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Comment by jmspring | Hacker News Reader

Web strategy? Like media? Does a technology company need to have a content/media component -- which Yahoo basically is.

Azure is a decent extension to the MS development ecosystem. Xbox and Xbox Live seem to be doing well -- I don't use either. Bing, while not Google, has it's fans.

Where MSFT was late to the game is in their approach to the post-PC era. WinCE/WinMo were "ok" at the time, then the iPhone came along. Win8, Surface, WP8 are all relatively new - do I expect the same success as, say, XP or the like? Not really, but that path is still playing out for them.

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Microsoft has lost; there's no getting back the head start they once had. It's not like Windows 8 is going to set the record straight and grow Microsoft to 10x the size of Apple and Google combined, like it once was. In part, this is because of their utterly flawed understanding of internet and the way humans (not businesses) work. Steve Ballmer is a joke of a CEO; a loud, screaming monkey that thought the iPhone was "cute". The guy is a moron.

Your comment seems pretty short sighted though, don't you think?

I think that it is only in the long term that Balmers mediocrity becomes clear. Short term analysis turns up that he really likes "DEVELOPERS!" and throwing chairs, but all the real criticisms (not amusing anecdotes) that I am seeing span several years.

>Microsoft has lost; there's no getting back the head start they once had.

Couldn't we have said the same thing when Apple lost to the IBM PC when they didn't "get" business computing? (the debacle that was the Apple III - a supposed "business" machine)

Yes, and Apple had to completely reinvent itself to get to the point where it is now. Apple then and Apple now are two very different companies.

Apple didn't reinvent itself. It cut products to a bare minimum, invested in an OS (and infrastructure) to move beyond MacOS, and then used that success to invest in and build new products.

It started with focus.

Ballmer has been filmed screaming developers and talked about throwing a chair. MSFT revenues have grown under his time, but the company isn't sexy. Have there been opportunities lost? Yes. To say it has lost? They have many years of mocking their cash cows before all is lost. MSFT has an odd habit of learning and adapting. We will see if that still exists.

It has been awhile but at one point MSFT spent more on pure research than AAPL did on their whole R&D budget. Research takes time, but AT&T and IBM aren't doing much of it these years. Investing in research is another plus, not in the near term.

I've been thinking for a while that Microsoft may have carved out a niche of letting others do the innovation, and then copying them and improving on it, not unlike Japanese companies.

Windows Phone/Mobile, Surface, Xbox, Search Engine, and Azure are all effectively this model. Hackers place a high value on innovation, but continuously increasing revenues with this 'embrace and extend' + kaizen model seems to work for them so far.

This is the definition of creating. Bringing other ideas together, and making them better.

Apple are exactly the same too. The stuff I love the most has come from elsewhere.

I meant Search and their media holdings. Not cloud services. Sorry for not clarifying.

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