BW: Steve Ballmer Should Focus -- Like the Other Steve
by , 1:05 PM EST, February 8th, 2008
Big mergers in the high-tech industry have been colossal failures, and the same can be expected of Microsoft and Yahoo. Steve Ballmer, who appears to be anxious to make his mark on his company should stop trying to be all things to all people, according to Arik Heseldahl at BusinessWeek on Friday. Instead, Microsoft should focus, like the other Steve. The one who's killing Microsoft in the smartphone business.
In an open letter to Steve Ballmer at Microsoft, Mr. Hesseldahl was particularly crisp and direct in his criticism of Microsoft's proposal to buy Yahoo.
"After all, who knows what will happen to the Internet while you're busy splicing these companies together," Mr. Hesseldahl wrote. "Name one truly important Internet innovation that has come internally from either Microsoft or Yahoo. I can't either. All the best new stuff at Yahoo has come by way of acquisitions: Flickr, Oddpost, Zimbra, and Overture."
Mr. Hesseldahl pointed out that, in addition to the expected difficulties in the acquisition and Microsoft's sprawling growth, other things have been left unattended, like Vista and a Web-based office suite. Instead, Microsoft has dabbled as a consumer electronics company, a digital media company, and with Yahoo in its sights, an online advertising company. "Before long you'll probably want to sell me telephone and TV service, too," Mr. Hesseldahl wrote with only a little hyperbole.
The round house punch, however, came when the noted BW author compared Steve Ballmer's lack of focus to the laser-like focus of the other Steve down south. "You know, the turtle-necked guy in California who keeps annoying you by selling iPods and computers that typically don't run on Windows. You could learn a lot from him. Focus saved his company from oblivion. Apple does what it's good at, and it expands into new areas carefully," Mr. Hesseldahl explained.
This is the very best explanation of what ails Microsoft in 2008 published to date.
After reading it, one has to wonder why Microsoft, as Mr. Hesseldahl pointed out, with a server, OS, and Office business that generates a $43B revenue with a 62 percent operating profit, seems so bent on self destruction.
Microsoft has built their business by catering to every need and whim of the corporate enterprise community, with overwhelming marketing, monopolistic exclusivity, and platform and training certification programs. Resulting in an incredible domination and profitability. Microsoft's business is serving the business community. MS is a slow-moving giant.
Their inabilities to innovate inhouse, quickly bring products to market, and quickly update and service trends will doom them in fast-moving consumer markets.
They should leave the trendy consumer areas to the fast movers, or suffer further corporate embarassment.
CloseViewName:Guest Fri Feb 08, 2008 5:01 pmSubject:
Quote
Guest wrote: ASP is microsoft techology to build server side pages. Most of the sites in interner are build with this techology.
I suspect more sites are using PHP than ASP. And I further suspect that the number of sites using just plain old HTML dwarfs both these scripting languages.
CloseViewName:pfueyPosts: 2Joined: 08 Feb 2008 Fri Feb 08, 2008 5:22 pmSubject:
It seems to me that the worst day, business wise, in Microsoft's history was they day they weren't broken up. Had they been broken up each new company (1 company developing apps the other developing os) might have had to compete against other companies and in the end would have produced better products. Compared to now where the general consensus is that vista sucks and office 2008 isn't far behind.
MS has innovated a lot in the web space, but to name just one innovation that everyone is all a buzz about... MS is the father of AJAX. Not the term AJAX, but the underlying technology. A quote from the Wikipedia article on AJAX: "Although the term Ajax was coined in 2005, most of the technologies that enable Ajax started a decade earlier with Microsoft's initiatives in developing Remote Scripting." I think people's dislike of MS often colors their ability to see what contributions it has made and therefore to make a fair assessment.
I totally agree with the article. Microsoft is slowly going downhill every year, if I were them, I would seriously be worried about Apple. Its only a matter of time before OSX becomes the dominant operating system, and were apple ever allow the OS to be sold and put on regular boxes, then Microsoft would be gasping their last breath. As a PC user, I admire apple products, I just want to be able to put together a machine with my own two hands. Were it not for that fact, I would have switched to a Mac a long time ago. They are fun machines, no activation to worry about, practically virus free, and everything just seems to work. Plus they made it easy to move to a new machine when you upgrade, and you can re-install the OS without loosing all your stuff and everything is identical after a re-install, unlike windows. Plus you can dual boot on every machine that they currently sell, something that us PC users can never do at the moment. Get an apple if your not a techie, they aren't expensive, contrary to what your led to believe.
You are so right, when IE 4 came out I was blown away by DHTML and no one noticed until 2005 when the open source fanatics finally got a clue. MS actually does this quite a bit, they create lots of innovative technology or features which are buried in feature bloated products. MS even invented Widgets. As for Apple, their only innovation is their brand. Their brand is the crummy disrupter, nothing they have done has been unique or even original. People buying iPods are starting to clue in now as they price compare MP3 players are realize they don't need an iPod or iPhone and can get something like an Archos which has 5 times the features and at least more than twice the disk space of even the highest end iPod or iPhone.
hardmanb wrote: Microsoft has built their business by catering to every need and whim of the corporate enterprise community, with overwhelming marketing, monopolistic exclusivity, and platform and training certification programs. Resulting in an incredible domination and profitability. Microsoft's business is serving the business community. MS is a slow-moving giant.
Their inabilities to innovate inhouse, quickly bring products to market, and quickly update and service trends will doom them in fast-moving consumer markets.
They should leave the trendy consumer areas to the fast movers, or suffer further corporate embarassment.
Worse yet MS was (and still is) expanding while the anti-trust findings of was to be returned against them. And the Judicial mockery as to what transpired afterwards, would be like Judge Judy hollering bologna, at the person winning the money in a case and treating the loser with kid gloves.
Microsoft sees someone else doing something successful with "software" and wants to own it. MSN/Live search vs Google search, X-Box vs Playstation, Zune vs IPod, Windows Mobile vs iPhone (actually was Windows Mobile vs a Java flavor originally), etc etc etc.
No, you're right that Apple has never really been about technology innovation, in most cases. Apple is about doing a few things, but PRESENTING them well, and in a usable manner.
To put it another way: Apple rarely innovates technology, but they are one of the few who CONSISTENTLY innovate interface.
Where usability architects have frequently been second-class citizens at many developers, Apple gives them quite a lot of responsibility and respect. So while they almost never come up with some new /technology/, they are really, really good at putting things together to make a far more usable package.
The iPod was not ground-breaking; there were already mobile digital media players. Some had more features. Many STILL have more features. But Apple came up with what was arguably the most usable interface method. The iPhone is not groundbreaking in terms of technologies; I could pick up an HTC Windows Mobile smartphone and potentially have more FEATURES. But the iPhone is, for many people, more usable, even though it is less powerful.
My father would not be able to figure out an Archos. (My father still has trouble with his generic simplistic Samsung cell phone.) However, he can use his iPod nano without trouble. Similarly, he has trouble remembering how to upload a file to a website (FTP, S/FTP, SCP, these things are alphabet soup to him), but he has no trouble whatsoever dealing with Time Machine to get back a missing file under Leopard.
To me, that counts for something, even when the underlying technology is nothing new. (After all, in the case of Time Machine using hard links, the technology is practically ancient.)
The era of the desktop is over, didn't anyone else catch Billy's announce when he said he was stepping down from MS to focus on his charity? It will take about three decades for MS to be gone, but those of us who know have moved on...to Linux...stick with them and suffer, or ride the wave.
CloseViewName:Guest Fri Feb 08, 2008 10:08 pmSubject:
Yawn, yet another macnut predicting the demise of Microsoft, too bad for them Microsoft keeps making tons of money and promises more of the same in the future to its investors, unlike the jealous little folks at apple.
Steve Ballmer is a megalomaniacal techno-imperialist, which, res ipsa loquitur, will be ultimately self-destructive. Hopefully you have already sold your stock in the relevant entities.
I wish I had an Apple Powerbook, but for the same price, I can buy FOUR Dell Vostro notebooks with the same amount of ram, hard drive, and dvd rw. Also - the lousy Everything You Know is Wrong Vista has sold about 20 million copies, while the great Apple OS Leopard is succeeding wildly at 2 million copies. What's wrong with that picture?
CloseViewName:Guest Fri Feb 08, 2008 11:13 pmSubject: Focus
Without UNIX and open source (and advancement in H/W) you'll all still be using Windows 3.1. Dig up the Comp. Sci. archives and ask MS to open up the source code to compare them to already existing technology at the time. MS did not invent widgets. NT was nothing more than slapping free UNIX server code on top of Windows (that's why the OS is so bloated). Interestingly MS did its best work - IE - when it was giving it away for free (I even liked the UNIX version that ran on my Sun and HP/UX terminals) and fighting for its life (Bill knew the browser is the future desktop). Who cares who invented what anyway. Are any of you guys paying a royalty to the guys who invented the internet or the GUI? If ASP was so great MS would not have create ASP.NET, and what is ASP.NET+IIS? Works and feels like ColdFusion - some will even say CF is easier to set up, develop, deploy, more flexible, and runs faster and slicker. And what is ColdFusion but Java under the hood? Google did not invent search either, so what? SO WHAT?
Everybody just focus back to the point of the article - MS should focus on innovating on its own instead of wasting its time and money with the Netscape of tomorrow, which is Yahoo. Want to know what the result of the merger will be? Just look at the outcome of AOL-Netscape and HP-Compact marriages. I suspect if it happens half the most innovative people at Yahoo will leave to work elsewhere so that THEY can FOCUS, perhaps create another Firefox like startup that MS cannot beat. At this rate the Windows OS and Office will continue to lose their market share as people discover free, cheaper, or slicker alternatives. All Balmer has to do is look at what happens when you focus more on your enemies (like Oracle/Sun on MS) instead of just focusing on what you do best and keep moving forward.
So the deeper question here is - Is Balmer actually right? Is MS again fighting for the future of Windows presence at one time won by leveraging everything on NT and IE? Even in all Windows shops it's still hard not to also find Cisco and Novell. As far as the server and PC space Windows has peaked. They still sell handsets and land line phone services too, but that's not where Balmer want the future of MS to be. Looking at worldwide consumer trends, built-in corporate inertia, and how innovations nowadays only seems to come out of the left field and no longer from any monolithic giants (even Google), seems like the one in the difficult predicament may not be Yahoo, it may actually be Microsoft. All dinosaurs have their day. Just look at IBM, old communist regimes, the music industry, and Detroit motors. Extinction is inevitable. I gotta hand it to him - Gates is smart.
CloseViewName:Guest Fri Feb 08, 2008 11:29 pmSubject:
200 million copies in U.S. or everywhere. OK. I read about 200 copies in China in the first week. In China! All the rest are pirated copies that MS don't make a dime on. Look at the world population in the coming future and that market - I'd give MS the 200 million.
DOS - bought
Win 1.0a-3.11 built
NT 3.1-4 built
Win 95,98,ME - built
XP - built
Vista - built
IIS - built
IE - built
biztalk - built
Office - built
Exchange - built
Flight Sim - built
"NT was nothing more than slapping free UNIX server code on top of Windows " - absolute load of crap.
NT was architected by David Cutler, from DEC. It was created in a very similar way to VMS, David's baby at DEC.
It did have a clunky POSIX compatibility but that was mainly to make the new server OS more attractive to current Unix users.
"If ASP was so great MS would not have create ASP.NET". Another silly point. So MS should NOT evolve a product line? ASP was great, but after a few years of user feedback and R&D the found a way to make an even better architecture. Maybe Linux should stop now, its good enough, right?
One point you folks are missing. MS is big, has cash, and many employees. They don't need to "focus" on one thing. It they did, they would be a much smaller company.
I run Windows, Mac, and Linux every day of my life. Each has its place.
Believe me, Apple doesn't want to "focus", it wants to be MS when it grows up. Apple had a chance to dominate the market back in the late 80s but screwed up. They have a good nitch and are growing, but they are not yet ready to serve the needs of business and consumer like MS is.
Google has deployed web-based software that is making MS irrelevant. If MSFT could port their software to the web, they could directly compete with Google.
If this is such a bad idea why is Google trying to block the transaction? Based on all the bad press, you'd think they'd be wetting their pants as they laugh about how their 2 largest competitors will go down. OR is it that then Google could be seen as a monopoly?
When Microsoft started there were very few competitors with most of the products that they were offering. Now, not only are there many competitors on every single product they offer, but some of them are for free.
Many people complained about the redesign with the latest Office Suite. In offices I heard, "where is X", or "what did they do with "Y". Vista was a complete waste of time and effort. Nobody likes Vista. Some reports show it has less then 1% penetration. All major companies that offer Vista also have a free XP downgrade option when you get a new PC.
The only thing that is keeping Microsoft going is history. It's only a matter of time until enough people get sick of their buggy, un-innovative, annoying, slow & simply non-working software and switch to competitors.
I myself switch to Apple last year, and I've been very satisfied. My business servers run on Linux, and all my laptops, and personal computers are Apples. I do run VMFusion wiht XP for one application for business that I need to use - other then that, I use absolutely no Microsoft products anymore. They are way to annoying.
Even the Xbox is loosing its initial momentum. Their buggy game system crashes with the "red circle of death" so often, and it's preventing their growth. Wii & PS3 will dominate Xbox very soon - it already started.
Office already has Google docs, and Apple Works/iLife for competition among hundred of others. Outlook has Mac Mail, Thunderbird, among many other options. Windows is loosing ground as more and more companies realize that creating software for Apple will boost their sales tremendously, and therefore their OS marketshare which already has server, business, and retail flavors are all being taken over. It started with server OS switches, then retail switches, and now business is switching over as well.
If they don't do something new soon - they will be destroyed. They can no longer think they are a giant and sit back and watch the money rake in. They are at a crossroads, and it's my belief that eventually they will be mostly out of the PC based software industry in the next 10 years, and they will focus on internet devices.
"Many people complained about the redesign with the latest Office Suite. In offices I heard, "where is X", or "what did
they do with "Y"."
I think the new Office interface is the coolest yet!!
"Vista was a complete waste of time and effort. Nobody likes Vista."
-- I do
" Some reports show it has less then 1% penetration. All major companies that offer Vista also have a free XP downgrade option when you get a new PC."
Better check your facts again. Vista is moving fast, and with Windows 7 just around the corner, well, let's just say MS is going to be around for a long long time. Do you not wonder why you still have to run VMWare on your mac
Also did it ever occur to you that the only place where Macs sell real good is in the US (and to consumers). Outside of there and in most businesses, Windows is the key.
> Win 1.0a-3.11 built
v.1.0 was useless. v.2.0's windowing was copied from Apple, and they sued. 3.0+ was the only successful one
> NT 3.1-4 built
When 3.0 development began in 1989, it was to be called ... ahem .. OS/2 3.0. OS/2 was a joint operation between IBM and Microsoft. MS later turned coat and used what it had learned and the parts it had developed for the partnership with the team it hired away from DEC.
> Win 95,98,ME - built
Win 95 was built except for some parts, notably the TCP/IP stack which was taken (legally) from BSD Unix. The Plug and Play architecture was innovative, but it didn't really work.
Win 98 was a recommended update at the time of release, but only for improved driver and USB support.
Win ME wasn't recommended as an upgrade by very many people since all the functionality was available through Win 98 updates.
> XP - built
You missed Win 2000 here. At the time of release, most businesses considered 2000 to be highly superior to XP. They were, however, both built at MS. Many consider Win 2000 to be MS's best OS to date.
> Vista - built
OK. Yes. And it took forever (as in DNF kind of forever) and billions of dollars.
> IIS - built
In house with notoriously bad security up to and including 5.1. Most consider the early versions to be poorly-designed software.
> IE - built
Ummm. No. It was licensed from Spyglass. Spyglass later sued MS because MS never paid any royalties. IE is free, you know.
> biztalk - built
Granted. An interesting product.
> Office - built
Word was built, though most of the concepts were brought over from Bravo at Parc.
Excel was basically a copy of VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3.
Powerpoint was purchased from Forethought
Access was completely developed at MS, but is generally considered a point of taunting by software developers.
> Exchange - built
Originally basically a mail server based on X.400 and X.500 standards.
> Flight Sim - built
Let's be serious. A flight simulator innovative? My father was a pilot.
CloseViewName:Guest Sat Feb 09, 2008 5:49 amSubject: Duh
"Yeah, Jobs is SOO smart that Apple wouldn't even BE in business today if Bill Gates hadn't just HANDED Jobs $180 million back around 2000 to bail Apple out... " - bzzz, wrong, it was 1997 and Apple's woes had nothing to do with Jobs, he was fired from the company in 1985, it was then run into the ground by morons and Jobs was hired back in late 1996 to save an ailing company. Since then he's given us OSX, iMac, iPod+iTunes, iPhone and turned the company around, that's a pretty smart man there, wouldn't you say??
"Funny how the Mac-wads ALWAYS seem to overlook that one little point... "
Funny how you think $150 million from MS was the saviour when Apple had in excess of $1billion at the time. A one-off donation doesn't save a sinking company, that's up to the CEO.
"Yeah, Jobs is a genius alright...That's why in spite of ALL their vaunted success, M$ continues to make all the money." - so by your logic there can't be more than one successful company? That's quite petty and narrow-minded.
CloseViewName:Intruder- TMO Mac SpecialistPosts: 2980Joined: 07 Jul 2004 Sat Feb 09, 2008 1:35 pmSubject:
I really wish the MS apologists would check their facts before claiming that the $150M from Microsoft was a "bailout" of Apple. That has been disproved so many times it's silly. $150M doesn't bail out a company when they have over $1B in the bank at the time. It does, however, get MS out of several troubling lawsuits filed by Apple, including those over stolen code used in Windows Media.
"NT was architected by David Cutler, from DEC. It was created in a very similar way to VMS, David's baby at DEC."
Dude, you're so right! Thanks for pointing out how MS invents new things... VMS is nothing at all like UNIX... I forgot D. Cutler invented everything... And if MS and Windows 3.1 did not come to the rescue, VMS would've probably died, as DEC lost so much market to other server companies during late 90s (like how my old company dropped DEC)... Wait, HP still use VMS and there's openVMS... Yeah, I guess none of us regularly uses Linux, Mac, and Windows like you... just kidding!
You're probably right. MS should not focus. Look what happens when they bear down to create a new OS like Vista. Even my .NET instructor said it sucked and is waiting for SP2 before he uses it.
All kidding aside, your comments are appreciated. I was merely responding to people using ASP and Widgets as proof of how innovative MS is. ASP had to evolve since it was not much different than CGI or PHP. MS does a good job when they take someone else's idea and make it better (give or take XBOX)... Wait, isn't that what the Mac detractors accuse Apple of being? I guess redesigning an idea better and more usable to consumers is appreciated as much as inventing the idea or owning the patent.
Everybody wants to make as much money as MS. Everybody buy/borrow/steal others' ideas and make them better - that's how IT evolves. Everybody works in a mixed environment nowadays, and a good portion over the Web. Lots of business people who makes a living with MS Office and Project use them on a Mac because they appreciate how Office looks and works on a Mac, so perhaps everything does have its place.
Sure, MS can afford to throw its weight and money around, but who knows how well this deal will turn out for them. Investing a year's worth of your income on something (which is what MS is doing) better result in a decent return. I just don't think it's worth it. At least wait another 6-12 months when Yahoo stock declines even more to buy it for cheaper. Like you said - time will tell. The prediction about MS decline is probably as prophetic as the prognostication about the death of mainframes.
CloseViewName:Intruder- TMO Mac SpecialistPosts: 2980Joined: 07 Jul 2004 Mon Feb 11, 2008 9:58 amSubject: Re: MS Built plenty
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Anonymous wrote: Just a few of Many...
...
Flight Sim - built
Hate to break it to ya, but Microsoft Flight Simulator started out as an Apple ][ program created by Bruce Atwick and subLOGIC in 1980. Microsoft bought it in 1996 when they acquired BAO (Bruce Atwick Organization).
CloseViewName:ctopherPosts: 100Joined: 25 Aug 2006 Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:33 pmSubject:
Quote
Intruder wrote:
Quote
Anonymous wrote: Just a few of Many...
...
Flight Sim - built
Hate to break it to ya, but Microsoft Flight Simulator started out as an Apple ][ program created by Bruce Atwick and subLOGIC in 1980. Microsoft bought it in 1996 when they acquired BAO (Bruce Atwick Organization).
Actually it's "Artwick" and he sold the assets in November 1995 (ok, almost 1996)
. I think you had your analogies crossed up.
