are not on WP8, and I have yet to meet a person who has a Windows Phone as their main device.

I've been using a Lumia 710 as my primary phone and like it quite a bit. I still haven't decided to upgrade to Win Phone 8 though, as I like the smaller size of the 710 quite a bit, and the apps that I have are working well for me.

It must be hit or miss. I'm actually returning my Lumia 822 tonight and getting an iPhone. Just way too many problems. However, at least WP8 has given me some fodder for my blog.

Unfortunately for Windows Phone 8, I don't think most people "come around" on things they are never forced to use. People will come around on Windows 8 because, despite the market presence of OSX, PCs are going to continue to be sold and people are going to start being "thrown into" it.

Windows Phone 8 isn't going to be forced on anybody though. I expect people to "come around" to it like people "came around" to BeOS. Argued to be superior by its fans, but ignored by the majority because ignoring things is easy.

The problem for a newcomer to an established market is that you cannot be just "something new", you have to be 10x as good or compete on price.

I think both WP8 and Windows 8's problems are that they are mostly beautiful "skin-deep", and that it mesmerizes you a little with all its different colors and animations. But once you start using them for a while you get frustrated with the lack of OS functionality, lack of apps, or even the OS interface itself, which wastes a lot of space for stuff, and doesn't make stuff as clear as on other platforms. Sometimes it's difficult to even realize what you're looking at or what you have to do, because the symbols and identifiers are so simplistic.

Having not used Windows 8 extensively, I can't say much about it, but I have to disagree about Windows Phone. I've been using WP7 for about two years now, and I really like it.

The OS actually has a lot of features built-in that you have to resort to separate apps for on other devices. And after some use, I don't find the icons any more mysterious than those found elsewhere... you can almost always pull the menu up to reveal the textual name for the icons if you need to know what they do, however.

From what I've seen, Windows 8 certainly needs some polish, just like Windows Phone 7 did when it was first released. I don't have any doubts that both products will continue to mature into things that are better, though.

Microsoft's biggest problem, in my opinion, isn't that they do a bad job - it's that they are too quick to bail out if things don't go their way right out of the gate. If they stick with the platforms they have in the market now, I think consumers will pick them up and enjoy them over time.

That's quite a laundry list, but it's cherry picked. Microsoft has done some great work over the past decade despite the missteps. They've cleaned up their security act (no small task) and Windows 8 and WP8 are solid efforts. Xbox is is a success, and Office is still essential business software for the foreseeable future. They're in much better shape than Apple was in the 90s.

All that said, I think the conclusion is correct: Ballmer is an anchor on the organization. I'm not sure if he's as stupid as he sounds, or whether he just feels obligated to pander to Wall Street with misplaced sales-manager bravado, but when you put him up next to Jobs, Ellison, Page or even Zuckerberg he just comes off as a buffoon.

I don't understand the diversity of their products, it seems like a lack of focus, and driven by a fear of missing out on the Next Big Thing.

I think they should focus on 2 products:

1. Office software: have clients on ALL popular operating systems including iOS and Android, and move as many customers as possible to Office 365 and Outlook.com (and move that to Windows Azure).

2 Windows operating system(s): that would be desktop, tablet and server including Windows Azure, not sure if Windows Phone makes sense.

Spin off Xbox (and related Kinect products) as a separate company. It's a strong enough 'living room' brand, and I doubt if customers really care that it's a Microsoft product.

Make technology from devdiv as open and easily accessible as possible. E.g. give the drugs away for free as in beer, and also free as in freedom where it makes sense. Ultimately, this should drive adoption of products 1 and 2 listed above, and that's where Microsoft should be making money.

Not sure what to do about Bing. Google needs competition, but I'm not sure if Microsoft is the right company to be doing this (search engine, maps, pushing ads). Is it profitable? If it's not by now, then when are they going to take their losses and quit that game?

"Spin off Xbox (and related Kinect products) as a separate company. It's a strong enough 'living room' brand, and I doubt if customers really care that it's a Microsoft product."

Kinect came out of Microsoft Research. If you spin off the Xbox division as their own company, I'm not sure how that relationship would still exist or how that would work.

"Make technology from devdiv as open and easily accessible as possible. E.g. give the drugs away for free as in beer, and also free as in freedom where it makes sense. Ultimately, this should drive adoption of products 1 and 2 listed above, and that's where Microsoft should be making money."

The developer tools makes a decent amount of money for Microsoft, far much more than their entertainment division does. Not sure why they would give that up. You can see Q1 for 2013 here: http://www.microsoft.com/Investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earn... Notice that Business Division brought in the most and then Server and Tools came in right behind that.

"A few gems in the credibility department from CEO Steve Ballmer: 'We don’t have a monopoly. We have market share. There’s a difference.'"

For a financial magazine, lampooning this comment shows a surprising ignorance of economics. Even 100% marketshare (which Microsoft never had) isn't equivalent to a monopoly. They'd have to be the only supplier, usually the result of significant barriers to entry (most often cost or government intrusion on the market).

Windows competed with Unixes, OS/2, Linux, Mac OS, BeOS, and others. Likewise, IE had Netscape and (later) Firefox, Opera, and Chrome.

Windows had obvious usage advantages over its competitors; but feature-parity isn't something the market guarantees. Its competitors had advantages over Windows, too. In the end, all were available, each had pros and cons, and users freely chose Windows computers in far greater numbers than the alternatives.

Wow. Hahahaha. The author of this Forbes article must be a web developer to have such an amazingly low opinion of Microsoft.

Strongly argued but wheres the credibility for forbes when they have another article from a few days earlier that takes the exact opposite view: http://www.forbes.com/sites/edzitron/2012/12/28/windows8/

Every magazine should have a strictly enforced editorial line and quash all diversity of opinion.

That's called coverage, son.

Forbes magazine is written by professionals.

Forbes Online blogs are pieces of junk written by "contributors" to get on the stock ticker news items. You could sign up and most probably get published as well.

I can't believe people ever thought stack-ranking was a good idea. A 5-year-old can see that it will fail.

By the way, Google has the same shit in its "calibration scores".

Who hires the idiots who think Enron-style review systems are a good idea? Where do all these fucking weak links in management come from?

Odd, navigating to that URL simply returned the word false as the page content.

Fast as in did so two years ago?

> Nokia has started discounting recently launched Lumia phones, indicating that they’re not exactly moving like hotcakes

Huh what? The Lumia 920 is selling so well that it's going out of stock and Walmart increased the cost to $240.00 on contract and it still got on the best seller list. [1] http://nokiapoweruser.com/2012/12/27/walmart-raises-the-pric...

http://wmpoweruser.com/walmart-complains-of-overwhelming-dem...

http://nokiapoweruser.com/2012/12/28/lumia-822-makes-to-the-...

http://msoftnews.com/mac/lumia-920-extremely-popular-at-walm...

The article is pretty misleading flamebait.

Forbes Online is cookiecutter flamebait junk written to exploit Google News and nothing else.

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