

Dvorak on Microsoft:  Party Over, MSFT distracted by shiny objects - nwatson
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-the-party-over-for-microsoft-2009-07-24?siteid=rss&rss=1

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chaostheory
In MS's defense, some of those past experiments paid off:

\- Word and Excel (which morphed into Office)

\- XBox (which is now a success as the 360)

MS has taken a lot of risks that most companies their size would never take;
they don't like resting on their laurels

~~~
jamie
Yup, and while you can fault them for investing in phone operating systems and
two aborted attempts at a phone os, arguably both of these represent the real
threat to the MS cash cow.

It's execution (and fear of killing the cash cow), not market selection that's
the problem.

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GeneralMaximus
Strangely enough, (consumer) operating systems and developer tools are _still_
the areas where Microsoft shines (or at least gets a passing grade). WinVista
was an utter failure, but Win7 is a very nice OS (I'm a Mac fanboy, FYI). My
tools of choice are usually Vim + Terminal (or XCode if I'm doing some Cocoa),
but I've used Visual Studio in the past and I liked it. Slow, yes, but many of
the features that make it slow are totally worth the 5-10 seconds I have to
wait for the IDE to start up. Also, look at all the cool things MS Research is
doing.

MS is a bungling giant and, even though I'll never choose Windows as my
platform of choice, I think they still do some things very well.

~~~
omouse
_Also, look at all the cool things MS Research is doing._

Which will never see the light of day as products nor will any of that stuff
seep into existing products...

~~~
chollida1
-F#

-Microsoft speach

-Parts of Microsoft Office

-Most of their C++ compiler

-The tech behind Windows Streaming Media

-TabletPC OS research

-Parts of the technology behind Bing

Along with alot of other things Read this article:
[http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/rick/04-16svalley.ms...](http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/rick/04-16svalley.mspx)

~~~
omouse
Nice! I like being corrected :D

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mkfort
What defunct hamburger chain is he speaking of? I assumed all the chains did
that, let McD's do the research then open up across the street (Burger King,
Hardees, etc)

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tybris
*sigh, doesn't it ever occur to anyone that a company that still makes billions in a deep recession, has the largest market cap of any IT company, has a share of over 90% in its main revenue markets, was until recently led by the richest man in the world, and only hires the world's brightest people, might not be stupid?

If a company wants to stay alive it needs to diversify and enter new markets.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that Microsoft doesn't try to create new
markets. Its core competency has never been innovation, it has always been
outmuscling the competition in growth markets.

Many of the diversifications have been a success, with Internet Explorer being
the flagship. Netscape showed the Web was going to be big, Microsoft entered
the browser market to make it so. Internet Explorer was for a large part the
catalyst that put a Windows computer (with Office) into every home in the late
90's.

The same thing happened when RealPlayer showed streaming video was going to be
big. Microsoft decided to give its WMP product a boost and made it so. The
multimedia possibilities further catalyzed sales of Windows PCs and Media
Centers in particular.

At this point IE and WMP are no longer important since there are plenty of
widely available alternatives that other people are developing freely for
Microsoft. It is shifting its attention to other areas that could further fuel
its software line. Azureus will establish a firm presence of Windows in the
Cloud, while acting as a catalyst for new features in their corporate products
like Office and Exchange.

Visual Studio, .NET, DirectX, etc. have all been major catalysts for the
development of the largest software legacy in history, which means Windows
will be in business for at least another 30 years.

Finally, Microsoft has entered a number of markets in which the only "failure"
is that it didn't become market leader. Otherwise, many of these products are
a success (Bing, Xbox 360, Zune, Game development, MSN). The added value in
terms of diversification and building new products and expertise is also
notable. The MSN/Live expertise is what allowed them to build Azureus, Bing
and Office 2010.

The only area in which Microsoft really failed to win its battle is handhelds.
Apple outwitted them with religious marketing and some UI novelties,
Nokia/Symbian always managed to keep a tight grip on the phone market, and
Google decided that the mobile OS itself can be a catalyst for its web
products. This is not only a missed opportunity, but may also come to threaten
Microsoft's dominance in other areas.

Overall. Microsoft is not evil, stupid, at the end of the road, or sliding
downhill. It's the #1 IT company and very good at doing business.

(No, I use Linux about 90% of the time, use Opera, VLC and Gmail on all my
machines and I don't own a copy of MS Office. It's just that I learned not to
ignore the business part of IT.)

~~~
pronoiac
Azureus? The Bittorrent client?

~~~
tybris
Woops, drop the us.

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ryanwaggoner
Why do people listen to Dvorak?

~~~
allenbrunson
a little context helps. dvorak is an admitted troll.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMQv0j29WHA>

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zmimon
By Dvorak's logic Apple would have been crazy to ever make an iPod, let alone
a phone. In fact by his logic MS might never have made Office or Windows. I
agree they bungled windows for about 5-6 years but I think the one thing MS
has done right is to invest in anything and everything they can.

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Agathos
Isn't this what The Innovator's Dilemma told us to do? Dip a toe in every
"can't possibly get big enough to threaten our main business" business because
sooner or later, something will.

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alex_c
This reasoning seems to be based on the amount of attention gained by all
these side projects in the media and tech community.

Of course, "Microsoft continues to make boatloads of money with Windows and
Office" doesn't make for a great headline, compared to "OMG, Zune sucks LOL".

The important part is how many resources Microsoft allocates to "shiny
objects", relative to its core products.

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makecheck
Dvorak made interesting points, but his logic is flawed: Microsoft doesn't
actually _need_ any successful products to survive.

Microsoft not only has a huge bank account, but it is being handed money by
all the peripheral industries that (sadly) depend on Microsoft's proprietary
technologies. Those companies will simply never risk destroying their huge
I.T. investments.

~~~
russell
That's true in the short term, but Dvorak's point is that MS has wasted time
and money on diversions that it has not executed well to the determent of
Windows and Office. You can also see that the cash cows are in danger because
people are moving to new environments that are not desktop/laptop based, like
iPods and cellphones. I cant imagine life without my laptop, but others seem
to be doing a lot with other devices.

Contrast MS with Apple and Google which have move into new areas with style
and excellent execution. MS seems downright frumpy.

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tocomment
I wonder how many MSFT shareholders would have wanted Microsoft to pursue all
of these diversions? It's a shame companies can't just focus on what they're
good at and send all of their excess cash to their owners (the shareholders)
as dividends.

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drawkbox
How Software Companies
Die...:<http://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=DeveloperBees>

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jwb119
couldn't you apply the same logic to apple? they sure aren't a cell phone
company, but they're making money hand over fist entering that market..

~~~
sorbits
Apple is a hardware company, their software and web services are to complement
the hardware, not their main revenue stream.

Seeing as they already did (portable) computers, even has done handhelds in
the past (newton), they did MP3 players, have several things related to
wireless technology (AirTunes, Apple TV), their version of a cell phone was a
natural evolution of their product offerings.

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berntb
I read this before sleeping. No comment still has noted something obvious.

Many of Microsoft's strange moves (IE, Zune, stores next to Apple's stores,
etc) obviously looks like a monopolist trying to cut off a competitor's oxygen
supply. Profitability is probably not that high on that agenda.

