If you were ever looking for evidence that Web 2.0 is a bubble because its leading players live in a fantasy land, a world were reality and Venture Capital rarely meet, much like the players in Web 1.0 land did, let me introduce Paul Graham from Y Combinator who thinks Microsoft is dead.
If Microsoft is dead then I’m the Queen of England and I hereby demand that you all bow before me and call me “Your Highness”.
Graham’s reasoning?
1. Google killed Microsoft
2. Ajax
3. Broadband Internet
4. Apple
Now try this quote on for size:
“The last nail in the coffin came, of all places, from Apple. Thanks to OS X, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare in technology. [2] Their victory is so complete that I’m now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. 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.”
Firstly, as a Windows user, my immediate message to Mr Graham: f*ck you.
Secondly, lets step out of fantasy land and take a look at the real world, the one in which Graham quite clearly doesn’t live.
According to PC World April 6, Apple’s marketshare: 6.08%. Oh yeah, I nearly forgot, it declined in March.
Now that’s not to take away from the Mac, it’s clearly a good product, however over 9 out of 10 people use Windows. Does this sound like Apple has killed Windows? Graham thinks it does, but he probably believes in faires at the bottom of the garden as well…that and that 9 out of 10 people are grandmas.
Micorsoft is alive and mostly well. Has it clearly failed in a range of endevours? absolutely, Microsoft’s internet strategy sucks and most people will take that for a given. Zune? do most people even know what a Zune is? probably not. Was the Vista development program a shambles? yes.
But take a look past this: Windows still powers most computers, at nearly monopoly levels. Windows dominates non-console gaming (try playing the latest game on a Mac). The XBox 360 is a huge success, and in 2-3 years time may be in a duopoly market with Nintendo. Office, despite the threat of online alternatives, still powers along, and certainly in the real world has nothing to fear in the next couple of years at least. Microsoft hardware (keyboards etc) must sell pretty well because you can’t walk into a store and not see them. Developer choice? most, nearly all programs are written to run on the Windows platform first and foremost, and whilst there is a pick up in Mac development, Windows software development continues to thrive…conversely if it was slowing this would be a sign of a move away from the platform, simply there isn’t.
I’m sure I could list a pile of other areas that Microsoft thrives that aren’t internet or Zune related, but surely this is enough.
Microsoft is alive and kicking and has many years left in the marketplace. Has it passed its glory days? possibly, but there’s a world of difference between a mature company that’s passed its peak and one that is dead or dying.
Originally posted on April 8, 2007 @ 12:08 am
HEH.
(hopefully the bolded, italicized and capitalized “Heh” comes through and effectively communicates my mutual bewilderment at Paul Graham’s assertation)
Well said Duncan, I too am fedup of people who keep saying Windows is dead, because as far as I can everybody I know uses Windows, despite their claims otherwise!
Dead? Microsoft? Company exec says phooey, too. And he offers up 4 billion other good reasons.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/13582
I use Windows and OS X. I don’t think Microsoft is dead but I can appreciate where the guy is coming from.
Windows and Office are the only products generating real profits for Microsoft. These two offerings have a momentum of their own – they are prevalent not popular; they’re what most people know because they are oblivious to the alternatives.
Is the 360 actually turning a profit? No. There is no doubt it has garnered significant marketshare and shipped (not the same as sold) millions, but it’s hard to reconcile these numbers as completely positive with the cold hard reality of the product’s (red) bottom line. OK, so Microsoft has deep pockets. But it really doesn’t inspire confidence in Redmond that it can produce outstanding products if their only strategy is “Well we can hold out at a loss until we win!”
Media center PCs haven’t achieved much either; significantly, HP have just dropped it. The Zune isn’t compelling enough to upset iPod, and frankly Microsoft’s media strategy is too disjointed when you compare it to how everything Apple is doing in this area (iPod, music, podcasts, TV shows, movies, Apple TV, iPhone) is leveraged through iTunes.
Why can’t Microsoft create a small team to produce something with the mentality of a start-up because this would force them to really innovate and bring something disruptive to the market. Unfortunately it’s because the culture just isn’t there at Microsoft; they’re slow and bumbling rather than alert and agile. And I get the impression decisions are made by committee rather than say, at Apple, where everything goes though one man with taste. For Apple, Steve Jobs IS the consumer.
The Microsoft vs Apple desktop debate is in some respects specious because they are competing in different spaces – software as opposed to hardware, respectively – and both have their strengths and weaknesses.
I don’t think Microsoft is dead but it’s certainly becoming increasingly impotent in many areas it tried to impose (read strongarm) itself. Microsoft will probably end up like IBM, an industry participant but largely irrelevant. How long will it take? I don’t know. Maybe sooner rather than later.
I have to agree that Microsoft as a company is not dead or dying. After all, even if all software switches to the web, you still need an operating system to run a web browser. With Linux taking forever to gain some kind of ease of use, and Apple refusing to compete on computing’s low end, what’s left but Windows?
What is dead or dying is any kind of excitement over the company and its products, and I’m sure this has a lot of folks in Redmond worried. The Zune is probably the most amusing example, but to be serious we have what I’m sure were five tedious and miserable years of extremely hard work on Vista, and the reviews said, “Hey, this is MacOS X Tiger on Wimpoids.†Surely we can reasonably be worried about a company that labored for half a decade, spending untold billions of dollars, and came up with nothing more than Vista?
There’s no question that an indecently high percentage of the people who build computer systems and environments and web sites hate Microsoft with a passion. As a result, when the age of the web came, those of us who could went over to Linux for stability and MacOS X for the cool interface, and here we are.
Paul Graham’s real message was that people who love computing have gone to the Mac, and that I think is hard to argue against. Microsoft will survive for decades to come, but those who are passionate about computing have gone elsewhere.
D
There’s no doubt the author who thinks MS is dead…is living in his own world…and fails to realize that he is only making comparisons with like minded people (co-workers, friends, etc.)…not the general population…on top of many other errors in logic he purported.
Microsoft for better or worse controls the OS market, and the office suite market…thought things are changing with FOSS….but you must look at their strong successes in peripherals like keyboards and mice….they focus on productivity and ergonomics as well as technological advances…and in my opinion from personal testing have far better mice than any competitor…even logitech…when you look beyond the numbers and actually try the products.
Furthermore the Microsoft gaming division has been a phenomenal success….they entered the arena at the right time, and took a strong lead right away. Wii would overtake MS in number of consoles sold based on their rate of sales…now having over 6 million consoles sold without a killer app yet, compared to the 360’s 10+ milliion….but MS cleverly can now turn profits on each console sold b/c production costs are down…and are coming out with a new upgraded system, as well as Halo 3 Beta, and the final release of Halo 3 this year…which will cause them to sell like hotcakes. MS simply gets just about everything right in their gaming division….and it was a wise move for them to jump into the gaming arena when the did…as I believe it has now overtaken the movie industry…and is now a 25 billion dollar industry…that is rapidly growing.
Don’t count MS out anytime soon…even IF they falter in their current monopoly for operating systems and their stronghold on office software….they will more than make up for it in the other markets they are in such as their gaming division.
[The XBox 360 is a huge success]
Hehe. Talk about living in a fantasy…
Duncan, I think that’s “Microsoft *is* dead”.
Otherwise, right on the money. ;)
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Very fact that you discuss his post here suggests that it is a link bait. By just posting a controversial topic, he hijacked all our attention for a day.
Darn, almost missed a Apple – Ms. controversy!
Windows and Office are the only products generating real profits for Microsoft.
Exactly that is where the
Fisher PriceApple freaks problem is : ignorance. MS dead?Whatever!
You just don’t know (and don’t want to know either) about all the different products that MS offers. And how stabile many are. MS only Windows and a little Office? For ignorant people yes. But that little Office develops itself in companies to Exchange and Sharepoint, just to name the two most known ones. And there are many more great applications you even didn’t know MS carries them in their package. Just browse Business at MS Marketplace.
Windows is not user friendly? Ugh, yeah. Compare Windows Server 2003 click and configure (group policies, even load balancing, clustering and many more) to the battle field you find in many *NIX systems.
Vista, even though Duncan still thinks it’s XP with a new suit, is a kick a$$ OS. You just have to discover all the features, but hardly anyone knows more than 4% of the XP features anyway, so who cares.
Mac nerds have been fooling the XP security holes years long. Today Vista’s UAC is not user friendly because you have to click twice to install/delete something. WTF?! Hypocrites!
On another note, on Monday I really must ask my boss why a multi-billion company works with MS and not with *NIX and Open Office. Is it really because MS is more expensive? F*ck dat!