

How Microsoft lost its mojo: thoughts from an insider - samgro
http://samgrossberg.com/a-five-step-plan-for-microsoft-to-start-winni

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brudgers
Microsoft isn't like Google or Facebook or Amazon because their most important
customer base is business - and business values predictability not the latest
feature. If Windows Live gets a new interface overnight, the boss says "shit"
not "cool" because six of his ten employees are spending time navigating the
change rather than being productive - and ten of ten are bitching about it.
Try to find Google's roadmap for the next year - never mind the next three.
Imagine trying to organize a large business based on Facebook's terms of use,
how long would that last? Sure I'll grant that Amazon's cloud service is
likely to be stable, but that's the exception - Amazon isn't rolling out lots
of beta's like Google or rewriting its TOS every week like Facebook. No,
Amazon is dull and boring and focused on providing stability, just like
Microsoft.

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samgro
Agree that enterprise software has different requirements, but Windows Live is
specifically Microsoft's consumer cloud product. Sharepoint and a few other
products within Microsoft are targeted at enterprise, and for those it may
still make sense to be on the 3 year product cycle. However, the hosted
version of the enterprise services like Sharepoint and Exchange, targeted at
smaller businesses, could be a great place to experiment with new features in
a way similar to Google Labs (on an opt-in basis).

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xpaulbettsx
(I posted this on the site, but I thought I'd say it again here)

Some of us are definitely working on #1, check out:

[http://blogs.technet.com/b/next/archive/2011/01/20/dirty-
wor...](http://blogs.technet.com/b/next/archive/2011/01/20/dirty-work-in-the-
garage.aspx)

tl;dr; summary - we've started a group in MS where folks can work on side
projects that are totally unrelated to their job (or related, not a
requirement), and we organize Hackathons to get folks working together and
show off their projects to the company at events called "Science Fairs". We're
also working with legal to get some of these projects released to the public.

It's definitely a struggle though, turning the battleship is not a quick or
easy process.

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samgro
The garage is definitely a step in the right direction. It needs to be better
publicized internally. I had heard whispers of it when I was at Microsoft but
it was not mainstream.

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mmcconnell1618
I think Microsoft's biggest problem is that it is beholden to stock holders
who expect it to continue to return insane profits on billion dollar
businesses segments. If an idea can't generate Billions next year they don't
appear interested.

