Dvorak on Microsoft: Party Over, MSFT distracted by shiny objects

In MS's defense, some of those past experiments paid off:

- Word and Excel (which morphed into Office)

- XBox (which is now a success as the 360)

MS has taken a lot of risks that most companies their size would never take; they don't like resting on their laurels

Strangely enough, (consumer) operating systems and developer tools are still the areas where Microsoft shines (or at least gets a passing grade). WinVista was an utter failure, but Win7 is a very nice OS (I'm a Mac fanboy, FYI). My tools of choice are usually Vim + Terminal (or XCode if I'm doing some Cocoa), but I've used Visual Studio in the past and I liked it. Slow, yes, but many of the features that make it slow are totally worth the 5-10 seconds I have to wait for the IDE to start up. Also, look at all the cool things MS Research is doing.

MS is a bungling giant and, even though I'll never choose Windows as my platform of choice, I think they still do some things very well.

What defunct hamburger chain is he speaking of? I assumed all the chains did that, let McD's do the research then open up across the street (Burger King, Hardees, etc)

*sigh, doesn't it ever occur to anyone that a company that still makes billions in a deep recession, has the largest market cap of any IT company, has a share of over 90% in its main revenue markets, was until recently led by the richest man in the world, and only hires the world's brightest people, might not be stupid?

If a company wants to stay alive it needs to diversify and enter new markets. It shouldn't come as a surprise that Microsoft doesn't try to create new markets. Its core competency has never been innovation, it has always been outmuscling the competition in growth markets.

Many of the diversifications have been a success, with Internet Explorer being the flagship. Netscape showed the Web was going to be big, Microsoft entered the browser market to make it so. Internet Explorer was for a large part the catalyst that put a Windows computer (with Office) into every home in the late 90's.

The same thing happened when RealPlayer showed streaming video was going to be big. Microsoft decided to give its WMP product a boost and made it so. The multimedia possibilities further catalyzed sales of Windows PCs and Media Centers in particular.

At this point IE and WMP are no longer important since there are plenty of widely available alternatives that other people are developing freely for Microsoft. It is shifting its attention to other areas that could further fuel its software line. Azureus will establish a firm presence of Windows in the Cloud, while acting as a catalyst for new features in their corporate products like Office and Exchange.

Visual Studio, .NET, DirectX, etc. have all been major catalysts for the development of the largest software legacy in history, which means Windows will be in business for at least another 30 years.

Finally, Microsoft has entered a number of markets in which the only "failure" is that it didn't become market leader. Otherwise, many of these products are a success (Bing, Xbox 360, Zune, Game development, MSN). The added value in terms of diversification and building new products and expertise is also notable. The MSN/Live expertise is what allowed them to build Azureus, Bing and Office 2010.

The only area in which Microsoft really failed to win its battle is handhelds. Apple outwitted them with religious marketing and some UI novelties, Nokia/Symbian always managed to keep a tight grip on the phone market, and Google decided that the mobile OS itself can be a catalyst for its web products. This is not only a missed opportunity, but may also come to threaten Microsoft's dominance in other areas.

Overall. Microsoft is not evil, stupid, at the end of the road, or sliding downhill. It's the #1 IT company and very good at doing business.

(No, I use Linux about 90% of the time, use Opera, VLC and Gmail on all my machines and I don't own a copy of MS Office. It's just that I learned not to ignore the business part of IT.)

Why do people listen to Dvorak?

By Dvorak's logic Apple would have been crazy to ever make an iPod, let alone a phone. In fact by his logic MS might never have made Office or Windows. I agree they bungled windows for about 5-6 years but I think the one thing MS has done right is to invest in anything and everything they can.

Isn't this what The Innovator's Dilemma told us to do? Dip a toe in every "can't possibly get big enough to threaten our main business" business because sooner or later, something will.

This reasoning seems to be based on the amount of attention gained by all these side projects in the media and tech community.

Of course, "Microsoft continues to make boatloads of money with Windows and Office" doesn't make for a great headline, compared to "OMG, Zune sucks LOL".

The important part is how many resources Microsoft allocates to "shiny objects", relative to its core products.

Dvorak made interesting points, but his logic is flawed: Microsoft doesn't actually need any successful products to survive.

Microsoft not only has a huge bank account, but it is being handed money by all the peripheral industries that (sadly) depend on Microsoft's proprietary technologies. Those companies will simply never risk destroying their huge I.T. investments.

I wonder how many MSFT shareholders would have wanted Microsoft to pursue all of these diversions? It's a shame companies can't just focus on what they're good at and send all of their excess cash to their owners (the shareholders) as dividends.

How Software Companies Die...:http://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=DeveloperBees

couldn't you apply the same logic to apple? they sure aren't a cell phone company, but they're making money hand over fist entering that market..

I read this before sleeping. No comment still has noted something obvious.

Many of Microsoft's strange moves (IE, Zune, stores next to Apple's stores, etc) obviously looks like a monopolist trying to cut off a competitor's oxygen supply. Profitability is probably not that high on that agenda.