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Microsoft is Dead

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f0dder:
Better start distributing the SSRIs. :)
-KenR (April 10, 2007, 10:24 AM)
--- End quote ---

I think this a lot of people would get a hefty serotonin boost if Microsoft went bust, so wouldn't it be irresponsible to also feed them with re-uptake inhibitors? You might as well throw in some MAO blockers while you're at it, then :P

iphigenie:
well i do understand his point. But i do think it is a case of apple and oranges.

A few years ago if you were in the tech or software business, then you were scared of MS coming in and stealing your market - by launching their own vaporware, that could be enough!

Nowadays most start ups are in the web arena, and in that market the one to be scared off is google - piles of cash, a brand that is still very strong, and still fast enough to react quickly.

I don't think it means MS is dead, even as a threat. I think its just a sign that most new ventures are in the web arena. If you are in the desktop software arena you probably are still scared of them killing your product with a 2 line press release...

It also shows that most of those startups aren't all that clued up about the industry they are in. If you are a startup you should be wary and informed about a lot of possible threats, not the just the big obvious one. There are a lot of very cash rich high tech giants that are funding lots of internal start ups and buying others and if you are not aware of the risk that people like MS, IBM, Oracle, CA, Adobe, Symantec etc. might step all over your little niche one day... then you are not doing your risk management properly

zridling:
Paul's article was definitely written to be techmemed. However, Microsoft has not had a good decade. Sure it's had successes, but its stock continues to take a beating, Vista can't be called "secure" by any measure now (with five "critical" updates in the first 9 days of April already), Office 2007 floundering, Zune is a bust, Xbox is great, but still losing cash, MS-OOXML is desperately chasing ODF in the ISO standard category, and Google running circles around the company at every turn. Say what you will, but Microsoft doesn't innovate, and there's where Paul isn't worried. The only thing Microsoft can do is buy him out, but spend one day in Vista and you'll see how far Microsoft has gone astray. There's no excitement either at the company, with its employees (known now more for their daily defections than their acquisitions), and certainly not with any of its software. The only real new desktop application they've built in the last 12 years was OneNote, and OneNote 2007 took a couple of steps backward on usability (e.g., the autosave feature is a disaster). I could go on and on. Sure, Microsoft has enough cash to last another 50 years in some capacity.

Meanwhile open source continues its encroachment everywhere — from phones to servers to application software to the desktop OS.

f0dder:
Heh, that "linuxisbetter" page is pretty retarded. It has some decent points, but there's just sooo much wrong with it. But that's a topic of it's own.

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