

What to Make of the Microsoft-Is-Falling-And-It-Can’t-Get-Up Meme - bensummers
http://kara.allthingsd.com/20100622/what-to-make-of-the-microsoft-is-falling-and-it-cant-get-up-meme/

======
endtime
I sort of roll my eyes at it. Bing is actually pretty innovative, I love
Office 2010 (Outlook gets threading right, IMO), I'm tentatively excited about
Windows Phone 7 (uncool as that may be), and I can't wait to let Kinect smell
my bones. Plus, all that boring enterprise crap like Sharepoint is basically a
license to print money.

That Apple and Google are doing well isn't really a threat to Microsoft. Tech
isn't a zero-sum industry.

------
InclinedPlane
It's more I think a recognition that MS has transitioned into a value company.
Some _parts_ of MS are still very innovative, but at the most fundamental
levels (management direction, company culture, etc.) MS seems to have reached
a tipping point. It's too soon to tell whether that zeitgeist fully represents
reality, but it's coming from both outside and inside the company.

Granted, the result of this transition isn't that MS suddenly goes out of
business tomorrow, that's not going to happen. Instead, the result is that MS
slowly slides down the hill into senescence. MS slowly bleeds away more and
more talent as the corporate culture becomes more bureaucratic. MS continues
to miss key opportunities and become left out of more and more new markets. MS
loses the cachet of being a cutting edge company, etc. Worst case scenario: MS
misses the boat on disruptive events that destroy its core revenue streams
(e.g. enterprise computing). More likely scenario: MS turns into another Sony
or IBM.

This isn't the worst thing in the world, but this sort of thing happens. For
people who are really passionate about this industry it's the equivalent of
seeing one of your favorite hard core metal bands turn into a vegas act. It's
disconcerting and disappointing.

