You must have heard of it. Paul Graham recently wrote an article on microsoft entitled “Microsoft is dead“. But is it?
On the web, Microsoft is inexistant, apart from My Space (don’t remember it’s name exactly), it’s invisible and all the major breakthroughs are now done through the internet with Web 2.0. Yet, the beast is not dead yet; it rules over the kingdom of desktops and it’s not tomorrow that Linux or MAC is going to force it to retire.
The question is: Does Microsoft has an Internet strategy or is it content to rule desktops? Let’s face it, the day Microsoft decides to make the web its hunting ground, it will draw a massive amount of money and buy a few companies and it will be on the heels of its competitors.
Yet, a big difference is there if you compare Apple, Google and Microsoft. Who is in charge of these companies? For Apple and Google, it’s tech guys while Steve Ballmer is a businessman! No doubt Steve has flair for good business but is it all that’s needed in the World of IT?
Random thoughts ... 
Seeing the competition Microsoft faces from the open-source community, like free, but powerful Linux and all its varieties, it seems surprising that they are still holding on!
Seeing the amount of pressure they put on customers, specially from the anti-piracy measures they implement and the restrictions like DRM, people are starting to move to the Liberty Zone that’s open-source and its CopyLeft philosophy…
Now, Web 2.0 is becoming a major player in the world of IT. Let’s hope MS can hold on and we get to see what they have in stock. Even if I hate to admit it, Microsoft did bring a revolution in the world of IT with its OS.
I believe that a good CEO for IT / tech companies should be people who’ve got a strong background in IT / technology, and that they’ve done something great. Plus of course, be super leaders.
For Apple it’s Steve Jobs – great man. For Google, it’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin. For MS, it was good old Bill Gates.
At that time Bill was doing things well, though we may discuss MS way of doing things was not that OK.
Now it’s Steve Ballmer – just a businessman.
In the fast growing IT field, if you’re just the best businessman on earth but no computer geek, then you can’t really do things super-well. You may say that you may appoint some geek guys, but that won’t help a lot.
Being a problem-solver man and a profit-man makes all the difference. A problem-solver man brings new and innovative solutions that are needed for the hi-tech company. A profit-man just looks at profits and won’t do much to solve things. And the geeks who work with a profit-man may and will surely find it super-hard to push forward for new ideas at top administration. The profit-man will not voluntarily venture into new ideas. The geeks on the other hand will.
Tech companies are a new business model. The old ways of doing things don’t really apply – make an MBA and you’re a super tech company manager.
Thus Google and Apple have a lot of new things that they’ve introduced. MS has not done so many niceties.
But is it dead? Well, for the time-being. Not until Ballmer finds the great new idea. And as time goes by, the advances that Apple and Google may be making are growing at a fast pace day-by-day and catching them might be an illusion since it may then be too late.
Perhaps removing Ballmer might be better for MS? Then who’ll be that super geek and super leader – both in one? I can’t see anyone – as a public point of view.
Or do like Netscape – make all MS apps open-source so that they’re not dead! Kidding…. I think.
When you occupy more than four fifths of both the desktop and browser world right now as I’m writing, you should be happy for the next few years to come!
As it’s often said, free is good but at what price?
well am fed upp with winfdows..nt i shifted to linux..using ubuntu
am having a real hard time to learn to use this though
Oh! Thank for nice post about Microsoft is dead!!!. If you want share more about this topic, you can read it at http://forum.techwoo.com/#5507_microsoft_is_dead