twitter's Journal: Yet Another Reporter Discovers M$ is Stupid.

Time Magazine recently called Microsoft "an empire in rapid decline." Now reporters are starting to show open contempt. John Naughton of the Guardian savages M$'s management, products and game plan with his wonderfully written, "Slavish reporters join Microsoft in cloud cuckoo land"

It turns out that we were unduly dazzled by the Masters of the Universe, but we had to wait until they had vaporised the US economy before getting wise to the fact. ... we see it [misplaced awe] in the way even hardened hacks go weak when offered an audience with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or even, God help us, Steve Ballmer, chief of Microsoft.

Microsoft has become an embarrassing shadow of its former self. Once it was a lean, mean, agile and ruthless. Now it is a middle-aged, bloated, sluggish company having difficulty keeping up with internet-driven change. Watching it trying to play catch-up with Google, social networking and 'cloud computing' is a bit like watching one's maiden aunt trying to be cool on Facebook.

This is not a company that knows what it's doing. Ballmer and Gates were once masters of their universe. But nothing lasts forever. Ask Lehman Brothers.

Give him time and he might learn that M$ has never had much to offer or been agile at anything but perception management.