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Comment by ChrisNorstrom | Hacker News Reader

At this point, Microsoft has pulled the plug on so many of its products & services over the years that developers and users are cautiously avoiding everything it puts out. Even if it's good.

From Zune (iPod competitor), to Kin, to Origami (small touchscreen laptop), to Games for Windows Live (steam competitor), to Live.com (google competitor v1), Bing.com (google compeititor v2), Expo (craigslist competitor), whats-it-called? (twitter competitor for natural disasters), Expression, Silverlight (flash competitor), Windows Live Spaces (wordpress competitor), Windows Phone...

Microsoft loves to start things, then leaves them to rot.

The Micro-Cycle:

1) See someone make money. Get starry eyed.

2) Rush into industry with product.

3) Let product/service rot.

4) Sunset product/service.

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Google abandons projects swiftly when they think that don't make sense; Wave, iGoogle, Reader, Glass?, Buzz, Plus?, Answers, Google Video, Google Checkout/Wallet, Orkut, Picasa, Gears, etc... When you are a large company you need to focus your resources into areas where you can be effective and not stretch yourself too thin.

Google doing it too doesn't somehow absolve Microsoft's transgressions.

People are also weary of Google doing this and you see comments on it in almost every discussion on HN of a Google product.

> and not stretch yourself too thin.

But they are. Keep, Fit are prime examples of stretching but offering a mediocre "service".

The way I see it, Google turned hard into a direction from building services with APIs into data collection silos. Google+ with Photos, Keep, Fit, Now. The data is even isolated from each other or really hard to access : - you can't access Keep data anywhere, or what you upload on it - Google+ Photos are available on web, not in Drive. You can see Drive photos in it, but you can't edit them with auto awesome

Fit is so basic that it offers practically nothing that it doesn't already exists out there. Data representation is in a form of one graph of total calories/steps. It does require you to enable location tracking though, to be able to automatically track steps/workouts (how suprising), which takes a major effect on the battery life.

Google is coming for your data and coming hard.

FYI you can access Keep anywhere at keep google.com Other than that I do agree with you in part, there's a few things now with multiple incompatible implementations and it'd be really nice to see them tidied up and merged sensibly.

Did I miss something? When did Google give up on glass?

They haven't yet, but with Android Wear replicating its functionality while being much less expensive and more socially acceptable, it's not hard to see that Glass doesn't have much of a future.

Since Sergey stopped wearing it [1].

[1] http://beta.techradar.com/news/portable-devices/other-device...

Yeah, but these aren't software platforms.

Wave, reader and glass not software platforms?

Microsoft also has tons of product they supported for years. From Windows, to SQL server, to Sharepoint, to dynamics, to Office, to Visual Studio, to xbox, to ... Also live.com rebranded and bing,WP are still alive and well funded. If you look for a company to never shutdown a product which isn't getting traction, you are living in a dreamspace and need to wakeup.

To be fair, the original Xbox was quietly removed from store shelves and software development halted immediately after the 360 was announced. Contrast this with the average console support cycle of several years into the new generation.

>>Windows Phone

Hey! When did Windows Phone die?

Probably referring to Windows Mobile. The platform that came out of nowhere, killed Palm and got total PDA/smartphone dominance... then suffered the IE fate because terrible management decided to remove resources since they had "won".

Not everyone remembers, but it was viewed as near-impossible to dethrone Palm, but inside of what, 5 years?, MS had Palm selling WM devices.

See also: Yahoo, but with #2 as "Acquire at large premium".

Any company with more cash than cultural relevance will do the same.

I don't think bing belongs on your list though. It's not making headway in the market, but it's not dead yet either.

Yeah, Bing and Windows Phone are still going but Bing is losing $3 billion a year, and Windows phone is losing market share despite sales increasing. It's only a matter of time before their plugs are pulled.

Chances are that Bing and Windows Phone will never be pulled. They are there because Microsoft has to be in certain markets, regardless of actual performance, in order to sell its technology stack as fully-featured and comprehensive. In the same way, Xbox will never be pulled.

Microsoft can drop the occasional service, but they rarely run from big platform bets. Most above-mentioned products were small fish or even just websites -- with the exception of Silverlight (but that's because in-browser media plugins as a category have been basically obsoleted across the whole market) and Zune (again, mp3 players have been basically obsoleted), they don't really sit on the same shelf as Office, Windows, Xbox, Windows Phone, Bing, VisualStudio or SQLServer.

I'll disagree on that.

Search and mobile are way too strategic to be dropped. There's no "there" anywhere else for a company as big as Microsoft!

They can lose $3B/yr for a long, long time!

Current funding, recruitment trajectories don't support your claim.

Bing isn't losing money anymore, they're finally breaking even as of last year.

Where did you hear that? This is from June 2014 [0]:

Unfortunately Microsoft does not break out its Bing revenue separately (and a Microsoft spokesperson referred us back to the earnings release when asked) so exactly how much Bing rakes in is anyone's guess, but the company did note Bing managed a 40% ad revenue increase in its recent fourth quarter ended June. CEO Satya Nadella, one-time leader of the division, also noted Bing would reach breakeven within two years.

So Nadella thinks it'll break even in 2016.

0. http://www.thestreet.com/story/12821420/1/microsoft-is-using...

Microsoft loves to start things, then leaves them to rot. The Micro-Cycle...

You seem to be claiming this is going to happen to IE as well? Seems a bit far fetched, given it is still used by millions of people and something like 20% of all desktop browsers used is IE.

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