Steve Ballmer is right, and I was wrong
betanews.com
betanews.com
Ever since Gmail was invitation-only, it has been awesome on multiple levels. It has its ups and downs, but if I am to think of products that have been almost perfect ever since version 1, Gmail is right up there with iPhone 1 - i.e. missing features, but so useful and refreshing.
How can you fail to mention that Internet Explorer, ever since version 6, became the main barrier for adopting web standards, as development on it simply stopped for several years, with the team being sent to work on other things, like Silverlight? How can you fail to mention Firefox for that matter? In 2006 Firefox version 2 was barely released. It then grew to over 20% of market-share, without Mozilla making aggressive deals for prebundling it. Internet Explorer isn't losing to Chrome only, it's losing to Firefox and Safari too and they ended up in this position by their own incompetence or malevolence.
There was a time when Microsoft was serving their customer's needs. They stopped doing that in 2001, after Windows XP was released.
The author is comparing it to Outlook and other email clients, not to the existing webmail applications when Gmail launched.
The bottom line is web is two steps backwards in terms of GUI, but four steps forward in terms of distribution, cross-platform, accessibility and availability. Gmail was probably the single most important bellwether of how Microsoft's lunch would eventually be eaten by cloud services.
Windows XP is version 5.1 of Windows NT. I think it is really dumb to try to see "laws" in product versions.
After Win 3.11 (wfwg) they made win nt (3.5-4.x), 2k (5.0), xp (5.1-5.2) the one line, win 95, 98, 98se, me, on the other.
NT 3.x -> NT 4 -> Win2k -> XP
Win 1.x -> 2.x -> 3.x -> 95
In NT 5.0 there was the addition of PnP with full ACPI support (and it saw the inclusion of the WDM).
NT 6 saw a major update of the graphic driver model that enabled to have a smooth desktop experience (also IPV6 was totally included in the system).
So no, it does not mean "nothing". ;)
My point was that if you want to find number laws, you will find making a point around them is really, really silly.
XP and 2000 are basically the same OS, XP was a big service pack.
The list is very long. XP is not a big service pack. It includes everything that was missing in 2000 to make it consumer-ready.
I have no idea what you mean by 'better internet support' so I can't say anything about that.
Remote desktop did exist in 2k, it was called Terminal Services. All XP did was bring a stripped down server to the client.
GDI+ is available as a patch for Windows 2000.
There was nothing preventing MS from releasing ClearType on 2k, they just didn't.
Media Player 9 was released on Windows 2000.
USB 2.0 and FireWire 400/800 are supported in Windows 2000, they're just device drivers. A little googling seems to indicate they were added in Service Pack 3 or 4.
XP wasn't like Vista where they changed the driver model or made changes to the authentication system with UAC. XP was just addons to 2000, holding back things like the firewall and the last patch to DirectX 9 were artificial limitations to make XP seem worth the upgrade.
Most of the time, windows users are advised to wait for the first or second service pack before they start using a new version as their primary OS.
I remember a post here about someone who worked at MS and how everyone just sorta waft through their jobs without wondering what else is out there. No one worries about Linux or other platforms really. No one explores new ways to do things or even fixing things that aren't solving an immediate problem. The description is hard to believe and reads like a dystopian city, but it's a good indication of why MS is going the way of the dinosaur.
In many ways it's the opposite problem Google has. They've gone above and beyond the simplifying and basically circled everything they offer around one account. So far, the closest thing MS has to offer is Live sign in, and even that is well after Chromebook in Windows 8.
Microsoft has always been about making it easy to buy. Not necessarily to keep and maintain. With most services Google offer, I literally expend no effort with upkeep. It's simple and it just works... well the Gmail UI is arguably worse now, but that's another topic.
Passport could have been 'Log In With Facebook' years earlier. The NEC Versa LitePad, running XP, came out years before the iPad. Windows CE ran on touchscreen smart phones (costing less than some current iphone models) and had native apps long before the iPhone came out.
I wonder whether these things should be attributed to a lack of CEO vision/proper resourcing, or if they were simply 'ahead of their time', or something else.
Apple and Google really did nothing different in that space, they just did things better. Or a least more modern. If Microsoft kept improving Windows Mobile to take advantage of new technology, we would be in a very different ballgame. Imagine if Windows Phone 7 came out in 2007.
They release something. If it sucks and it's important, it will probably get better. They will live with mess. Office applications are a mess of features. Some are hard to find or hard to learn. But they don't avoid a feature altogether if its hard to implement in an elegant intuitive way. They get the feature out there and to some customers that feature is very useful, even if it is irritating & complicated. Apple just wouldn't implement it.
This is super important in corporate IT. The IT manager want something done. MS software doesn't argue with them. It doesn't tell her that she shouldn't be doing this in the first place. It just lets her do it (after spending a few weeks reviewing licenses, versions and creating a 3 year roll out plan).
That's why they do so well in the corporate market. They're not afraid of the schlep, the long sales cycle, 2 years of user complaints before a product is really good enough.
For all Microsoft's CEO might have done wrong, he was
right about something dismissed by many (and I among
them): Google.
Ballmer started treating the search and information
company as a competitive threat about a decade ago.
Google as Microsoft competitor seemed simply nuts in
2003. How could search threaten Windows, particularly
when anyone could type a new web address to change
providers?
Ballmer was obsessed, chasing every Google maneuver,
often to a fault. Execution could have been better, but
his perception was right.
1. The idea that Steve Ballmer's hostility could be recast as innovation is laughable. Microsoft was pathologically hostile to any competition, and it's obvious that this hostility was frequently tuned and recalibrated according to the success of the quarry. If anything, it only reinforces my belief, that if Ballmer were ever permitted to have is way, Ballmer's lifelong ambition is to destroy anything good, and replace it with himself.
2. Very early on, Google was a better search engine than most others, and it wasn't difficult to recognize. Using it, you found what you wanted, and you noticed it when you spent less time searching, and parsing irrelevant crap. Contrast this with the MSN home page (with the earliest form of Microsoft's version of a "web search"), which (like AOL) looks and feels like a supermarket tabloid. Ballmer's recognition can be readily categorized as jealousy, not genius. My hypothesis is that he tried out Google himself, he liked it, realized it was useful, then realized it was not under his control, and set out to either control it or destroy it. It's not inspiring. It's not mere competition. It's simply another expression of greed.
The next CEO needs to find the right balance between focusing on the assets they have as well as picking the right fights with emerging technologies. That said, hindsight is a wonderful thing.
So we should either all agree that most CEOs are clueless, add no value to their companies, and have the anticipating power of dart throwing monkeys in which case I wonder why we keep paying them so much. Or we believe that they have a higher role to play (I do), and we raise our expectations and criticism.
Note 1: that I'm not saying that their job is easy. It's certainly insanely difficult. But they get paid a loooot of money for it, so they have to be held accountable. And being right from time to time, here and there is not enough.
Note 2: my comment is specific to the article. I believe Ballmer did more than just one thing right, also I'm convinced he did many things right.
So we should either all agree that most CEOs are clueless,
[...] in which case I wonder why we keep paying them so
much.
It's disingenuous to say Google has "launched and succeeded" against Microsoft in the PC OS space.
However, many everyday tasks that we carry out in our PC are done on the Web browser. Google has a very strong position in search, email and other services. Even the leading Web browser is theirs.
When your PC becomes just another way to run a Google browser to use Google services, I'd call that success.
Not in a small part because it lowers the barrier to doing a larger and larger share of your computing outside of a Windows PC, on mobile. Where Google leads as well.
Even the incumbent is the largest, as long as it is declining, and the challenger, albeit small, but is growing, the challenger is usually considered a success in the market place.
Firefox had been eroding at IE and changing people perception of internet and web browsers for more than a decade. Failure by MS to compete with Firefox is what allowed Google to put the last nail in IE coffin.
Mobile OS war really started 6 years ago after the iPhone basically reset the expectations. Google and Microsoft started at the same stage to compete against Apple. Ballmer could not have had the foresight that Google would compete in a category that did not exist yet. Or if he could predict the smartphone/tablet resolution they would just have bought Android before Google.
About the PC OS. So what about the netbooks that had MS sweating years before Google took interest in the category. And again, Google took interest only because it was/is basically abandoned by all the player. (it is fair to say that MS does not give a sh!t about Chrome type laptop)
MS made several failures. (when you are on top ...) It is just chance no prophetic vision that set Google as its arch-enemy today. Had MS competed in the browser and mobile area better, Google would have most likely chosen another road. Google after all is making money selling ads, OS/Browser are just the tools that made sense to invest in, considering MS failing.
If you think of Microsoft as making their zillions of dollars not by selling software but rather by imposing a tax on every single computer purchase, then you understand why Ballmer was 100% right on the money about Google being by far their most dangerous competitor (and, incidentally, why some people believe that Apple and Google are not fundamentally in competition; and further why some believe that Android is no longer necessary to Google.)
I wonder if, like many other people, Mr. Ballmer found the existence of Google a perfect fit to his personality, which involves finding an anathema, a thing to be hated, and then sublimating one's energies into productivity by feeding on that hatred. Let's call this Hatred-Driven Development. Or rather, considering we are talking about a CEO, Hatred as a Strategy (HaaS). The reason such behaviour feels petty is that these people literally don't exist without the external object which forms the focus of their lives.
As others have pointed out, he had enough time to do something about Google, and failed, and that shows that HaaS is not enough. If you want points just for trying and just for hating the competition ferociously, there's a heaven for that kind of person; middle-management at a large corporation.
I believe that this is a story of how to make $15.2 billion in net worth by being in the right place, a rocket called Microsoft, at the right time.
Stuff like this makes me think this guy is a jackass. Steve Jobs never "disrupted an established revenue stream" - in 1999 he started with nothing, and built everything from scratch. He died with the company in full throttle, and that's that. Never had the need or the chance to do what this author is suggesting.
Furthermore, how exactly can you fault Apple/Cook's performance post-2011? Their releases have all been solid improvements which have sold like hotcakes. Their products still command global consumer consciousness like no other brand. The iPhone and iPad stand as the centre of gravity of the mobile market, and the confusion and noise of the myriad products churned out by Apple's ertswhile competition only further cements their stature. Other than a few small exceptions (screen size in particular), they still control the focus of consumer desire - the average consumer only knows and cares about a particular feature once Apple has pointed to it. Watch what happens post-5s - if other phone manufacturers release a spree of devices with novel unlocking mechanisms, you can guess why.
Everything Apple has done has been profitable and popular. They're playing from a position of incredible strength, so why should they rush out and reinvent the wheel? They have time, their current position is stable, and it would only advantage competitors to reveal their next plans before Apple is ready or it is even necessary to do so.
I think the mistake people make here is in confusing what happened to Microsoft with what might hypothetically happen to Apple. But Apple isn't Microsoft. There's no indication whatsoever that Apple is taking their current strength for granted - moves like the new campus suggest a firm focus on and faith in a very long-term future. The only people who are dissatisfied with Apple's performance are impatient, ignorant tech commentators, who seem to depend for their sense of self-worth on a deluge of new gadgets to critique. It's a serious cognitive failure to imagine that just because Apple overturned incumbents, Apple must be equally vulnerable to being overturned, as if the marketplace just cycles through the same rough dynamic with little to no variation. Apple blew the competition out of the water because it was better, and in so doing it set a new bar for product and ecosystem execution that until now no other device manufacturer could equal - a bar which it has only maintained and even raised.
We're only now starting to see the market rebalance with Google and Amazon emerging as real competitors, with Microsoft a big question mark about when and if they will ever rise to the occasion. But the ball is thoroughly in the competition's court, so right now Apple can watch, analyse, and plot its next move. We don't have even close to enough data to evaluate Apple's "performance" yet because we haven't seen it.