

Rob Glaser on why Microsoft has seemingly stopped innovating? - stumm
http://www.quora.com/Why-has-Microsoft-seemingly-stopped-innovating

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bediger
This point: _Monopoly Economics and Culture: Microsoft's 2 core businesses --
Windows and Office -- are natural winner-take-all monopolies. What it takes to
maintain these businesses in a financially successful way is very different
than what it takes to create successful new businesses._

Really doesn't ring true at all. "Windows" and "Ofiice" as natural monopolies?
That's not at all the stock definition of natural monopolies. Natural
monopolies classically are said to occur in markets like electric power, phone
service, natural gas service, where there's an inescapable (ie not legislated
or state-maintained) huge cost of entry into the market, and then each
additional customer has an almost neglible marginal cost.

A "winner-take-all monopoloy"? I dunno, that smacks of network effects, a la
Hal Varian. (<http://www.inforules.com/models/m-net.pdf.pdf> ). Do Microsoft
boosters really want to go there? Because in the case of a good that's got
really, really strong network effects, a little sub rosa action could go a
long ways to tipping the balance one way or the other.

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NumberFiveAlive
There are plenty of criticisms to hurl at Microsoft, but I just don't see how
'not innovating' is one of them.

The Kinect is highly innovative and it the fastest selling gadget in history:
[http://www.neowin.net/news/kinect-beats-apple-becomes-
fastes...](http://www.neowin.net/news/kinect-beats-apple-becomes-fastest-
selling-device-in-gadget-history)

WP7 may have been late to the table and turn into a total failure, but it's
certainly innovative.

Hell, even the Zune device + Zune software + Zune service is the best music
provider out there, imho.

I guess you can argue that Windows 7, .NET 4.0 and ASP/MVC are derivative, but
they're certainly moving their core products forward.

Microsoft has plenty of hits and plenty of misses, but everyone acts like
they're being left behind by Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter. They still
make a ton of money and put out a lot of new, fresh products. Some are great
(.NET 4, Kinect), some crappy (IE 8), and some meh (Office 2010), but would
you argue Google has any better of a track record? Remember Wave and Buzz?.

