Break Microsoft Up 355
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Tom Worstall writes in Forbes that the only way to get around the entrenched culture that has made Microsoft a graveyard for the kind of big ideas that have inspired companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon is to split the company up so as to remove conflicts between new and old products. With Ballmer's departure, instead of finding someone new to run the company, bring in experts to handle the legal side and find suitable CEOs for the new companies. 'The underlying problem for Microsoft is that the computing market has rapidly left behind the company's basic strategy of controlling the machines that people use with operating-system software,' says Erik Sherman. 'The combination of mobile devices that broke Microsoft's grip on the client end, and cloud computing that didn't necessarily need the company in data centers, shattered this form of control.' Anyone can see how easily you could split off the gaming folks, business division, retail stores, and hardware division says John Dvorak. Each entity would have agreements in place for long-term supply of software and services. 'This sort of shake up would ferret out all the empire builders and allow for new and more creative structures to emerge. And since everyone will have to be in a semi-startup mode, the dead wood will be eliminated by actual hard work.'"
What's good for others apparently is no good for M (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What's good for others apparently is no good fo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's good for others apparently is no good fo (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope.
The problem is that there's people running Microsoft who still think the way to sell more Windows 8 isn't to listen to customers and fix Windows 8's problems, it's to make (eg.) the next release of Direct3D Windows-8-only thereby "forcing" people to upgrade (LOL!)
Re:What's good for others apparently is no good fo (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. It seems to me that Microsoft still has the idea lodged in their collective heads that they're in a position to say, "Fuck you if you don't like our product. You have to buy it anyway." Unfortunately, they are still kind of in that position, but their position is increasingly tenuous.
Re:What's good for others apparently is no good fo (Score:5, Funny)
I think that's on the back of their business cards, in very small print.
not that position (Score:5, Insightful)
Howso? I don't see them in that position at all.
A person or business can set themselves up with the best of technology *without ever using a Microsoft product*...Can you name one significant area where that isn't true?
Sure, pre-Intel/Mac days for some database stuff a Windows machine is the only thing that made sense, but those days are long gone.
I think M$ is dead...watch closely and observe. This is what it looks like when a giant tech company fails.
Re:What's good for others apparently is no good fo (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that there's people running Microsoft who still think the way to sell more Windows 8 isn't to listen to customers and fix Windows 8's problems,
There's a reason for this.
The root of the problem is that Microsoft believes in a zero-sum game, namely that:
"Empowering the customer results in Microsoft losing power."
This is a very common attitude in the publishing industry. They would rather lose their customers than lose their grip on power.
This is the driving philosophy that explains so much of what's going on in the industry:
* DRM -- Screw paying customers for the sake of retaining power over them
* Artificial limitations -- Hurt the customer so that products don't cannibalize each other
* Metro -- Badly inconvenience the customer for the sake of some dubious strategic marketing theories
* Locked-down RT bootloader -- Make the hardware less valuable simply to prevent a few Android installs
The list goes on and on.
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In my role as a primary policy maker to many large global companies, I've outright dictated a complete ban of anything with Windows 8 and a refusal to allow it's connectivity to any network primarily because the user interface is so foul in every possible way and hinders efficiencies. Fortunately my emo
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I love how badly this strategy is backfiring. A lot of game developers have realized that OpenGL is a better choice than D3D, for the simple fact that if they use OpenGL, their work is easily portable between PS4, iOS, Android, OS X, Linux, and others, while with DirectX they're stuck with Windows and XBox.
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I think the problem is that their unified vision is anything but unified. Hell, they can't even make up their minds about what Windows 8 is supposed to be.
By contrast, their development and cloud products are getting more synced up as each month passes. Their work on Azure is probably the best example of MS unifying a bunch of teams to a common goal.
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It should have been fine this iteration. The required fixes aren't major* and there was no shortage of people telling them what's wrong with it.
* Mostly just to add a start button and optional boot-to-desktop (for all those desktop machines, duh!)
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The start menu wasn't 'incredibly awful' until they broke it in Windows 7. Then they said 'no-one uses the start menu, so let's get rid of it'.
The only thing they need to do to fix Windows 8 is remove the GUI and put back the one from Windows 7, preferably with the Windows XP start menu.
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The major problem is that it keeps dumping you into "Metro" mode while you're trying to use desktop programs.
Getting back from metro mode to desktop mode takes some effort, and it's a constant annoyance.
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I can tell you're not in marketing. (Or maybe you're in the marketing division of Microsoft...your attitude is precisely ht problem they have)
The web is full of people not buying Windows 8 because they heard there's no start button. They want a start button? Microsoft should give it to them.
After you get the machine in their hands they can discover the new way of doing things and decide if they like it or not. The point is not to put any obstacles before the first step.
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Unify them by making them totally separate functional modes. Interesting strategy, that's for sure.
Yes. Microsoft even screwed that up.
Metro apps should have been able to run in Windows on the desktop. Instead they split the OS into two glaringly incompatible modes, and forced users to keep switching between them.
Their problem was that no-one was going to buy a Microsoft tablet without apps, and no-one was going to write apps for a tablet with no market share. So they had to push that Metro crap onto desktop users to try to get people to write apps that could then run on tablets and phones.
Re:What's good for others apparently is no good fo (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, while Windows Mobile used to be the best option for a smartphone out there, and shows that MS were at least trying to be in that market a long time ago.. the fact remains that they haven't come up with anything good on their own for a long time. They try to muscle their way in on everything, rather than making people want their devices. Look at all that shit with the Xbone. Xbox Live had started turning a profit, but they weren't happy with that, and kept trying to push ways to squeeze even more money out of their subscribers. If they focused on creating good products that people love, rather than thinking "how can we take a piece of this emerging market?", they'd be a lot better off.
Re:What's good for others apparently is no good fo (Score:5, Interesting)
they haven't come up with anything good on their own for a long time
I'd say that they at least deserved credit for Kinect. While it was obviously released in response to the unforeseen success of the original Wii and its novel control methods, the fact remains that it went beyond being just a "me too" product and was genuinely innovative in its own right.
That said, it was arguably the exception rather than the rule, probably because it came from the XBox division and wasn't a threat [slashdot.org] to the entrenched interests and politics of the main Windows and Office divisions that have crushed so much potential innovation within MS.
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The Kinect was a great piece of kit, but in its next iteration, it went right back to "How can we use this to monetize our customers?" Turning into a spying platform to serve targeted ads did nothing but turn people off buying the latest.
Re:What's good for others apparently is no good fo (Score:4, Informative)
Well, they bought the Kinect ... so if the extent of Microsoft's 'innovation' is technology they buy, then yes. But in terms of a single really ground breaking piece of technology Microsoft developed in-house, it's much harder to think of recent examples.
Yes, the Kinect is a pretty good system, but let's not lose sight of the fact that it was purchased technology. All this means is Microsoft is still rich enough and occasionally observant enough to pick up technology other people have created.
In terms of their own creation of products from scratch -- I don't think their recent track record is all that impressive. Sure, they've got bazillions of dollars and can keep buying stuff, but as an innovative technology company goes, they've proven a little stagnant recently. Their tablets, phones, Windows 8 ... none of those are doing anywhere near as well as a company the size of Microsoft would expect, and Microsoft s bordering on being a bit player in the mobile market.
Re:What's good for others apparently is no good fo (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry - but that is not 100% correct. Being a former MS employee, they were working in their research division on Project Natal in the 90's, which became the backbone of the Kinect. I saw it at many research fairs at the Redmond campus.
Re:What's good for others apparently is no good fo (Score:5, Insightful)
Why did it take them 15-20 years to get it out of the research labs?!!?
Re:What's good for others apparently is no good fo (Score:5, Insightful)
In terms of their own creation of products from scratch
That's a pretty high bar you've set. It seems like for you, to qualify as an innovation you have to single handedly build every component within the device at the company internally from first principles (aka "scratch"). The Kinect was as much an innovation as the iPod... it was an evolution of technology, built on existing technology but packaged in a way that brought widespread consumer adoption.
Can you point to any device from any company that is built fully in-house from scratch? Just looking at the companies listed by TFA as innovative, I can't think of one. Amazon's Kindle Fire? Built on top of Android and chasing the sucess of the iPad. Google's Android? Bought. Google's self driving car? They bought the talent from the DARPA challenges. Google Glass? Under the same principles you will not call the Kinect innovative Google Glass is not innovative - built on the technology others have created. What about the original iPad? Every piece of functioning technolgoy within was purchased from another company. So maybe the OS is all in-house.... but iOS is based on OSX which is based on BSD, so I guess they call short of your bar as well.
Sorry, ALL technology today is built off the technology others have created. The Kinect used Primesense's sensor to create an innovative gaming device the same way the iPad used someone elses's touch screen technology to create an innovative tablet. Give credit where it is due.
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They only need to first create the universe.
ALl the hard ware and parts of the Kinect that make it the Kinect where bought.
the iPod was built in house. Yes, it was a clever assembly of things, most of which already existed. But it was design in house. MS bought all the key Kinect tech after years of failing to be able to do it themselves.
Re:What's good for others apparently is no good fo (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, let me clarify ... because clearly you feel the need to be pedantic.
What unique combination of technologies to produce something novel and groundbreaking has MS developed over the last 10 years?
They couldn't make their own motion controller work, so they bought one and integrated that with XBox, but they didn't build it. The Zune was a "me too" product which apparently 'squirted' and nobody bought. Their tablets and phones, just more "me too" and the market doesn't seem interested. Tabbed browsing, Firefox had that before MS. I'm told at one point they made decent keyboards and mice -- but not what I'd call innovative.
Other than that, I don't believe Microsoft has 'innovated' much of anything in years. And in a lot of cases, they've done a piss poor job of copying what other people created.
I'm not saying you need to create every single piece of technology from scratch without relying on anything before. I'm saying they haven't strung together existing bits of technology to create anything which is novel or innovative in a very long time.
If Microsoft is reduced to making copies of other products, resting on their laurels and collecting revenue from Office and OS upgrades and not making new and interesting things ... then Microsoft despite all of this money on R&D is either pissing it away, or the management are incapable of taking it to the product stage and have anybody buy it.
Sorry, but Microsoft has become everything they used to criticize IBM for being -- too large to adapt, too rigid in their thinking, and missing out on what it is people are looking for in some of these newer technologies.
By rights with their resources and spending on R&D Microsoft should be putting out reams of cool stuff. Instead they've given us tablets and phones nobody wants, Windows 8 and not a whole lot else.
Microsoft may not be in trouble now, but long-term if they're not capable of making anything new and interesting ... they could be really screwed, because gone are the days where they could just trot out an OS every few years and an update to Office and make shit tons of money. You only have to look at their market share in tablets and phones to realize that.
Re:What's good for others apparently is no good fo (Score:4, Insightful)
Kinect was a complete technology even before they bought it
No it was not. Primesense had a sensor and some algorithms in a consumer and developer unfriendly package. The sensor wasn't a new idea -- structured light has been around for decades The algorithms weren't a new -- the CV algorithms to process the data have been around for decades. Microsoft took these ideas and went the last mile of making it a reality for consumers and developers, which obviously is not easy since no one had done it before.
Microsoft buying the Primesense sensor and using it in their product is equivalent to Apple buying a multi-touch screen and using it in the iPhone. But no one is saying the iPhone wasn't an innovation.
Again, if you're arguing that very little actual innovation takes place, you will see a great deal of agreement.
No, I'm arguing that innovation is almost never the sudden development of a new and radical technology from scratch, but almost always the application or combination of existing technology in new ways. Even look at the Internet, the greatest innovation of our generation, It didn't happen over night, built by one company or entity from scratch; it was an evolution of technologies over 20 or so years.
[T]he Kinect is not innovative, it's just better than other similar things which came before
Really? Something comes out which is better than everything before it and that's not an innovation? What exactly is *your* idea of an innovation. You've told us plenty about what isn't an innovation, but I don't really see any indication from you about what *is* an innovation.
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Really? Something comes out which is better than everything before it and that's not an innovation?
Microsoft didn't do the innovating part. They did the packaging. I hear that Microsoft is spending some money on actual innovation in biotech, though. that makes sense given Gates is massively personally invested in Big Pharma.
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Re:What's good for others apparently is no good fo (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think anybody is saying Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to continue as a single entity with their current strategy. They're saying it's not proving to be a very good strategy, and that the entity known as Microsoft might be more profitable if it was broken into several things.
See, Apple and Google seem to be able to execute on their strategies. But Microsoft is so concerned about cutting into sales off Office or their desktop OSes that some of their other offerings aren't doing so well.
Yes, but has it been working for them? Because, arguably, the Windows Phone and the Windows tablets aren't selling overly well, Windows 8 itself is proving a little lackluster, and Microsoft has generally been stuck doing "me too" for years.
So, either they need to start making different decisions (like allowing one division to do stuff that isn't dictated by another), start dropping products which are underperforming ... or split into multiple divisions so that they can be separate businesses and actually try to thrive.
But I think it's hard to not come to the conclusion that something about how Microsoft is doing their strategy is causing some of their products to be selling terribly.
The "lose money on everything but make it up on volume" works when you're a hugely rich company, but it's still a terrible strategy.
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Imagine if the Apple Mac department had blocked the iPhone and/or iPad because it could eat into the Mac market share (which I'm sure it did). I guess Apple would by far not be as profitable as it is now.
Re:What's good for others apparently is no good fo (Score:4, Informative)
Imagine if the Apple Mac department had blocked the iPhone and/or iPad because it could eat into the Mac market share (which I'm sure it did). I guess Apple would by far not be as profitable as it is now.
The iPhone is indeed killing iPod sales. The iPad is destroying all growth in Mac sales. And Apple is quite happy with that. Steve Jobs himself said (and I'm quite sure he quoted someone else) that "if you don't cannibalise your products, someone else will".
good for the goose, good for the gander (Score:3)
Re:good for the goose, good for the gander (Score:4, Insightful)
point of fact: Mac runs FOSS, iOS is the garden (Score:3)
iOS (iPad and iPhone) is the walled garden.
Mac runs any FOSS applications you want, so yes Mac is great for free and open software users.
I used Linux exclusively for many years. When I was given a Mac Pro with 32 GB of RAM, two $400 graphics cards, etc. I decided to try it out. In 18 months of use, I've not found any OSS applications that don't run nicely on the Mac.
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What the fuck are you reading?
Yeah, if you count 'other' at 40% of the market. And all Android.
Or, if you want an Apple spin. Apple's market share is still more than the next four tablet competitors combined.
Schumpeter (Score:2)
Amusing (Score:4, Insightful)
Why don't all these brilliant analysts go make billions if they are so smart?
Re:Amusing (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they are fucking it up. Royally. They've enjoyed having a de-facto monopoly position for a long time, but since the rise of mobile devices, everything is becoming even more web-centric and cross-platform than before.
Windows and Office are slowly losing their status as requirements to get anything done in business, and they're definitely not needed for home computing any more. Geeks already know this, but the rest of the world is catching on too.
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Because they are fucking it up. Royally. They've enjoyed having a de-facto monopoly position for a long time, but since the rise of mobile devices, everything is becoming even more web-centric and cross-platform than before.
Nothing de-facto about it, they are a criminally convicted monopolist.
In fact, their monopoly is the only thing that keeps them afloat. Windows is still shipped on 90+% of new desktops/laptops. Office makes up a good chunk of those as a bundle. Desktop dominance gave them a foothold in the server market, which they exploited. IE kept people tied to Windows for a long time, but that is crumbling now proper standards are being followed.
Windows and Office are slowly losing their status as requirements to get anything done in business, and they're definitely not needed for home computing any more. Geeks already know this, but the rest of the world is catching on too.
Yay!
I'm slowly bringing the missus to the new world order. All her work is
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You act as if borders and national regulations mean anything to international corporations. If you don't like the laws, restrictions and regulations of country A, your HQ is suddenly in country B and you have to stick to their rules.
Some Caribbean island sure hold a LOT of companies these days, despite their tiny size...
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One of the most successful companies of all time, which is still doing billions in business, and everyone can't wait to tell them how they are fucking it up...
If you look at the numbers, they are clearly fucking it up.
Why don't all these brilliant analysts go make billions if they are so smart?
Because Microsoft has been creating illegal and unethical barriers to fair trade by abusing its monopoly position.
Re:Amusing (Score:5, Informative)
"If you look at the numbers, they are clearly fucking it up."
Revenues for FY 2013 for MSFT were $77.8B, up 5.6% over FY2012. If that's evidence of "fucking it up" then I know of a lot of businesses who'd really like to be fucked up like MSFT -- Canonical, for example is in Mark Knopfler territory financially speaking, Sony's been losing money year on year for a while but is still regarded as successful, same with a bunch of other tech companies large and small.
MS' innovation and expansion days are over, they moved (like IBM did in the 90s) to being a services company several years back instead of pushing for growth because in part they had nowhere left to grow into since they owned 90% of the market for business desktop software and a large chunk of the server OS market too. They don't do hardware like Apple and Samsung because they've got customers who do hardware for them (Dell, HP, the various mobo manufacturers). Even the Surface machines are a tiny part of the MS oeuvre, more technology demonstrators than real products. The only mass-market hardware product line is the Xbox and that's not core to what MS does.
Because Microsoft has been creating illegal and unethical barriers to fair trade by abusing its monopoly position.
1996 called, it wants its "Year of the Linux Desktop" T-shirt back.
Re:Amusing (Score:5, Funny)
Why don't all these brilliant analysts go make billions if they are so smart?
You don't have to be a successful automotive engineer or car designer to take one look at the X-90 [wikipedia.org] and see that someone somewhere, in more ways than one, fucked-up monumentally.
There's your car analogy, for simplicity's sake. ;)
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Re:Amusing (Score:4, Informative)
At one point, so was Enron and the Roman Empire ... that doesn't mean Microsoft hasn't put out some dogs lately, and that they couldn't be making even more money if the division which makes Office wasn't using their strange hold on the company to make sure nothing cuts into their profits.
Are you seriously thinking Windows phone, their tablets, or Windows 8 are hugely successful products?
Microsoft's strategy the last bunch of years has been to prop up unprofitable products until they become successful (XBox) or cancelled (Zune) -- and with the hardware makers pulling back from their tablets and phones to focus on things, it's going to hurt even more.
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I appreciate your view, but at the same time, I can't help but observe that your logic is broken. Making billions but less billions than they previously were making is a bad sign, especially when coupled with a lower percentage of the overall market share and a huge public rejection of your latest flagship products. Gotta look past the number of zeroes.
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One of the most successful companies of all time, which is still doing billions in business, and everyone can't wait to tell them how they are fucking it up...
Well, they are fucking up. There's the old joke: What's the easiest way to become a millionaire? Start with a billion... Microsoft was in a very, very strong position ten years ago. That's why they are still in a reasonably strong position today. But really, if Ballmer had done a good job then we would all have been using Surface tablets for the last three years with the some UI as the M-Phones we were using for the last six years, and we would be poking fun at Apple's and Google's feeble attempts to get in
Re:Amusing (Score:5, Insightful)
Oil tankers tend to go forward a long while even after the engine is off.
MS has been going forward quite a while now without any engine running. And restarting it means that you have to invest a LOT of fuel just to get it going again, unless you strip that tanker down to a speedboat and leave the rusted hulk behind.
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Most of Microsoft's continued profits come from "momentum." Back in the day, everyone HAD to use Windows and Office. If you didn't use Windows and Office, you couldn't do business. (Yes, I know there were always alternatives, but the mindset and market share were such that it was very hard to NOT use Microsoft products.) Today, you don't NEED to use them. Many companies still use them because that's what they've always used (i.e. Momentum) but that can't last forever. At some point, some companies wil
Re:Amusing (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody here is arguing that they are doing billions in business. The issue is that they should be doing many billions in business more than they are. In the words often attributed to Senator Dirksen "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
This is an industry in which incumbent multibillion giants fall, events that many Slashdot saw or experienced first hand. Fundamentals are fundamentals and any company the starts to consistently make the same mistakes that the previous multibillion dollar companies made is likely to have a repeat of the same consequences.
Microsoft treats it's customers (e.g. Windows 8.1 Start Button instead of Menu), manufacturing partners (8.0/8.1 & the Surface), professional advocates (ending Technet) and it's own employees (stacked ranking) with contempt. When your busy pissing off the very people that you need to stay in business you lose their good will. When you lose their good will they start to make fundamental decisions to go with competitors products. The market reflects these changes everywhere from the rise of alternative office suites to failure of Windows phone to the largest consecutive set of multibillion dollar losses the PC market has ever seen.
The giants can and will fall, nobody is entitled to an empire. Unless Microsoft stops treating the very people it needs as the enemy and starts listening to what people keep telling them that they want they will continue to lose their empire. Start by reading this excellent piece from Vanity Fair on Microsoft's Stacked ranking system for their employees [vanityfair.com].
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Why don't all these brilliant analysts go make billions if they are so smart?
Sorry, but this is a really stupid thing to say. Yes, I know you probably think it makes a lot of sense, because lots of people think about things that way, but it's just amazing that you assume that wealth and intelligence are necessarily linked.
First, there's the expectation that smart people are all focused on making making money, as though it's intelligent to waste your life scrambling to accure more money than you can use. Second, you assume that intelligent people can simply think themselves into b
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One of the most successful companies of all time, which is still doing billions in business, and everyone can't wait to tell them how they are fucking it up...
The fact that they remain (absurdly) profitable doesn't mean their strategic position is a good one. What made Microsoft a success for the last 20 years isn't what is going to matter in the next 20 years. The world has changed but Microsoft has struggled with that change. While still very important, PCs aren't the epicenter of computing they once were. Mobile devices are where almost all of the growth is and Microsoft does not have a dominant position or even particularly promising products in that spac
Re:Amusing (Score:4, Interesting)
Well "fucking it up" is one way of putting it. And it's true, if by "fucking it up" people mean moving towards being just another player rather than the dominant player in the market.
Sears was the Amazon of its heyday -- if not more so. It dominated a huge slice of the American retail economy, using the hot technology of the day: the mail order catalog. It spent decades in decine, powered by inertia and massive paid-for infrastructure -- hundreds of yellow brick stand-alone stores and distribution centers across the country built in the 1920s to 1950s. I remember the Sears of the early 70s. Dirty, unattactive stores full of (except for tools) shoddy, undesirable merchandise.
Sears went though a decline-driven break up, divesting itself of insurance, consumer credit, construction and other non-retail operations before selling the rump of the retail business to K-Mart in 2005. "Sears" today is essentially a re-branded K-Mart, and many spun-off pieces of the old Sears conglomerate survive and prosper as independent entities or with new owners in a related business. The problem wasn't with any of the individual pieces of the business, it was moving with the times while managing all the different *kinds* of pieces of the business.
Which is not to say that Microsoft is necessarily going the way of Sears, but there are some interesting parallels. Like Sears, MS exploited an unique market position to enter many other markets. Like Sears, MS has several highly successful cash cow operations that can sustain marginally successful side businesses. That's a blessing in the short term, but sometimes a curse in the long term. In the mobile space, MS wore Palm down with shear financial persistence, only to lose that hard won market to more agile and creative competitors.
MS may still regain its mobile position by funding that business from its cash cows, but it's not sure thing. Doing that across many business areas could translate into a lot of lost profit in the long term, depending on its future success in those areas.
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People may not know how to make billions but people with a basic understanding of numbers can see how Microsoft is worth less than half of what it was when Ballmer started which, to most people is an indication that the company is fucking things up.
He has been CEO since June, 1998.
MSFT Market Cap in 1998 was $244.79 billion.
MSFT market Cap is currently $284.47 billion.
I realize that 16% growth kind of sucks over a 15 year period, but I'm finding it hard to walk away from the numbers thinking that Microsoft is "worth less than half of what it was when Ballmer started"
1999 was their record year for a market cap ($447.21 billion), but that was right before the dot-com bubble burst, so actual thinking people that can recognize cherry picking arent
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I realize that 16% growth kind of sucks over a 15 year period, but I'm finding it hard to walk away from the numbers thinking that Microsoft is "worth less than half of what it was when Ballmer started"
Well, to be really honest, every commodity has at least doubled since 1999, so if you're measuring in USD, then, yeah, MS is worth less than half it was at that point.
But financial analysts always hand-wave away inflation (especially real inflation), calling a 2014 Dow-15000 the same thing as a 1999 Dow-1500
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Woo, I'm just stabbing with an inflation calculator, but $245 billion 1998 dollars in 2012 dollars is $342 billion, so they have lost money. If I did that right. And by me, I mean a website I used to calculate the value of that 1998 figure in today dollars (well, 2012 dollars, that's as far as it goes). Anyways, that's a loss.
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Microsoft is not worth less than half it was when Ballmer started.
The stock is.. maybe you heard there was a crash of technology stocks right around the time Ballmer took over?
Their revenue (and profits if I recall) are all much larger than they were 13 years ago.
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".. there was a crash of technology stocks right around the time Ballmer took over?"
Coincidence? almost certainly!
Yes and No (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. Each of those areas could be self-contained, if it isn't already.
"Each entity would have agreements in place for long-term supply of software and services. 'This sort of shake up would ferret out all the empire builders and allow for new and more creative structures to emerge."
Why? There will always be empire builders. And why would "new and more creative structures" emerge? If the existing divisions are lagely self-contained, what stops that now? I have witnessed companies down-sizing and splitting up - management become obsessed with it as an end in itself, like "well we shut down that department, what can we shut down next?". They stop thinking about the product. "Creative" groups are the first up against the wall.
On a much smaller scale, I saw a company of about 30 people reduced to about 5 because the new owner, a devout Thatcherite, just thought "The smaller the better". It ended up with the craftsman in the workshop keep having to stop making stuff to go and answer the phone; that was not efficient.
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If the existing divisions are lagely self-contained, what stops that now?
Problem is, Microsoft doesn't let them be self-contained. Everything is geared towards protecting Windows and Office. Divisions have been shuffled around as needed when the SEC reports and/or marketing needs a boost.
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Problem is, Microsoft doesn't let them be self-contained. Everything is geared towards protecting Windows and Office. Divisions have been shuffled around as needed when the SEC reports and/or marketing needs a boost.
Apple doesn't let its product lines be self-contained. But instead of trying to protect certain products, they try very hard to make everything work together well.
false alam, John Dvorak quoted in blurb. (Score:2)
it's kinda like quoting bill o'reilly.
Big Ideas (Score:2)
I can't see any successful big ideas which have come out of Google in the last 5 years. The last good big idea was probably Android in 2007 and even that emerged partly from an acquisition. Apple's last good big idea was again in 2007.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Big Ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there will be people who say the iPod was nothing special (I'm not one of them) because of mp3 players existing before then. But both of you are forgetting about the iPad - first real successful tablet in that form.
But I think the problem is that technology levels make some items inevitable and we're really waiting for technology to advance for the next big idea to manifest. Not so much the next big idea itself. Unless they can replace our eyeballs with an attractive replacement that also acts as a phone, camera, and HUD... convergence technology is pretty limited right now to what we have - a phone, tape recorder, gps, browser, camera, etc in our pockets.
Everything from there will be an evolution until that eyeball form factor is feasible.
Otherwise it's like waiting for the next big idea on the desktop in 1985 (when the 386 was released). Milestones (integrated soundcard, etc) came and went but the next big revolutionary idea never came. Evolution came. We went far since then. Looking back, home computing seems like a revolution. But it's one revolution, lots of little evolutions.
The next big idea (www and internet for the common man) did, but it was not strictly a desktop thing imo. But again, www is the revolution. Lots of evolutions since then to make the web page of 1993 look antique.
Get away from the hardware (Score:2)
They should focus on their core competency: software. Expand existing business-oriented product-lines to iOS, Android, and Linux, in addition to Windows. There-in lies the revenue. Trying to compete with entrenched hardware manufacturers like Sony and Samsung is a loser's game.
Maybe in 1999 (Score:5, Insightful)
No one recognized the Year of Linux having come and possibly passed, because it was in the pocket, not the desktop.
Back in 1999, this breakup may have been a good idea, comply with the Court monopolistic findings and make 2 much more agile companies.
But what is the point now? The techscape is very different and Microsoft's woes is mostly the result of internal bureacracy that built up complying with that now obsolete order. Get rid of the bureaucracy, not split the company. At worst, it goes to court and I find it very hard that MS will lose.
What MS needs is leadership that's more adventurous than "Look! Me too!" and backed by MS's considerable but ever slowly dwindling resources. In the last 15 years, all they added for themselves on top of the OS and Office was Xbox. The problem long term for MS is that the desktop is now old hat and it has no share in mobile. On top of that, for most users, Operating Systems will be given ever less importance to the end user. Already, I have friends who do their Quickbooks and Intuit taxes online with just a browser. Something they couldn't do 15 years back. They use one of the free office softwares and edit pics with another free program that's better than 90% of the pay programs. Their OS at this point couldn't matter less and that's how they like it. All that matters is their data and being able to manipulate it. 15 years ago, it was unfathomable to get on in the world with anything but Windows. Now you can get along with minimum 3 OSes.
MS's OS (and it's wealth) comes at considerable cost to others. License fees ratchet up every so often and what now. If other industries/companies can do away with a cost, they will. And that means eventually dumping Microsoft. Especially when this expensive commodity can be replaced for free. With Chromebook, this is creeping in. 15 years ago, this was unfathomable and crap like Lindows was a joke from a 3rd tier company no one heard of. Because Ballmer was right - it's about the applications, stupid. Developers and all that.
Ironically, that's exactly what MS now lacks in the mobile arena. They lost at their own game. They're suffering the same problem Linux had on the desktop - marketshare. With the Microsoft Zune, they skated to where the puck was, not where it was going. Taste that, friends, because that's just sweet. Now that OS agnostic world is on the horizon, Windows becoming a niche among professionals and gamers but no longer synonymous with computing, or even desktop computing.
Who knew? The Year of Linux on the Desktop will probably come when the OS couldn't matter one bit anymore and for that very reason.
Re: (Score:3)
No one recognized the Year of Linux having come and possibly passed, because it was in the pocket, not the desktop.
Yeah, it's pretty interesting to think about how much of our personal computing now takes place on Unix or Linux. There are, of course, people who use Linux or BSD on the desktop and server, but setting that aside, there are now a lot of people using Macs, which are running a certified Unix. Then there are the iOS devices, which are also running unix, and Android devices which run Linux. I've also seen some people running around with Chromebooks, which is again Linux.
There are a couple of big moves to w
synergy (Score:2)
The only thing that ever made Microsoft great was its ability to leverage its core OS into new markets. Sure that isn't working lately, but if you take that away, what have they got left? Not a lot.
I'm not sure what "computing market" this guy sees (Score:2)
The underlying problem for Microsoft is that the computing market has rapidly left behind the company's basic strategy of controlling the machines that people use with operating-system software
In what alternate reality? The computing market here in the real world has wholeheartedly embraced that strategy. Windows and Mac on the desktop/laptops, every game console's proprietary OS, iOS and even Android is heading in that direction in the portable space. Linux is still mostly free of it, but then Linux is a blip in "the computing market" in this context.
I'm not saying that Microsoft's not screwed, but I question the credentials of an "expert" who says, essentially, "The reason <big oil company
... said John Dvorak (Score:5, Insightful)
The moment someone uses John Dvorak to support an argument, I stop taking them seriously.
Errors (Score:2)
Microsoft being broken up would break the things they have that are working. So their cloud/application linkage in azure would be broken up.
The area where the disaster has taken place is in Windows. By making 8 - they've irrepairably damaged 7, and 8.1 doesn't fix it. The cloud area they worked on has been destructive of on premise IT, which is dumb. You don't need that damage.
If you really kill windows, you're in very deep trouble on the server and application sides, and it requires a full rework.
Although
A king has his reign, and then he dies. (Score:2)
It's inevitable.
Take a look at IBM . . . (Score:2)
. . . back in 1992-1993, all the analysts were screaming that IBM needed to break up.
What Microsoft needs, is a Lou Gerstner, not a breakup.
also break up apple mac OS from the hardware (Score:2)
so they can come in have a os that can run of most of the systems running 7 and 8 right now as well maybe some of the systems still on XP.
Also that can let mac os X run on real server hardware.
Terrible idea (Score:2)
I agree that they need to prune and focus.. and I absolutely hate how they make up the worst names for all there products and services (Windows RT anyone?) which only adds to the confusion about their offerings.. but what SHOULD be one of Microsoft's big advantages is that they have *all* the pieces of the puzzle.
If they could ever just work together and integrate them all they literally have most of everyday computing covered with their products. The potential for easy sharing of data across platforms an
Shouldn't have appealed (Score:3)
So the basic argument is that if Microsoft hadn't appealed in 2000 and had just abided by Judge Jackson's ruling [wikipedia.org], they wouldn't be in the mess they are in today?
So the company's no better off for all that extra legal wrangling, but in the meantime a lot of lawyers and investors made a mint.
That still leaves the problem... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not about the OS anymore. And applications that are tied to an unpopular OS will eventually be left behind, which spells difficulty with a Microsoft applications division. Just the act of creating hardship for the users, which had worked so well in the past, is now only helping the competition. If Apple has a sheltered garden, Microsoft had a prison camp. But they can't keep the gate closed anymore.
Windows 8's biggest competition is Windows 7. This illustrates a fundamental problem with the business plan.
Perhaps the best strategy would be for a hypothetical OS division to adopt "OS as an application", and work on easily enabling legacy applications running on today's platforms, and recognize that this is only an interim business solution. There has been a lot of work in this area, but it tends to be something only geeks can do. Make something that my mom could install on a non-Windows box and run her old copy of Office, and you'd really have something. This will eventually happen anyway; rather than get soundly beaten, and have the OS division be a millstone around the other products' necks, Microsoft might as well participate.
Hugh Pickens who? (Score:3)
Hugh Pickens writes...blah blah blah...
Who is Hugh Pickens? I ask only because for someone to suggest that this is what MS needs to do, would need a precedent for this to be suggested, where this person would have been apart of and seen the end result directly. This person would have had to have been in a previous situation with a similar company with similar situations and have seen the progress in order to turn around and suggest that fracturing a company into smaller parts is for the better. If you have proof that this works, then please put on the table. I have yet to hear of companies that got better when they fractured off into smaller pieces, if anything, it has been the reverse, merger after merger solidifies the companies overall hold on the market and offers stability towards unifying that all sub sections follow the same protocols and can lose the dead weight of needless duplication of processes.
Re: (Score:2)
Because Microsoft doesn't have enough friends in Washington, and no important politicians are major MSFT shareholders.
Re: (Score:2)
Devil's advocate:
* Many banks do diversify, and have split themselves up into semi-autonomous companies (one for mortgages, one for banking, one for investments, etc). The actions of each of these do not generally affect the others, and are run independently.
* Microsoft on the other hand has 'divisions' that are all forced to play nice with each other, and are all suborned to the interests of Windows and Office - even when it makes no strategic or economic sense to do so. Also, those 'divisions' often chang
Time Wasted (Score:2)
Where is Tuppe666 to tell us how lololMicrosoft yayGoogle!
Why would I do that? You would have to be living in a hole not to see that Google is coming from a successful multiple product launch; Positive numbers for Chome OS and Docs...and it looks like they have cracked TV first while replacing Airplay. Microsoft have had nothing but bad news since SurfaceRT was announced a failure...Balmer kicked out (Bill Why?)....A gaggle of articles like this one of how to fix Microsoft failure in everything but Windows/Office and their replaced services even though it has a mo
Re: (Score:2)
If OSX were to ever be licensed to generic PC's, I strongly suspect that Microsoft would be in deep shit within two years. The only thing that keeps that from happening is that Apple doesn't want their own profits diluted.
What doesn't kill you... (Score:2)
they seem to have their hands in too many cookie jars and unable to focus on anything lately
The whole point of why we are taking about breaking up Microsoft...Something Gates Lied under oath to protect against, is because Google *succeeded* in those very some of those very sectors that Microsoft failed so spectacularly in.
The reality is I suspect part of Googles success has been because it had been attacked from so many sides. Competition has made Google successful...Years without it, with a sudden need to, is how Microsoft got here.
Personally I think Google should think about taking on Amazon.
Its
Re:Yeah (Score:5, Informative)
Splitting Microsoft along business/consumer lines:
MicrosoftBusiness:
*WindowsDesktop (Profitable)
*WindowsServer (Profitable)
*WindowsServerApplications (Profitable)
*WindowsCloud (Profitable)
*WindowsMouseAndKeyboardWhatnots (Profitable)
MicorsoftConsumer:
*Bing (Lossy)
*Xbox (BreakEvens)
*WindowsPhone (Lossy)
*WindowsTablets (Lossy)
I predict that MicrosoftConsumer would quickly cease trading in the wake of this split, leaving only Microsoft standing.
Re: (Score:3)
I predict that MicrosoftConsumer would quickly cease trading in the wake of this split, leaving only Microsoft standing.
Pretty sure that's what's already happened internally.
Which is the whole problem.
Re: (Score:3)
But it was their own fault - Microsoft would partner with one small company with the deal that if that small company works exclusively for them, Microsoft would stomp, thump, smash and crush all the other competitors. Startups would fail to get and lose all funding the minute Microsoft announced they were going to enter that market. In the end everything ended up as Microsoft DOS, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Spreadsheet, Microsoft Calendar, Microsoft Explorer, Microsoft Exchange (mail serve
Re:Yeah (Score:4, Insightful)
Splitting Microsoft along business/consumer lines:
MicrosoftBusiness: *WindowsDesktop (Profitable)
Profits for Windows Desktop are declining.
*WindowsServer (Profitable) *WindowsServerApplications (Profitable) *WindowsCloud (Profitable) *WindowsMouseAndKeyboardWhatnots (Profitable)
MicorsoftConsumer: *Bing (Lossy) *Xbox (BreakEvens) *WindowsPhone (Lossy) *WindowsTablets (Lossy)
I predict that MicrosoftConsumer would quickly cease trading in the wake of this split, leaving only Microsoft standing.
You missed a new profit center - Android Racketeering.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
No what has caused MSFT to go off the rails and what any CEO with a brain, hell what ANY person with a brain should do in that situation is simple....LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS!
Clarification: Listen to your customers, and figure out how to make them _want_ to give you their money and come back for more, instead of figuring out how to take their money away from them.
:) Microsoft was. So _listening_ to people has its dangers as well.
When you talk about out-Apple Apple, I have the impression that Surface is what all the fanboys asked Apple to do with MacOS X, and what they predicted Apple do to, and Apple just wasn't stupid enough to do it
Re: (Score:3)
Microsoft didn't do Surface the way they did because they thought it was best. It was the only choice they had, given their ongoing business strategy.
The problem with Microsoft's strategy is that it counts on sitting back and letting innovation happen elsewhere. Then seeing what works for their competitors, cloning it, and using their monopoly desktop OS and office suite to force their clone to 'succeed'. That strategey worked with local networks. Cloning Novell's networking and tying it to Windows killed
Re:Yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
Ballmer was a successful CEO. At wringing out profits. Which is what Wall Street wanted. But doesn't drive the company forwards.
From here:
http://stratechery.com/2013/if-steve-ballmer-ran-apple/ [stratechery.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Then again, that can be applied to so many other companies other than Microsoft. GM, Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner, several of the large banks, etc.
I've always said that this fucked up need for more and more quarterly profits will lead to t
Re:Yeah (Score:4, Interesting)
You could also argue that Ballmer brought a failure culture into MSFT too.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/08/23/stack_ranking_steve_ballmer_s_employee_evaluation_system_and_microsoft_s.html [slate.com]
'Surround yourself with idiots so you don't get fired' doesn't seem like a very good way to have a successful company.
Re: (Score:3)
I dunno. Although I don't foresee a "mass migration", Windows 8 is certainly drumming up a dangerous amount of interest in alternatives to Windows. It's gotten a LOT easier to talk people into giving user-friendly Linux distros like Ubuntu and Mint a try (and I've found most people tend to adapt to Ubuntu extremely well and end up loving it; hell, I'm a power-user who uses KDE but even I will admit that if you look at Ubuntu Unity from the perspective of being newbie-friendly, it's damn-well designed) and I
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Yeah (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet you are still locked into Microsoft because you felt the need to buy their Office suite.
This isn't a criticism, merely an observation - I am in the same boat. For me, this lock in is about being able to create and edit business documents, as well as downloading existing Office documents and templates from the web and not having to worry about whether they will work in Numbers or Open Office.