
Microsoft is Dead (2007) - sharjeel
http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
======
primitivesuave
The most common form of Microsoft-hate usually centers around how a company of
such gargantuan size makes such gargantuan fuck-ups. But this is to be
expected of companies of gargantuan size, and is certainly not limited to
Microsoft alone (although recently they've had more than their fair share).

My qualm with Microsoft is all the little things that they let slip through.
Little things like having a control panel with 100 different links with
nondescript names. Is it really possible that not a single person at Microsoft
tried changing a setting on their Windows machine and realized how difficult
it was to even find the setting? Were they so entrenched in the Microsoft way
of doing things that they were accustomed to a shitty user experience? Or did
the aesthetically minded engineer have his voice drowned out by the
bureaucracy?

If the higher-ups were yelling down the food chain, "build an Apple-killing
UI!", I can see how they would settle on what became the app-centric look of
Windows 8. But blatantly idiotic decisions around the little things like
control panels, choosing wireless connections, and the sheer difficulty of
navigation, make me realize that somewhere at Microsoft something is really
fucked up.

~~~
gnaffle
Here's a good story about the shutdown menu in Vista, and how it came to be:

Original rant by Joel Spolsky:
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html)

Answer from the guy working on the shutdown menu:
[http://moishelettvin.blogspot.no/2006/11/windows-shutdown-
cr...](http://moishelettvin.blogspot.no/2006/11/windows-shutdown-
crapfest.html)

Another response from the guy that implemented the OSX shutdown menu:
[http://arno.org/arnotify/2006/11/the-design-of-the-mac-
os-x-...](http://arno.org/arnotify/2006/11/the-design-of-the-mac-os-x-
shutdown-feature/)

~~~
tanzam75
It's simply astonishing that the "Vista shut down menu" meme continues to come
up after all this time, and that the wrong lessons continue to be drawn.

Between Windows Vista and Windows 7, Microsoft changed exactly one thing. They
replaced the two icons with a single text label that said "Shut down."

Nothing else changed. There was still a fly-out menu. There were still half-a-
dozen options that users vaguely understood. They still had strange labels
like "Hibernate" and "Sleep." There was still a "Log out" option. There was
still a "Lock" option.

Turns out, none of that was the problem. The problem was that _people didn 't
understand what the power icon did._ Replace the icon with text that said
"Shut down", and suddenly they knew what it did, and started clicking on it.
They stopped opening the fly-out menu, and the "Paradox of Choice" went away.

The lesson is _not_ that you should stop offering choices to your users! You
can offer simplicity _and_ choice at the same time. Just stop replacing text
labels with confusing icons.

Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000 had a "Shut down" text label. Windows XP had both an
icon and text. Windows Vista had an icon but no text. Windows 7 went back to
just text. The only design that caused confusion was Windows Vista.

~~~
gnaffle
I agree that the main problem wasn't the options, but I do think that some of
options are were unnecessary (the distinction between hibernate and sleep, for
instance).

The real lesson is that design by comittee over years trying to reach a
compromise will often result in terrible design decisions. It wouldn't even
have been a problem if they had kept the icon, if it just did what people
expected it to! (shutdown, not sleep as was the default). And now we have
Windows 8, where they've hidden the shutdown menu inside Settings.

~~~
tanzam75
I agree that the default was wrong in Windows Vista. I disagree that an icon
would've been OK -- as Joel Spolsky pointed out, he had no idea what the icon
would do. That's why he opened the fly-out menu, and that's why a lot of users
opened the fly-out menu. Where they got confused.

I just found it frustrating that the tech press echo chamber ganged up on the
fly-out menu, when _that wasn 't even the problem._ The fact that Microsoft
eliminated the complaints with just one button in Windows 7 shows exactly
where the actual problem was.

------
eldavido
It's really interesting how in 2007, I believed (as did pg, seemingly) that
the web would eventually overtake desktop software.

Fast forward seven years, and some of the biggest names in software
(Instagram, Lyft) have completely abandoned the web for "desktop" (really,
native) software.

That so much code ships directly to mobile devices says a lot about the power
of centralized app stores and truly sandboxed installations where one app
can't trash the entire system. We've come a long way.

~~~
beefman
The critical characteristic of the desktop here isn't its use of native code.
It's more the local filesystem. Many mobile apps use network data. From this
perspective they have more in common with web apps than with desktop software.

Despite this, I'm inclined to agree that the web is threatened. The desktop
may be defined by local files but the web wasn't defined by remote ones. It
was more about the culture. More about anyone-can-publish. To me, that's the
baby at risk in the mobile bathwater.

That, and any aspect of personal computing that can't be performed on a phone.
Which is most of them. I'll stick with the hemorrhoids and circadian
disruption, thanks.

My wife and I were talking about this the other night: It's not that people
who learned to compute on the desktop are abandoning it for mobile. It's that
most people couldn't handle desktop computing in the first place. It's too
abstract (dare I say difficult?). So the mobile revolution is really about the
unwashed masses computing for the first time. Perhaps that's why mobile apps
and operating systems eerily remind me of soap operas and reality TV.

~~~
schuke
> It's not that people who learned to compute on the desktop are abandoning it
> for mobile. It's that most people couldn't handle desktop computing in the
> first place.

Totally agree. For most everyday scenarios, using Windows is like flying a
Boeing 737 for your daily commute: it's a huge overkill, requiring way too
much setting up and maintenance and when you incidentally touches one switch
the whole thing stops working.

Windows 8 didn't take off because what MSFT did was in addition to all the
panels of the 737, they put an iPad in the cabin. For those familiar with
Windows that's no big deal: this is why we see people shrug off all the Win 8
hate, saying "it's just Windows 7 plus touching interface". But for those had
trouble coping with Windows in the first place, it's now doubly confusing.

~~~
hiharryhere
I dig this analogy. Since moving my folks over to iPads, I get emails from
them daily, photos shared with me and zero distressed support calls.

------
adamconroy
It is an insightful piece but nothing annoys me more than sensationalism. Its
click bait and I am annoyed I got sucked into reading it and annoyed that I
feel compelled to waste time commenting.

Anyway, if it isn't obvious, the article's credibility is killed by the use of
the word dead. Microsoft clearly isn't dead it just isn't the biggest player
on the internet, and isn't really a player in the start up space.

~~~
spaceborn
> the article's credibility is killed by the use of the word dead

How? The author clearly doesn't mean "out of business" when he says "dead". He
means that what Microsoft once was, or what it represented, is dead. The idea
once conveyed by the word "Microsoft" is dead. It's not sensationalist
clickbait, it's a metaphor.

~~~
TwoBit
Well he may mean that, but that's not what comes to mind when most people
think of the word "dead." And picking that particular word to use as liberally
as he does comes across as overly dramatic.

~~~
spaceborn
I suspect this article may have been written for an audience with a
collectively higher level of reading comprehension than what you describe.

------
BlobbyLaMouche
I tend to think the exact opposite to the "Microsoft is Dead". I'm nobody
important (well not a PG anyway), just a consumer and a developer. And if
anybody cares, I'm quite excited by Microsoft at the moment.

As both a developer and a consumer, I have a complaint against Google. It's
going in every direction. Google has no stable, coherent, ecosystem on which
you can build your products. You don't know where they are going between
Android and Chrome OS. Or between DART and javascript. Or Java and Go.
Microsoft is _trying_ to attack exactly that by trying to create, brick by
brick, a coherent software ecosystem. Coherent from a development, design and
user experience point of view. This direction makes sense to me. I'm just not
buying at the moment as the quality and experience is just not there yet. But
I could buy.

Also I just watched Nadella speaking, and he says he wants to address the
separation between consumer and business software. I think that's pretty cool.
If you couple that with the fact more and more people work from home, or
remotely, and the fact we have more and more devices around for both work and
private usage, that begins to make sense.

You could argue that we are tired of Microsoft trying. But they are moving all
their products together, and it takes more time, obviously. And some skills in
the execution. Hence Nadella's new role. Well that's my interpretation anyway.

Now imagine he succeeds to make all these products marginally better.
Microsoft doesn't need much, it's almost there. This could become an Apple-
like come-back before even being gone.

------
LeicaLatte
Pretty terrible title considering Xbox 360 had taken off in 2006. Not one
mention of Xbox in the whole post, indicating how much PG is out of touch.
Xbox took gaming to next level, especially online gaming and managed to build
a great ecosystem for games.

The younger ones, in the last line, are all actually playing on Xbox.
Microsoft has greater identification among younger people as brand than say,
Apple given their decade long presence in console and PC gaming.

~~~
coldtea
> _Pretty terrible title considering Xbox 360 had taken off in 2006. Not one
> mention of Xbox in the whole post, indicating how much PG is out of touch._

Yes, clearly he's not a 17-something gamer.

He also focused on things that matter. In Microsoft's bottom lime, the Xbox is
marginal at best. For ages it has not even be profitable.

Every gamer could as well only use an Xbox, and it still wouldn't matter much
for the kind of discussion we're having about Microsoft.

To put it in another way. Gaming (put together): not much of an industry,
compared to IT/mobile sales.

~~~
ksk
>To put it in another way. Gaming (put together): not much of an industry,
compared to IT/mobile sales.

Why are you comparing gaming to IT/mobile? It should be compared to other
entertainment industries. It has already surpassed Hollywood in terms of
revenue in the US ($17bil vs $9bil in 2011). Having a dominant product in the
gaming industry begets a _lot_ of influence.

Worldwide, The VG industry generates around $70 billion in revenue (excluding
mobile gaming). In comparison the movie industry - (all countries combined,
not just hollywood releases) generates around 120 billion.

>Every gamer could as well only use an Xbox, and it still wouldn't matter much
for the kind of discussion we're having about Microsoft.

Please explain what you mean..

~~~
coldtea
> _Why are you comparing gaming to IT /mobile? It should be compared to other
> entertainment industries._

Because we're discussing a company, Microsoft, that has most of its business
and revenues in the IT/mobile space and a small part of it in gaming. And I
want to see if the gaming market is as large and important as the main market
the company is involved in.

> _Please explain what you mean.._

I mean that even if Microsoft was the most succesful and relevant gaming
company in the world, it would still not mean its relevant in the IT space.

And MS's relevance in the IT space (compared to the nineties) is what Paul
Graham's post we're discussing is all about.

------
kbutler
Paul Graham isn't saying that MSFT isn't a viable, powerful business, just
that it no longer has the potential to use technology to change the world.

As a dominant monopolist, MSFT had little incentive to change the world, and
as a large, mature company, it is much more likely to be reactive to change
than to be the source of change.

There more interesting question to me now is, "Is Apple 'dead'?" Apple has
similarly been reacting to change, rather than driving it since the iPad (yes,
others may view this differently). Will they be able to create something new
and revolutionary? Or will that be left to new, scrappy "startups"?

~~~
wernercd
Microsoft is Dead! LONG LIVE MICROSOFT!

Apple is Dead! LONG LIVE APPLE!

------
jmnicolas
It's a good thing Microsoft is "dead" so now when appropriate we can use MS
tech without having to endure the critics.

As far as evil goes, to me, Google is much more scaring than MS.

~~~
polymatter
I think you mean "Google is much more scary than MS". The gerund doesn't make
a lot of sense in this context.

For bonus fluency points, it reads better if you say "I fear Google much more
than MS".

I apologize if feedback on your English was unwanted.

\---

On another note, I generally agree. Google has a lot more scope for evil than
Microsoft does. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish applies to what appeared to some
Google properties too (eg Reader).

~~~
jmnicolas
Oh well I wrote "scary" at first then I thought "no it must be 'scaring'".

No need for apology when you give me a chance to improve my English.

Thank you.

------
us0r
2007 - $51.12 billion

2013 - $77.85 billion

I'd love to die like that.

~~~
simonh
People were saying that about BlackBerry right up until a few years ago. Where
are the true mobile versions of Office or Outlook? When will Windows 8+ become
anything other than a painful mess for ordinary users? Will anyone ever ship a
Metro app anyone cares about?

The old Microsoft isn't part of the computing platform of the future, mobile
and services, but the server division is. For the division Nadella is from,
their competition aren't Apple or Yahoo or even Google, it's Rackspace and
AWS. For them Apple etc are customers and allies. The old Microsoft is dead in
the water, but can a new Microsoft fully emerge from its shadow to take a
valuable place in the future of the computing industry?

~~~
EpicEng
Do they need a mobile version, really? I wouldn't use it at work, and we all
seem to get along with the native versions just fine. It's the corporate
clientele that pays the big bucks for these products, and I'm not aware of
them clamoring for a mobile version.

(PS, I've only actually worked at startups which have grown into larger
companies. At no time did I or anyone else I was aware of feel the need for
mobile Excel.)

~~~
72deluxe
That's true. Although the parent is right that everyone hates Windows 8+ and
nobody cares about Metro apps in truth, the big money is made in the
enterprise space. Windows Server, SQL Server and Exchange are huge. People
think that everyone could install a Linux box and migrate but it isn't that
easy. Give a Windows admin a Linux box and see how dumbfounded he will be.

The iPad made a splash in the consumer world and perhaps in the BYOD world a
bit but you don't really see people doing real work on them or ditching their
desktops to use them. Great for consuming, not for creating (unless you enjoy
struggling). I think as long as Microsoft caters to the enterprise market and
move away from attempting to force a mobile UI on a desktop, things will go
swimmingly for them.

Having said that, Windows 8 on a Surface is a joy to use! Just not on a
desktop without having to fling your mouse all over the place to get things to
appear.

------
shliachtx
_" One of the reasons "Web 2.0" has such an air of euphoria about it is the
feeling, conscious or not, that this era of monopoly may finally be over."_

While it seems that there is no longer the complete monopoly that Microsoft
had, the new monopoly that Google has is functionally similar. While not fully
there yet, they are heading towards near-complete lock-in to Google services.
Web 2.0 may have raised the bar for monopoly (or lowered the bar for
competition), it definitely didn't do away with it altogether.

------
Beltiras
I predicted Apple's death some months after Steve Jobs died. Why? Two things
(both of them decisions of the CEO): Plastic iPhones and the iPad mini (both
products Jobs had resisted) and the more damning fact that for the first time
a dividend of a serious size was paid
([http://investor.apple.com/dividends.cfm](http://investor.apple.com/dividends.cfm)).
Jobs was adamant about growing the warchest. His assumption was that if a
stockholder thought his/her investment was better placed elsewhere, stock
could be sold and reinvested. The act of paying a dividend states that the
board thinks the investor can do better elsewhere with that money.

Apple is no longer hungry, nor foolish.

~~~
insaneirish
The first iPad mini was introduced on 2012-10-23. Steve Jobs died on
2011-10-05. It's certain that Steve both knew about the iPad mini and
supported its development. Apple's hardware development takes time and does
not shift on a dime.

"Apple is no longer hungry, nor foolish" is such a facile statement that means
absolutely nothing.

~~~
Beltiras
I was actually rephrasing my point, using the quote. Sheding money as
dividends means Apple is not hungry. Having no visionary guide to quell the
aversion of risk, Apple is no longer foolish. I'm a bit embarrassed having to
explain it.

~~~
insaneirish
Their war chest will remain strategically as big as it needs to be. The amount
of cash they have is ridiculous.

And while an Icahn sized stock buy back is probably too much, their current
buy back makes all the sense in the world. The stock is tremendously
undervalued.

You can't say it more eloquently than Warren Buffet: "If you could buy dollar
bills for 80 cents, it's a very good thing to do." [1]

[Disclosure: I am long AAPL.]

1: [http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/03/04/apple-warren-
buffett-...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/03/04/apple-warren-buffett-
cash/)

~~~
robmcm
Not to mention most of that cash is overseas, and it would be extremely costly
to pull in onshore. They actually took a loan to pay out the dividends as it
would be cheaper than paying the tax required to onshore their overseas
monies.

I expect if all that money was in the US they would be spending it on
something else. There are only so many fancy stores with expensive glass you
can build overseas.

------
mehwoot
Microsoft as the concept of an all powerful dominating IT company is dead, and
nothing has or will replace it. The company itself is still doing fine- they
still make roughly twice the profit _google_ did last financial year.

~~~
yzzxy
Is that just net profit, or does it account for growth? Net profit is not
always a good metric for a large company's performance, as there are a lot of
incentives to keep that number down and invest money back into the business
(such as taxes). Amazon, for example, almost always operates near or at a loss
from a quarterly or yearly perspective, but makes huge growth as business.

~~~
codeulike
This Ballmer slide from a few months ago compares Microsoft financials to some
of the other big players.

[https://twitter.com/janettu/status/380824535714377728](https://twitter.com/janettu/status/380824535714377728)

Pretty interesting: they are still big, and they are arguably much more
diversified than any other the other big players.

~~~
teh_klev
"and they are arguably much more diversified than any other the other big
players"

"Diversified"...that's the keyword here and I guess the key to their continued
success at putting money in the bank.

------
Thiz
Microsoft wanted to destroy the web, and they lost.

They tried to destroy linux, and they lost.

They tried to destroy apple, and they lost.

They tried to destroy android, and they lost.

That's why we, web, linux, apple, android fans hate microsoft with a passion.

While they succeeded in destroying so many other companies and technologies,
we were there and we fought those fights.

We never forget.

~~~
jader201
But seriously, aren't all competitors just trying to destroy each other?

~~~
rivd
You're right of course, but the tactics they used (especially against
oss/linux and the web) pissed off a lot of people.

If destroying meant: making yet a better product and marginalizing the
competition (with the product or through marketing) it would be business as
usual, but it seems microsoft didn't understand that their embrace-extend-
extinguish method would backfire in the internet age.

------
djulius
tl;dr

PG thinks the web/startup scene == the world. 7 years proved he's wrong.

~~~
weixiyen
It's almost as if he had a stake in the web/startup scene or something.

------
whistlerbrk
Why can't people just acknowledge these things are cyclical?

You love something, then everyone loves it, then it's not as cool and special,
then people start to hate it, then they tear it down and find something else
to love. Microsoft has completed that cycle and is now potentially going to be
loved again, whereas Apple is nearing the end of their cycle and is started to
be hated.

------
sekm
IMO Microsoft is still one of the scariest companies when it comes to the
gaming industry. I'm overjoyed to see tricklets of sanity rise up (the PC
market)through Valves efforts, but MS is still a very big, very scary beast in
AAA gaming.

~~~
kendalk
My guess is that Valve is being watched by every other game maker. I wonder
what is being said behind closed doors in meetings with a lot of suits. If
Valve is successful, I don't think they will be alone for long.

------
outside1234
The most amazing thing about this essay is that even the smartest people
amongst us (Paul Graham) can be bigoted and see things as black and white when
they are grey.

Microsoft has done some well documented evil things but imagine if IBM had won
the OS wars? Talk about locked down and monopolistic! And has the ascendance
of Apple and Google been uniformly good? I think not - we are in less control
over our software and our data than when Microsoft was in charge.

It kinda seems crazy stupid to not invite a company that makes $24B in income
a year to your demo day. But then again, Microsoft has never been a company
that is bamboozled by Nest Labs-style startup overvaluation bullshit, and
maybe you knew that.

------
ajcarpy2005
Microsoft is lumbering and beurocratic but they do actually ship a lot of code
and support the developer community. Xbox is also very successful obviously.
Windows 8 was a huge flop in most people's opinion due to terrible user
interface, despite the welcome creation of a Windows app store.

They still have a lot of momentum behind them because of all the PC
applications that only work with Windows.

It's an interesting reality that Apple has their OS locked "officially" with
their own hardware. In that respect, Microsoft seems more open to hardware
competition. (IMO)

~~~
72deluxe
The strange thing is that with Windows XP, you could go online and search for
software from within it. You could "get software" from within XP (somewhere in
the Control Panel I think?)

Perhaps it didn't take off due to the lack of wide-ranging Internet
connectivity at the time. But they did at least attempt an online shop/store
at the time. But everyone forgets this.

~~~
ajcarpy2005
Ah, I think I know what you're talking about. Was this where their games like
"Motocross Madness" were available for trial or purchase? I see the
convenience of a nice searchable, organized app store but the decision to
bifurcate Windows 8 into two completely separate desktop environments and then
hide all the useful controls off of the screen (in corners) seems completely
asinine. There's probably keyboard shortcuts that make navigation easier but
there needs to be a good GUI for those users who are used to using their PC
that way.

~~~
72deluxe
Precisely. Windows-C for the charm etc. isn't obvious. It isn't even obvious
what this charm thing is either, or why I need to move the cursor over to the
edge of the screen.

This will completely confuse most Windows users who are used to clicking on
things that they see, not magically waving the cursor around to make things
appear and then clicking on non-obvious vague silhouette-style icons.

------
at-fates-hands
Sometimes I wonder if people who write this stuff actually understand how
businesses operate.

Microsoft is dead because of competition? How does that even make sense? Like
I've said many times before, competition actually makes a company and their
products better, not make them die. MS has had to turn their huge ship around
and its a slow process.

Sure, they're making baby steps and getting there, but the hatred for them is
beyond what I've seen for other companies. It's not just that they dominated
and killed a bunch of competition in the 80's and 90's. Even now with the new
products they're bringing to market, people are still hazing them and won't
let them get off the mat.

It's almost fashionable these days to hate MS. They can't do mobile like
Android and Apple, they can't do cloud stuff like Amazon and Salesforce. .Net
is dead, everybody loves Ruby. MS can't do anything right, blah, blah, blah.

Nobody wants to see the small victories, they just want to pile on enough dirt
and hope they go away.

------
NAFV_P
> _Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the
> same in the audience at startup school. All the computer people use Macs or
> Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not
> only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers
> uses Microsoft 's anyway._

Well, Apple's laptops, like their whole hardware range, look really nice and
well made. My Toshiba Satellite is dusty, covered in bagel crumbs and stinks
of roll-ups. I would be really embarrassed turning up in a public arena with a
pig ugly piece of kit that looks like it has been used in a sewer.

Windows is still used by many businesses in the UK. That is the main reason I
still have it on my laptop, most CV's are only accepted as .doc/.docx/.txt
files.

The desktop no longer matters? Hell, the CLI is still alive and kicking. I
find Vim works better in tty than in xterm.

------
spiderPig
So are these the same thoughts the hacker community will have with Apple's iOS
in the future (there'll inevitably be some missteps)? Or even OSX for that
matter? I fail to see why in-principle the community that is so vocal about
FOSS gives them a pass.

~~~
visualR
Stallman doesn't. Apple did open source WebKit, which made the browser
experience good.

------
paulScholes
'Microsoft's biggest weakness is that they still don't realize how much they
suck. '

right on the spot.

------
Mustafabei
I guess they don't see themselves as the community sees an all round and
productive IT company. They had and do still have an abundance of market
penetration (considering the business world in Europe and Asia and so on).
They couldn't (maybe didn't) kill the desktop by replacing it with surface.
They really could have, and the whole business world may be on tablets today,
but they didn't do it. (and please don't tell me that the business world are
on tablets today, tablets are still accessories to laptop and desktop
computers)

I understand if anybody says "hey! MS is not a company as you or others would
prescribe to be and you don't get what surface is and what it is for!" Maybe
that's true. But they had lots of chances of coming back as a competitive,
innovative actor and they keep grounding their chances with products like
Windows 8. Last month, may father, who is an author and do not get along well
with any computer called me and said: "I just could not work with this Windows
8." To note, he barely learned to cope with the old fashioned windows
interface. Loading a considerable amount of cognitive load to consumers upon
whom your market penetration depends does not seem like good idea. It at least
is not "innovation".

We will see what the concept will be like in 5 to 10 years or so, when the
planned obsolescence time of the currently available MS running hardware (and
software for that matter) comes. But to replace things like Word, Excel? Quite
possible, but difficult. When those can be replaced, I think we will see
whether the company stands over a house of cards or not.

------
Nilzor
_" no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway."_

That was a false statement in 2007 and is still today. I'm the evidence, if no
one else. And I don't think I'm alone, although it _does_ puzzle me when I see
Microsoft evangelists at conferences holding speeches from Apple computers.

~~~
higherpurpose
I do think Windows will become pretty irrelevant over the next 5 years, as
Android and iOS get owned by _billions_ of people. However, I agree that right
now and for the past few years, there's a very strong bias towards Apple
computers in Silicon Valley and in media offices, and they might think "Apple
is everywhere", even though it's not.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
If Apple keeps curling up in their luxury niche it will be iOS that's going to
be irrelevant in 5 years.

And Microsoft will start to decline if they don't go after SAP's and Oracle's
enterprise applications business before their server-side stuff becomes a low
cost cloud based commodity.

I think both Apple and Microsoft are going down. Linux will rule the server
side and the client side in the shape of Android/Chrome OS.

~~~
visualR
Sounds bleak

------
yread
I don't think they are dead. Just look at design. WP7 brought forward the flat
style. First everybody laughed at it. Now it's the new hip. iOS got converted
into flat. Lots of websites are being redesigned for flat. How many examples
of flat design would there be if MS didn't have any mindshare?

------
sharemywin
A lot of start ups are making OSs, browsers, web servers, email clients or
servers, productivity suites, game consoles,document servers. Nope. Sorry,
still avoiding Microsoft's territory. And if Google or Apple gets kicked in
the balls from the justice department they would become low key as well.

------
ilaksh
Its a natural tendency of the system for proprietary efforts to grow in power
and centralize. We need a more evolved paradigm because there is a fundamental
antagonism between business (in its current form) and technology.

One of the things that is starting to force this evolution is the growing
realization that we must move from a server-based internet to a distributed
data-based internet.

We need to popularize new or better ways of achieving cohesion while
maintaining decoupling, diversity, and freedom to evolve different solutions.

I think there are a lot of ideas but the newest and best ideas for fundamental
structural changes are not well known or tested. We need to test some radical
changes to societal structures.

------
ppradhan
this sounded like pandering then, it sounds like pandering now. he's in
business, of course he's got a solid marketer in him!

------
dchichkov
It would not be optimal for Microsoft to die. And it is kinda sad that DEC and
Sun are no more. I liked that
[http://altavista.digital.com](http://altavista.digital.com). It was good.

~~~
royprins
That is not the definition of death that the article uses. He argues that
Microsoft died as a monopolist, as the bully of the schoolyard. DEC and Sun
never had that position to lose. IBM did, but now I keep paraphrasing the
article. Read it :)

------
sparky_z
Funny how the links to the footnotes in the article are intercepted by the
numbered list near the bottom. You'd think somebody would have caught that bug
by now.

The first time through, I thought they _were_ the footnotes, and, oddly
enough, they sort-of made sense. Especially the 2nd one, which came off as a
strange joke (as in "We better make sure Microsoft doesn't catch the Apple
bug").

------
smoyer
From my experience, girls liked Barry Manilow in the mid-to-late '70s ... he
was hard to compete against in middle school.

------
VikingCoder
Wow, reading an article saying that MSFT is dead, with this line, "And of
course Apple has Microsoft on the run in music too, with TV and phones on the
way."

ON THE WAY. This article is before the iPhone came to dominate. Wow, did
Microsoft miss that boat.

------
LordHumungous
Ehhh Microsoft still has a lot of talent they are just plagued with entrenched
bureaucracy.

~~~
SwellJoe
And, what do you imagine will solve the problem of entrenched bureaucracy?
Given that bureaucracy tends to expand itself as a primary feature...saying a
company is "just plagued" with it, is a pretty damning statement.

------
tzury
At the time this was written, it seemed as if Microsoft was __dying __, so
calling it dead might be a "safe" prediction.

However, even a dying wounded can get intensive care and get back to life...

------
mamby
Keywords:

\- Web \- Google, Apple \- Startup

Insight: Web: Infrastruture (Cloud) + Apps (HTML&co, Native) Are Apple & Goog
better than MS @this ?

------
ohjeez
Oh my. I remember reading this when it first came out in 2007. Does that make
me an old fart?

------
jaseemabid
Good news for Satya Nadella to start with

~~~
CmonDev
Do you enjoy your life-style of reading news delayed by 7 years?

------
dschiptsov
Is this still a news for anyone?)

------
ddmma
why every time something new good happens some old sh8 must pop-up?

------
dandare
Huh, sir, are you a prophet?

This is clearly amazing :D

------
headgasket
C# and .net killed MS. The same virus killed Sun and will kill oracle.
Technologies that try to isolate the coder from the machine by creating a
funnelled dumbed-down common interface are inherently flawed because the HW
evolves faster than the software.

~~~
billyhoffman
You are seriously saying somehow that languages which abstract away hardware
details are bad?

"Assembly? Bad! you should know the instructions op codes."

"C? Bad! you should know assembly! What are you trying to do? Write an
operating system that is portable beyond the PDP architecture?"

"Java? Bad! You should manage your own memory! And the STL should be good
enough for anyone."

Abstraction, by reducing complexity or making assumptions, allows developers
to work faster or do more. Does this have negative side effects? Sure (see
Joel's leaky abstractions article), but the benefits out weight the costs by
several orders of magnitude. My evidence? The entire computer industry for the
last 74 years.

~~~
headgasket
Sorry I did not formulate my though properly. Let's try this:

Companies that try to use a language/platform combination to isolate the coder
from the machine by creating a funnelled dumbed-down common interface and
executing environment are pursuing a loose-loose path.

1\. the HW evolves faster than the software 2\. the coder wants to hack the
most out of the hardware 3\. the OpenSource community is a paradigm shift for
software companies, you can't put the cat back in the bag.

Cheers

------
beerglass
(sorry if I sound like a phony or worse suckup when I say this, but) PG is one
of the smartest, ahead-of-his-times guy of our generation!

~~~
djulius
Yes you do, but nevermind, you're just like the vast majority of commenters
here.

Btw thanks for your contribution, very interesting.

