
What happened to Microsoft? - KevinBongart
http://www.marco.org/105602688
======
amix
Some stats about Microsoft's current market position:

* Microsoft holds almost 90% of the operating system market share [http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-shar...](http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8)

* MSN Messnger is the most popular IM client in the world, 60% market share <http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2006/04/3557.ars>

* Internet Explorer is still the most used browser, 65%+ market share [http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qp...](http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0)

* Microsoft Office is still the most used Office suite (95%+ market share?)

* XBox is selling great and they are taking a market leader position [http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/jan09/01-05XBo...](http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/jan09/01-05XBoxBigYearPR.mspx)

* Hotmail is the most used web-email with 250 million users+ (GMail does not have 100 million yet) [http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/metrics/email-statist...](http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/metrics/email-statistics.htm)

* Microsoft are a big player in web-backend market. IIS and ASP are catching up with Apache [http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2009/04/06/april_2009_web_...](http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2009/04/06/april_2009_web_server_survey.html)

* .Net has the largest market share amongst developers [http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=.net%2C+java%2C+c%23%2C+ru...](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=.net%2C+java%2C+c%23%2C+ruby%2C+python&l=)

* Even in one of the biggest financial crisis, Microsoft still makes shit loads of money (almost $15 billion in revenue for Q1 2009) [http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/apr/23/microsoft-rev...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/apr/23/microsoft-revenue-plunges)

Taken from <http://amix.dk/blog/viewEntry/19446>

~~~
njharman
The article is about the decline of MS. Statistical points that aren't rates
or aren't compared to past statistical points are meaningless.

~~~
amix
It points out that Microsoft is still a market leader in a lot of markets
(including web-markets such as IM and email), they are earning lots of money
in a bad economy and they are known to be excellent business people (some of
the best in the market)... I think it's very naive to label one of the biggest
companies in the IT industry as dead in any foreseeable future.

Btw. I also point out statical rates: Microsoft shares in IM, web-email,
console market, developer tools market, web-server market etc. are all growing
and aren't declining.

~~~
carbon8
_"I also point out statical rates: Microsoft shares in IM, web-email, console
market, developer tools market, web-server market etc. are all growing and
aren't declining."_

Depends on how you measure it. For instance, apparently in terms of monthly
uniques hotmail is declining and will be overtaken by gmail this year:

[http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArti...](http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=213300662&subSection=News)

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TomOfTTB
This article is filthy with mis-information. Just to give a few...

* Microsoft did make mistakes in it's early days. To make that point I need only cite all the Microsoft Execs who were quoted saying "OS/2 is the way of the future and We'll be phasing Windows out"

* Vista isn't popular with "die hard Windows fans". In fact, a big part of the reason Vista is failing is because there are a lot of things you can do in XP that you can't do in Vista (try right clicking on a network drive and looking for "Search" if you don't believe me)

* I don't see how you can have this sentence "Today’s Microsoft is impulsive and sloppy." and then follow it immediately with this "It has become massive and complex with too many layers of management, committees, and bureaucracy to produce anything great " You're either bureaucratic or impulsive but you can't really be both

* Microsoft did not "rest on their laurels" after IE6. What did happen is that Jim Allchin decided Windows = IE and disolved the IE team by integrating them into the Windows team. So when Vista's development timeline went to hell so too did IE. But there were always people working on it.

* Microsoft did not "get lazy" and miss the Internet boat in the mid-90s. What they did do was "get proprietary" and back MSN as a competitor to the Internet (remember that back then AOL was the competitor to beat and they didn't even have Internet access integrated yet).

I could go on but the point is made I think. You should know a little
something about Microsoft before you write a post on how the company went
wrong.

~~~
axod
It's largely irrelevant to most startups wether Microsoft went wrong because
of X, or because of Y. Point is, they don't matter any more. Interesting from
a historical point of view, but not much more.

MS still shows at every single opportunity that they do not understand the
internet, and they'd actually rather it didn't exist. That's unlikely to
change.

~~~
hvs
I would tend to disagree since nearly 30% of web servers run IIS, and ASP.NET
is one of the most popular web frameworks on the market today. Considering
that it is largely competing with _free_ servers and frameworks, that's fairly
impressive.

[http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2009/04/06/april_2009_web_...](http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2009/04/06/april_2009_web_server_survey.html)

~~~
axod
I don't think it's useful to just go for raw numbers - it'll be skewed in ms
favor with tons of big irrelevant corporations using it by default. How many
big consumer sites use IIS/ASP.NET? How many startups? How many high traffic
sites use it?

A web startup using IIS/ASP.NET is quite a rarity. I'd expect maybe 2% of
startups? If that.

The fact the xBox doesn't even have a web browser should be reason enough for
alarm.

~~~
maukdaddy
I don't think irrelevant means what you think it means. I'm no fan of
Microsoft, but they are certainly relevant. And those "big corporations" are
certainly relevant too - they spend billions of dollars on hardware and
software.

~~~
axod
OK to clarify, Irrelevant if you're doing a consumer based web startup.

If you're doing B2B or corporate stuff, then sure, you have to deal with that
rubbish along with everything else.

~~~
OmarIsmail
You're so wrong. And even if you weren't wrong,writing off the huge B2B market
is pretty silly.

In any event, MySpace and PlentyOfFish both run off of .NET

So the largest dating site in the world, and the second largest social
network. I'd say that's pretty relevant.

~~~
mahmud
> So the largest dating site in the world

Ahem, largest FREE dating website :-)

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rajeshamara
These days more and more I realize that none of the people who comment on
Microsoft are generally biased against microsoft and have no clue about
Microsoft's business strategy. First the greatest fact of Microsoft is not
innovation it is perseverance.

Generally they don't come up with any innovative products but they try to
simulate other existing popular products but make them better over lots of
versions by eating into competitors market share. (You can look into the
history of microsoft products which will be easily proven)

The reason Microsoft can do is because they have lots of cash and they can
take losses on the products for couple of versions. The greatest example is
SQL Server with 1% market share in late 90's and close to 38 to 40% market
share in 2009.

The revenues are generated for Microsof is because of volume of licenses.
Every body knows that microsoft is microsoft because of Bill Gates who will be
there for another 20 years to guide Microsoft just in case if it is needed.
This is not true for Apple (Pancreatic cancer for Steve jobs) and also true
for other companies.

\--R

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Keyframe
I would not dismiss Microsoft that easily, they are still a dominant force in
software world and probably will be for a long time to come. Maybe they just
lack focus here and there, which comes along having battles on so many fronts
as they do have. Microsoft is a gigantic battleship with lots of bad and good
stuff, for example Microsoft is a way to go if you want to be at the bleeding
edge of 3D research these days, and that is just one very small segment of
what they do - and lead in.

~~~
eru
And don't forget Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK. That's where Simon
Peyton-Jones works on the Glasgow Haskell Compiler.

------
hvs
"The report of my death has been grossly exaggerated." - Mark Twain

Much like the endless stories of the death of Apple in the 90's, this article
exudes an arrogance unsupported by the facts. Certainly, Microsoft has made
many mistakes and are not at the top of their game right now. But to suggest
that "Internet Explorer’s marketshare will probably dip below 50% within three
years." is a sign of their decline is comical. Below 50%.. within three
years.. the horror.

Microsoft continues to be a dominant force in the business world and will for
the foreseeable future. Thankfully, they now have competition again on many
fronts that will only serve to push them to refocus and improve the products
that have declined in recent years.

~~~
rimantas
You know, not too long ago Internet Explorer was regarded as dominant force on
the web (98% after all), now (at least where I am) it is already on the edge
of falling below 50% (last week's numbers are 51.5% of all IE versions
combined). And yes Firefox pushed MS to refocus, which gave us IE7 and IE8–so
what? Being the dominant force at the moment does not mean you will stay here
for long. Unless you have a clear vision ahead. I fail to see any signs of
that vision on MS side.

~~~
hvs
When IE was at 98% they had almost no competition in the marketplace and the
Internet was still just catching on. Netscape, through a combination of MS's
actions and their own incompetence had become irrelevant. That was never a
situation that could endure for long.

I don't disagree with your larger point. In my opinion as a web developer, IE7
and 8 are horrible browsers. My point is that Microsoft is more likely to
rebound from this situation than to go out of business or become irrelevant.

~~~
njharman
And what did MS do? They disbanded the IE team and sat on their asses.

------
csomar
I have a point of view, I hope you don't down vote it and understand it first.

Most of HN users are web developers. In web developement, MS was a stupid
company, they try to make "their standards" and not respect the other
standards; which leads them to a big failure, now they are changing (with
Microsoft Expression), but their visitmix.com is still missing a lot to
compete even products like wordpress.com, also the tools provided their (I
tried them) are buggy... So MS needs lot of monetization to get in the right
track.

This happen with me also, I didn't learn ASP.net although I'm a dot net
developer. I learnt PHP, PHP servers are cheap, fast, simple and do what I
need. So why go with the very costing ASP.net and SQL Server??

In Windows Developement, I beg to differ and I consider MS had succeeded. why?
Because Dot Net (whether it has good shares or not (and it has)) it a GREAT
product. I use Vista and I'm very satisfied with the results.

WPF and Dot net are little buggy, but that's normal for anything that goes big
to have problems here and there. The Dot Net FrameWork is an important
evolution in the domain of programming, is there any other competent
framework? If you didn't tried it and want to develop OS applications then you
should. Yes, Dot Net is for any OS, Windows, Linux, MAC. With the mono project
(although I didn't tried it) I think only few tweaks are needed and your
application is cross-platforms.

That's for the developers. MS didn't succeded online but did Offline.

Now when I come to the office, Office 2007 is much more advanced than 2003 and
worth buying, there's a lot of whole new features to create nice documents (on
word) the best feature I liked, is that i can convert my document to PDF and
then it can be viewed by my clients whatever their OS!

MS is not good on all things, just few and what's wrong with that?

Is google good on all things? Was google good in his "knol"?? did google
succeed with "orkut"?

Every company fail and succeed that's normal and every company is an "EVIL"
and try to show us that they are "GOOD" people.

The future:

I think in the future MS will stay a power, but no longer a dominance, Market
will be divided between MS, MAC and Google, but as the internet, computers and
technology are getting wide spread, there will be a big market for each and no
matter each one to work with, just the one you like most

~~~
aceofspades19
There is no company called MAC, there is a company call Apple which has a line
of computers commonly referred to as "Macs".

~~~
csomar
thx i had confusion on their OS, company name and computer name

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GiraffeNecktie
It's telling that the article has no mention of Windows 7 which, unlike Vista,
has been widely praised for it's polish and performance. The rollout through
to RC has also been handled in a slick but low key manner.

Seems a little premature to write off Microsoft at this point.

~~~
iamelgringo
I've been using Win7 for months, and I'm as happy as a school girl in a new
Christamas dress.

~~~
aswanson
It does look pretty good: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLU34h8SCF4>

If they restore search that they damaged with vista it could be a winner.

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10ren
Xbox 360 is doing well against its similar competitor, the Playstation 3. The
problem is that the Wii is doing even better - not be _being_ better, but by
changing the basis of competition.

That is the one of the few ways that successful wll-run companies can die.

------
bobbyi
Does google really have the much higher a success rate with moving into new
markets? How often do you really use Knol, Lively, Google Base, Checkout,
Sketchup, etc.?

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Rob15283
These days, I could care less about Microsoft. When I hear that they're about
to announce a new product or enter a new market, I don't consider it important
because innovation and quality just isn't in their genes. IMHO, they're living
off past successes while companies like Google and Apple continue to innovate
and make Microsoft a marginal player.

~~~
tybris
Innovation is term thrown awfully loosely.

Apple did not invent the MP3 player, smart phone, GUI. Google did not invent
Web search, web mail, online maps. Microsoft did not invent the OS, IDE,
Office suite.

Innovation is not a core-strength of these companies. As most large companies
they focus on quality (creating a really good user experience) and marketing.

Companies like IBM, Philips, Amazon.com, Toyota run on innovation. AT&T and
Apple (pre-90s) used to.

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Dilpil
What happened to Microsoft last quarter was about thirteen billion dollars in
revenue.

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tybris
Wishful thinking.

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TweedHeads
_"Microsoft’s entry into a market previously meant imminent death of any other
players, but now it’s usually a source of comedy for the tech press."_

As always, a sad end for the bully.

Geeks have never and will never tolerate bullies, ever.

Progress can not be caged and tamed, no matter how much money is spent on
locks and chains.

