
Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations - 6thSigma
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57569944-75/bill-gates-not-satisfied-with-microsofts-innovations/
======
jug6ernaut
No one involved in the transition from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone should
be satisfied, it was a complete failure. At the time Windows Mobile pretty
much owned the Smart Phone market(unless you consider BB at the time smart
phones, they were close to but not just IMO. No where near the freedom as WM).
But over Windows Mobiles life time it completely stagnated, but even with that
had a large following.

With there transition to Windows Phone they completely deserted there current
user base opting for a more iphonesk ecosystem. That of restriction instead of
freedom.

Ironically Android is the true successor to Windows Mobile, and in a position
Microsoft can only dream of right now.

~~~
martinced
I was working in the mobile business _before_ the iPhone came and owned
everybody (waiting then for Android) and I recall things totally differently
than you.

The smartphone market was owned by Nokia and their Sxx series. That and the
BlackBerries.

We were working on mostly Nokia (either native or Java), Qualcomm BREW (C++)
and, granted, we had _some_ demand for Windows Mobile but they were pretty
much a nobody in that pre-iPhone world. Just as they're still nobody.

There was hardly any customer demand for Windows Mobile compared to Nokia and
the others.

There has been no "transition" because MS never was anywhere that mattered
with their phones.

It has always been an utter failure.

Now of course you may your definition of a "pre-iPhone Smartphone" which
appears to be: "Certainly not a BlackBerry and certainly not anything that
wasn't running Windows Mobile". So then it becomes hard to argue ; )

~~~
macspoofing
>There has been no "transition" because MS never was anywhere that mattered
with their phones ...

That's not really true because there was the PDA market, which was dominated
by Palm and Microsoft. So you had RIM and Nokia in one corner, and Palm and
Microsoft in the other. Any one of them could have created the iPhone but none
of them really got it, and they are where they are.

~~~
Spooky23
Microsoft existed in the PDA space to keep Palm from growing.

Lets face it, the secret sauce to smartphones from a technology POV is the web
and web services. Microsoft had disbanded its IE team after the release of
IE6, and thought that they had put the Internet problem to bed.

~~~
macspoofing
You can write a book on the number of missteps and missed opportunities
Microsoft had in the last 10-15 years. They missed the boat on everything from
search, to web-mail, to social networks, to digital music, to smartphones.

>Microsoft had disbanded its IE team after the release of IE6

I remember when that news hit slashdot like it was yesterday. I remember
because I got really angry at Microsoft and their idiocy. I actually thought
ie6 was a decent browser, but there was no fuckin chance it was going to be-
all and end-all of browsers. It was also the day that I _really_ started
looking for an alternative. Soon after, I installed Firebird beta and never
looked back.

------
gesman
Ways to boost MSFT stock in 1 hour:

1\. Announce that Bill Gates is coming back.

2\. Announce that Ballmer is leaving.

~~~
mieses
Not really. Gates is still anti-web. He also doesn't absorb how culture has
changed - both the culture of technology creation and the culture of
technology consumption. Ballmer is not great but he probably has more daily
exposure to the right arguments than Gates. Also, Ballmer's buffoon-psychopath
persona seems to be a cover for a paranoia or fear. Gates seems genuinely more
cocky, perhaps because he's more intelligent, while Ballmer seems more likely
to listen to ideas he doesn't agree with. A contemporary Microsoft led by
Gates would probably make some awesome but irrelevant products.

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SlipperySlope
Microsoft simply could not dictate to the telcos like they did to the PC
manufacturers in the 1990s. The telcos decide what phones get sold to
consumers. Kin, for example, was killed because _no_ telco wanted it.

Telcos like Android - its free and they can skin it.

Microsoft has been arrogant and _toxic_ to every one of the mobile phone
manufactures that partnered with it.

It is ironic that Android, with its free software Linux kernel, is _crushing_
Microsoft worldwide in the most dominating fashion!

If smartphones are true personal computers, then Microsoft is _toast_.

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Datsundere
Microsoft had been going downhill since steve ballmer took the Gate's
position. They're loosing their empire that Bill built.

But I have to give it to Bill, he knows how to control and take over. Letting
others pirate your software just to let your empire grow is astounishing to
me.

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macspoofing
No kidding. They missed the boat on almost every trend in the last decade.

------
jebblue
Just one question, where is my Microsoft Linux? Give me that and a UI better
than Unity (like Gnome 2) and I'll actually pay for it. Subscription.
Seriously. I don't even need a "Visual Sudio for Linux", Eclipse works great
but hey if you want to put C# apps on Linux I might go back to buying MSDN
(for Linux) oh and this deal is only on if you don't take it all away in a
year or two. You bet the farm on Linux Microsoft, and I'll bet the rest of my
future on Microsoft and Linux.

If you don't I bet IBM or HP will.

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dylangs1030
This title is somewhat inappropriate.

Technically it's true, but I think it gives the impression that Bill Gates is
not happy with Microsoft's decisions.

Really it's that Gates doesn't think Microsoft has reached the end of its
innovations, and that he wants to improve smartphones.

------
RexRollman
I think the quotes on this title should have been around the word
"innovations".

------
ekianjo
It's not like Microsoft ever innovated much anyway. DOS was bought from a
hobbyist and repackaged as MS-DOS in the early days, Windows was not the first
OS with GUI (on the contrary, it was quite late in the game), the Xbox 1 was
no more no less than a PC under the hood, DirectX was Microsoft's own library
to copy OpenGL, etc... In that sense, what they are doing nowadays reflects
their past history of poor innovation.

~~~
jmduke
This level of dismissal could undermine any potential accomplishment.

If you're talking 'innovation' like Marie Curie, then sure. But its willfully
disingenuous to say that they weren't -- or aren't -- an innovative company,
relative to so many others.

~~~
ekianjo
Well Microsoft had "I can do it too" kind of innovation, if you like, but
rarely pushed for something very new on the market by themselves. I have
rather known Bill Gates and his friends for his "innovative" market practices
to crush competition than actual product innovation (having OEMs install
Windows by default, and threatening the ones who would not do that to get the
next versions of Windows later, and so on).

I reckon that PocketPCs were probably an exception to that point, and there
are here and there innovative parts in the company, but it feels more that
it's "innovative DESPITE its roots" than anything else.

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Amanda_Panda
Windows Mobile still goes strong in the PDA market with retailers and for POS
devices. My company makes custom software for WinMo PDAs, and admittedly my
opinion is colored by the fact that our software is also a POS (pun intended),
but I can't really believe that WinMo once held a dominant market share. Or
rather, I can believe it, and can believe that the iPhone had it for lunch.

------
quattrofan
He should be very unsatisfied with the total abortion that is Win8. One of the
single biggest mistakes MS have ever made IMHO.

~~~
twodayslate
Bigger than Vista? Or the red rings of death?

~~~
quattrofan
IMHO certainly bigger than Vista dont know about RRD. Vista was not THAT bad
and SP1 fixed most of the issue. W8 is wrong at a fundamental level, its an OS
for a tablet scotchtaped onto a desktop OS. What made my mind up is trying to
help a woman in the shop the other week who had unknowlingly bought a new PC
with Win8 on and was totally confused. I tried to help her and even I was
lost... its a mess.

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NegativeK
The title of this article bothers me and sticks out more than any of the
actual content.

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adam-f
Well, that makes two of us.

~~~
rbanffy
I'm, however, perfectly happy with how things are going. If all goes well,
we'll get rid of them in a decade or so.

------
RDeckard
Nice haircut.

------
taligent
It seems pretty clear that Microsoft's problem isn't with their ability to
innovate.

It's in their complete inability to get to market quickly, take risks and work
together. And that is directly related to their HR policies in particular
their ranking system.

~~~
potatolicious
Not sure why you were downvoted. Upvoted even though I don't particularly
agree.

Having lived in Seattle for a couple of years, and knowing _many_ Microsoft
employees during that time, my outsider's view is that MS's consumer-side
failures are largely geographical and cultural.

Redmond, or even Bellevue, is _extremely_ isolated from Seattle, which in and
of itself is not exactly deeply intertwined with the cultural centers of the
US. Locals know this - Microsoft employees who move from Seattle across the
lake to the east side often joke about nobody ever visiting them again
(sometimes less-than-jokingly). It's also more or less a company town -
Microsoft's presence is so overwhelming and absolute that a lot of the
technological zeitgeist from the rest of the country _never make it there_. If
you lived/worked there it's easy to believe Microsoft's ridiculously
optimistic PR pieces - pieces that would be hilarious when read in any other
environment.

This isn't even an urban/suburban argument (though it has shades of it), it's
a "company town vs. diverse city" thing. Microsoft's geographical location
gives its people tunnel vision and a grossly false picture of the technology
sector.

The second part I've observed is a lack of internal honesty within Microsoft.
Failure seems to be couched in safe corporate-speak to the point where it's
greatly muted (maybe that's the intent). You cannot expect your work force to
pivot and fight hard when they've been falsely told their giant failure was a
minor hiccup. I saw this after the WinPhone launch - MS employees were still
honestly bullish about its prospects even when the market as a whole had
completely rejected it.

If MS wants to be nimble in the consumer space, it needs to set up shop in
cities where their competitors play - you will not get an honest impression of
how your products (or your competitors' products) are doing otherwise. They
also need to have frequent, honest, no-holds-barred accountings of how they
are doing. If a product was a flop, call it a flop.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I graduated from high school in Bothell (just north of Kirkland) and I'm a
Microsoft employee, but I've never been based in Redmond before. I find your
post is a bit weird, bizarre, and maybe a bit biased.

Yes, suburb Seattle is quite different from urban Seattle, but ALOT more
people live in the suburbs. You also have to compare it to San Francisco and
San Jose, how many of your friends from the city will visit you once you moved
to San Jose? Honestly any?

Seattle is fairly international and non-isolated, its in the same category as
the bay area, which is to say: we have a lot of space between us and the next
mega-cities (Vancouver or Portland), but that is true of any western city.

As for Redmond, I remember when it was just a bunch of trees with a filming
lot for Northern Exposure. It never had much of its own identity, like
Kirkland, Bothell, or Lynwood; they are just part of the suburbs. Even
Bellevue is a bit souless, they have an urban core but its mostly a shopping
mall. Not much difference from any other big city in the states!

Microsoft employees are actually brutally honest. We internally criticize our
own stuff all the time, there is not much of a reality distortion field in
Redmond or Beijing. But we aren't going to hang our dirty laundry in public,
what company would do that?

Finally, Microsoft has many offices around the world, many are deeply involved
in core products; Silicon Valley for example. My own office has a 1000 people
I think.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"Yes, suburb Seattle is quite different from urban Seattle, but ALOT more
> people live in the suburbs."_

I was careful to disclaim that this isn't a urban vs. suburban thing (though
it is, to a limited extent) - this is a company town vs. business-diverse city
thing.

After all, Google and Facebook were _both_ born and headquartered deep within
suburbs. The difference is that Mountain View and Palo Alto are _swimming_ in
tech companies - even if your social circles were _entirely_ tech people, it's
extremely unlikely they all work at the same place.

Compare with Seattle (stronger in Redmond/Bellevue) where practically everyone
works for Microsoft (if you're on the east side) or Amazon (if you're on the
west). Even for members of the community who don't directly work for MS, the
relationship with MS is so overwhelming that it grossly distorts reality
inside the bubble.

There's a lack of perspective because just about everyone works for the same
company, subject to the same cognitive biases, with no substantial competition
base (or hell, just other tech companies) to give you the necessary occasional
whack upside the head.

> _" but its mostly a shopping mall. Not much difference from any other big
> city in the states!"_

I very, very heavily disagree. The US has _many_ incredibly interesting big
cities, even if some of them are deeply flawed from a financial or civic
perspective. NYC and SF are no-brainers, but even the much-lampooned suburban
gridlock of LA is (arguably) the cultural center of the entire country. New
Orleans, Detroit, Chicago, Boston... I don't think I can seriously describe
_any_ of those as soulless mostly-shopping-malls.

This is my personal opinion, but IMO Bellevue epitomizes the worst of forced-
urbanization. Its soullessness and emptiness is far from the norm in the US,
and _definitely_ not the norm for urbanization in the world.

~~~
rdouble
_The US has many incredibly interesting big cities_

The US has far more boring big cities, though. You've already mentioned the
interesting ones.

~~~
iso-8859-1
Why do you not like San Antonio? Look how great it is:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_San_Antonio>

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I like San Antonio, the river walk area is really cool.

I'm not sure about the suburban blight around it, I never lived there to
experience any of it. But inner tubing down the Guadalupe....

------
maeon3
I think the most telling evidence of Bill Gates satisfaction level is on the
following page:

<http://biz.yahoo.com/t/38/567.html>

6-Feb-13 3,189,267 MSFT Automatic Sale at $27.44 per share. (Proceeds of
$87,513,486)

5-Feb-13 3,810,733 MSFT Automatic Sale at $27.56 per share. (Proceeds of
$105,023,801)

4-Feb-13 3,000,000 MSFT Automatic Sale at $27.64 per share. (Proceeds of
$82,920,000)

1-Feb-13 5,500,000 MSFT Automatic Sale at $27.87 per share. (Proceeds of
$153,285,000)

31-Jan-13 4,500,000 MSFT Automatic Sale at $27.50 per share. (Proceeds of
$123,750,000)

We are in a world drowning in words, follow the money, it does not lie.

~~~
fjarlq
You've omitted a lot of context.

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7106589/ljbox/doc/MSFT-shares.png>

Gates has been selling his stock at a steady pace for over a decade. Since
Sept '01 he has sold an average of about 78.4 million shares per year.

Using your link you can see that he sells 20 million shares quarterly, with
each block of 20M selling within one week. So he did his usual 80 million in
the past year.

Since the rate of his selling has neither increased nor decreased
significantly in at least 11.5 years, are you sure you can conclude something
about his satisfaction level? What about the possibility that he is
diversifying and funding his philanthropic goals?

As of today he still owns about 421 million common shares of MSFT, worth $11.8
billion.

~~~
maeon3
You are right. I was not looking at the whole picture. But still, if Bill is
putting that money into another growth vehicle, that means that he believes
Microsoft isn't going to rise to superstar status again. It's not a place
where his money will even retain it's base value. He wants to get it out as
soon as possible without crushing the stock. A decade long opinion that
Microsoft isn't going to get better with time.

~~~
fjarlq
_> if Bill is putting that money into another growth vehicle, that means that
he believes Microsoft isn't going to rise to superstar status again._

But Gates is not putting his money into another growth vehicle, he's putting
it into his philanthropic projects, which he spends most of his time managing.

He has made it clear (with both words and actions) that he wants to use the
rest of his life doing the most good with his money that he can. And he has
almost entirely redirected his career toward those non-Microsoft goals. If he
was interested in making the most money he can, he would be doing totally
different things.

Of course, he can't (sensibly) sell his entire stake in MSFT at once. Instead
he is selling it slowly but steadily.

Also of course, he can't (sensibly) spend all his money at once. It is being
invested in a diversified manner:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Investment>

Diversifying his wealth makes a great deal of fiscal sense, considering his
goals, and the fact that he is no longer running Microsoft.

So, I don't see how you reasonably conclude that his MSFT sales mean he has
lost faith in Microsoft.

 _> It's not a place where his money will even retain it's base value._

The MSFT dividend yield has historically been over 2% and is now over 3%, so
it's not like it's doing completely nothing before he can sell it.

So it seems we agree that Gates wants to sell his MSFT as quickly as is
reasonably possible, we just don't agree on his motivation. I suspect he will
continue doing so until he isn't risking so many eggs in one basket, because
he has other goals besides wealth accumulation.

