Why is Microsoft Making its Own Life Difficult? 105
sebFlyte asks: "Asking Slashdot readers what they think of Microsoft's methodology and ethos might seem like a silly thing to do, but a ZD-Net article raises some interesting points. The main one is that: 'Microsoft's behaviour is technically, morally and practically indefensible. It could publish its CIFS specification tomorrow if it so chose, an act that would correspond closely to the spirit and letter of the European decision. The company would then be free to compete through the simple process of making better products, something it claims to favour, while also encouraging precisely the sort of interoperability it says is missing.' The question I'm curious to canvas opinion on is why Microsoft is taking an attitude that is believed by so many to be damaging to their market position."
Re:Why is Microsoft Making its Own Life Difficult? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why is Microsoft Making its Own Life Difficult? (Score:2)
At least the Beatles made people happy.
Re:Why is Microsoft Making its Own Life Difficult? (Score:2)
Re:Why is Microsoft Making its Own Life Difficult? (Score:1)
It's not about marketing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at their attitudes from the beginning. They can never accept simple success. They only consider themselves successful when they have destroyed the competition. They have never competed on the quality of their product, or on a level playing field. They compete by force, like buying out their opposition, or giving away products until the opposition goes broke.
While they like the money, it's about a small group of men at the top who want nothing more than to rule the world.
Re:It's not about marketing... (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:It's not about marketing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Did I say I thought that? Where did I say I thought that? Where did I imply I thought that?
Microsoft is the company under discussion, so my comments were about Microsoft.
So how, exactly, did you infer that I felt no other company behaves the same way.
The world revolves around money, power, and influence.
Yeah, I thought that way at one point. I'm glad I dropped out of the rat race and found I can live without ta
Re:It's not about marketing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not buying into the lifestyle you've created doesn't mean I'm into the hippie lifestyle. It's not either black or white. There's a lot of gray area in between -- and for those with imagination, there's a whole rainbow in between.
I just decided to stop playing by the hardball rules where everything is zero-sum (it's not enough for me to win, but others have to lose), and focused more on win-win situations. Maybe it's beyond your view of the world, but it works great for me.
I have the resources I need. Within a year or so I'll be starting a new business, using the profit from this one, where I'll be producing (in digital video and digital film) my own movies from the scripts I write. I don't see how I can be giving up a +1 when I found a way to do what few writers can: create a film company that produces his own scripts the way he wants, without producers telling him what to re-write.
But, again, with that deep and original insight you show into the business world, I'm sure you're doing a fantastic job with your own business that's dominating the rest of the world.
Re:It's not about marketing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's not about marketing... (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree completely.
I don't have a lot of money myself, but I have my own small business that's not so big that it requires that I give up everything else to keep it going. That business generates enough money to live on. And I have sufficient "free time" to pursue my other interests and things that I enjoy (like reading Slashdot.) I have no "boss" to answer to; my boss is me.
I mig
huh? (Score:2)
You are a discount private investigator?
Re:It's not about marketing... (Score:2)
I can't say their motivation isn't money and power, but I've found IBM an absolute joy to work with. This was really highlighted to me when they sold their drives operation, the part of the company I've had the most dealings with, to Hitachi. The difference was, shall we say, marked.
I agree that most companies operate as you say, but there are some out there that recognize that the best way to build, and more importantl
Re:It's not about marketing... (Score:1)
I am sure you have a realistic view of how business really works. But there is no reason the people should have to put up with abusive entities.
Business actually has
Re:It's not about marketing... (Score:2, Insightful)
True... In that book Gates published in 1994, he wrote that his goal is to collect a fee for EVERY financial transaction that takes place anywhere on the planet.
Any man with goals like that is EXTREMELY dangerous.
Get the Facts (Score:2)
They have never competed on the quality of their product
Not quite.
Only when MS has to compete on quality do they. Much of the time they're not constrainted to do so. Otherwise, there are other agendas to pursue, such as market domination and extending the customer in "Solutions" that are entirely MS.
[Likewise, only when they have to provide open interoperability, do they. Marketing programs saying nice-sounding buzzwords are usually more their style.]
I rail against MS all the time for their many fault
They don't believe they can be hurt (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:They don't believe they can be hurt (Score:2)
A) OS X took me all of 1 hour to fully understand, including the command line.
b) I can download mandrake or Suse for the costs of bandwidth and a couple of blank cd's.
c) Linux has never crashed and took out the system on me.(I have had programs crash, but recovery is easier than windows )
d) OS X has crashed only once during a login. (my font files got trashed)
e) I reboot windows machines every couple of days, losing work. Very frequentl
Re:They don't believe they can be hurt (Score:2)
More expensive. If you already have a PC, you cannot install OS X on it. It requires a new computer. And a high-end Mac is more expensive than a high-end PC. The new Mini has eroded some of the price complaints, but the mini is not perfect for everybody.
This one wins in price, but NOT in ease of u
Re:They don't believe they can be hurt (Score:2)
If you believe the myth that Mac's are more expensive than the cheap shit PC then you are an idiot. Take a high end PC, and match it feature for feature/ card for card to a Mac. You will have to custom build it to achieve this. Price either ties or favors Mac's this way. You can't compare an Intel S3 shared-memory vide
Re:They don't believe they can be hurt (Score:1)
Corporate Culture (Score:5, Insightful)
BTW, I am aware of Gates' philanthropic endeavors and that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how he treats his customers and the computing industry in general.
Re:Corporate Culture (Score:1)
Re:Corporate Culture (Score:2)
Reaches over, grabs his "father" hat and puts it on.
"That doesn't make it right!", he shouts.
Re:Corporate Culture (Score:3, Interesting)
How very true. in IBM's case, it continued on and off for years,like a bear hounded by a pack of dogs, until market realities, and Microsoft, reached them.
Think about this: the original IBM pc used Ms DOS. Do you all see MS saying: "we see Office as our core product"?
Sadly, I don't. Their core asset is the operating
Re:Corporate Culture (Score:2)
I do. They held a conference recently on MS-Office technologies and said outright that their aim was to get as many developers as possible trapped into basing stuff on MS-Office so that it would become effectively impossible for them to change out.
If that's not monopolism, leveraging an existing dominance to entrap more customers, I don't know what is.
If I was supervising them, they would immediately lose every patent and trademark that they
Re:Corporate Culture (Score:2)
Neat. But the problem for them is, only developers and a narrow subset of power users can be in a way "forced" to use Their office.
I am not an IT pro, so for me "power user" means "anybody that is able to use VLOOKUP()", especially if the lookup table is not o
Re:Corporate Culture (Score:2)
...these are the guys (and gals) who will innocently base their entire core stratum of MS-Office macros around one obscure .NET feature and one obscure OLE2 feature and one obscure MicrosoftFeatureOf
Re:Corporate Culture (Score:2)
My point exactly. "Feature bloat" is a common enemy.
BUT, let me relate my personal experience.
This is a sort of a coming out for me because, I have to confess, i have been a Microsoft fan once. I was a User of Lotus 1-2-3, and when, with
Re:Corporate Culture (Score:2)
So who gets to define what an "operating system" is ? Because the only remotely objective definition is the academic one, which hardly gives a saleable (to the end user) product.
Re:Corporate Culture (Score:1)
And, as you should also recall, IBM was penalized harshly for their behavior.
Since his father was a CORPORATE LAWYER AT IBG, you can't tell me that Gates doesn't know that what he's doing is not only wrong but also has PRECEDENCE in federal court RULING years ago already that these business tactics and behavior are wrong.
Re:Corporate Culture (Score:1)
I think the same thing is happening with MS. The rise of Linux and other open source software will eventually reduce MS from its monopolistic perch in the consumer OS area.
I think that it's important to recognize tha
Re:Corporate Culture (Score:1)
Since Gates' father was a career corporate lawyer for IBM, and apparently they were close enought that his father referred the PC team to Bill, it's hard to argue that Bill was kept in-the-dark about the ramifications of the government suits against IBM for behavior which M$ is now brazenly and sham
Re:Corporate Culture (Score:2)
Hell, I'd say that *because* of his pa being a Corporate Lawyer, he probably knows that sometimes it's better to pay the fines; costs of doing business.
Re:Corporate Culture (Score:2)
i have no love for their products. i use linux, os x, develop php/mysql apps, etc. my wife uses her computer for her photo business and runs xp, but uses, moz mail, firefox, etc., and needs it primarily for photoshop. now, as for gates and businesses, again, i'm no fan, but look, microsoft has done more for the computing industry and computing than we really want to admit. because of him, there is a computer on every d
Re:Corporate Culture (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sorry but this is bunk. Any impact Gates and co have had has been purely coincidental and at the expense of other companies with better products and by destroying an active market place I can't see that they have been beneficial. OK, sure, they have had impact alright but a very negative one. Look at th
Assumption (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Assumption (Score:2)
I've come to the conclusion that companies advertise to their weaknesses. By that I mean that, when they recognize that they have a weakness, they treat it as a PR problem to be glossed over with advertising, rather than something that should actually be fixed.
Examples include Dell advertising their great customer service, or Hyundai advertising their reliability.
Re:Assumption (Score:2)
I don't disagree with your point, but I thought it worth noting that Hyundai (who is a client of the company I work for) actually has some really unique and effective new methods of improving their quality. Obviously I can't say what they are, so you'll have to take my word for it, but one approach in particular is really novel and has resulted in a huge short-term measurable quality increase (as reflected in the latest JD Power survey).
Dunno if this will carry
Re:Assumption (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft is smarter than that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft is smarter than that. (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft is smarter than that. (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft is smarter than that. (Score:1)
Re:Microsoft is smarter than that. (Score:2)
GOOD Start my BOY!
Re:Microsoft is smarter than that. (Score:5, Interesting)
It sounds great to say that Microsoft just posted the most profitable quarter ever. But if you look behind the scenes, you see that Microsoft did less business than the previous quarter.
You have to realize that Microsoft can almost live on its investments alone, without even being the #1 player in the market. I'm not suggesting that MS is not the #1 player right now, but I am suggesting that you have to look at revenues, not at profits. What you see might tell you another story - a different story from the one you are preaching.
I don't study MS financials, so I am no expert. But I do get the impression that Microsoft has reached a plateau, in terms of revenues, with its current product offerings. It seems that people are slowly getting interested in other things: Like OSX. Like OpenOffice. Like Firefox. Like Linux.
Microsoft drove their growth with a certain appeal. It was a cost appeal. Microsoft let you do things with computers for not a lot of money. This was appealing to people who were interested in computers at the time, but not initially to average consumers. Now Microsoft has eliminated its own cost appeal by virtue of its monopoly. The computer enthusiasts have become disillusioned with Microsoft, and have moved on to other things (cheaper, more open, more curious other things). These people are beginning to drive the next wave of technical innovations that will later become the staple of the common consumer. At the same time, MS is cutting its R&D and relying on its monopoly position and same old predatory practices to cast the illusion of growth.
The fact is, there is no room for a monopolist to grow without getting into other markets. Yes, we see that Microsoft is trying this. I think it is because they understand the doom that is coming on the shink-wrapped software front. The good news is that, in these new markets, Microsoft is not yet a monopolist. They will try to leverage one monopoly to build the other, but I don't think they will succeed.
Of course, we will see Microsoft as a big player for many years to come. That just gives everyone more time to see the writing that is on the wall.
Re:Microsoft is smarter than that. (Score:2, Informative)
I am no expert, by Yahoo! finance [yahoo.com] is always handy for this sort of thing:
Total revenue is up about 28%, and gross margin has moved about the same amount, over the past three years. (Working from their last end-of-year, June '04)
R&D is up about 80%
SA&G (this includes marketing) is up about 91%
These added operating expenses seriously cut into operating income bewteen '03 and '04, cutting about 24% over the three year period
Insiders have sold [yahoo.com] (net)
Re:Microsoft is smarter than that. (Score:1)
For the most part, mOoZik is right. Business doesn't survive on good will, it survives on raw determination, brutality, and underhanded marketting.
Because they can... (Score:1)
Prudent and Non-religious MS (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as I or others on /. rail against MS for various practices that end up costing users money, causing vendor lock-in and upgrade treadmills, the company did not get where it is today by acting foolishly.
All of their recent actions and behavior is consistent with maximizing shareholder return.
If conditions change, either regulatory (EU, DOJ monitoring, broadcast flags), technical (TCPA) or marketplace (Linux, Oracle, IBM) I would count on them adjusting their strategy to continue to maximize long-term revenue, pure and simple.
Re:Prudent and Non-religious MS (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft has become big and inbred. I'm not as sure as you that they can change. The people I know who work for Microsoft sound like they've been brain washed. That's bad for a company in the long run. As the article says, it looks like the strategy they've followed
You're right, but it's evil. (Score:2)
In order to do that, they will adapt as best they can to the current situation. With Bush in office in the US and the EU slow to react, they see the best course of action to be what they have always done: play the game.
Buy the competition, sue the competition, undercut the competition with vaporware or bundling, lie about the competition, steal ideas from the competition
Why.... (Score:2)
I suspect, many questions can all be answered the same. >:P
Re:Why.... (Score:2)
Because it works. (Score:5, Interesting)
The question I'm curious to canvas opinion on is why Microsoft is taking an attitude that is believed by so many to be damaging to their market position.
Because their actions have not been damaging to their market position; they have succeeded wildly with those tactics. Why should they change? What could they possibly gain from a change in strategy that they don't already have? "Good feeling"? "Competitive instincts"? You can't take either of those to the bank.
The only interesting question is: if, and this is a big if, if they they ever find themselves to be losing marketshare in a substantial way, will they be able to move fast enough to change and adapt? or will they maintain their mantra to the end?
And by substantial, I don't mean FireFox and it's 3%--I mean, for a serious threat to emerge, it would have to be somewhere above 20% of the market Microsoft wants to own. Otherwise it's just an outlier.
Re:Because it works. (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly. It's not foolish to continue using a strategy that continues to work. I would actually break your interesting question into two:
Although we have seen some
Re: (Score:2)
IP is where it's at (Score:4, Insightful)
I've never heard of any program that was actually written by Gates. Whatever he knows about programming is marginal compared to what he knows about protecting the implementation. If releasing any information about how MS processes data or how its IP works is required in order to publish a truly open standard then there's no way they would ever do it without fighting tooth and nail.
New technologies may be exciting and the ideas behind them may be easily understood, but they're considered property by many people and any action that abridges that property right will be frowned upon. Bill Gates seems to think he's John Galt, but none of Ayn Rand's supermen were as prone to error as Microsoft has been. He lost his chance at immortality when his company started using clout instead of new ideas to beat out the competition.
Re:IP is where it's at (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong. He started the company by writing a BASIC interpreter. And he developed it on a university mainframe on university time.
A small nit perhaps.
Re:IP is where it's at (Score:1)
Paul Allen did most of the work translating it from PDP-11 assembly to 8080 and 6502 assembly.
Re:IP is where it's at (Score:2)
Please, please show me a cite.
Re:IP is where it's at (Score:2)
Re:IP is where it's at (Score:2)
Here's one. [folklore.org]
Plus you shouldn't forget the original 8080 Altair BASIC that led to the infamous "open letter to hobbyists." [blinkenlights.com]
Gates' BASIC interpreter (Score:2)
It all looks perfectly workmanlike to me. I haven't gone over it with a fine-toothed comb judging how good it is compared to, uh, the code I was writing i
Re:IP is where it's at (Score:3, Interesting)
I read somewhere a story about a guy at Microsoft who fixed the buggy flood-fill code in the graphics for Microsoft Basic. He showed his fix to Bill Gates and wondered aloud about who had written the original code, it was such a piece of garbage. Gates nodded, said nothing, and left. An old hand who had witnessed this then told him that the author of the original code was Bill Gates.
It seems clear from the history we have that Gates was once a real programmer. He knew assembly language and knew enough t
Re:IP is where it's at (Score:2)
Leitner mentioned a number of weeks ago that Gates had written an altair emulator that ran in 3k of ram and left 1k for the users environment. He wrote this on a PDP-10 with only the Altair specs for a reference. The true programming feat is that his subsequently developed code ran flawlessly on an actual altair machine.
Because... (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:Because... (Score:1, Funny)
It IS about Marketing. (Score:5, Insightful)
How can this be? Because 99% of the population either doesn't know or doesn't care. All they hear is Bill Gates saying "We are focusing on security" or "We are focusing on interoperability", and that's what sticks.
Whether or not the security or interoperability are actually addressed is irrelevant - the terms have been associated with Microsoft in peoples' minds. All it takes is some repetition and maybe an ad campaign or two to drive it home. Then in six months, some poll will come out saying that people associate Microsoft with interoperable products.
And that's what it's all about, boys and girls.
Re:It IS about Marketing. (Score:1, Troll)
MS is the way they are because most of their customers are too stupid to know any better.
Re:It IS about Marketing. (Score:2)
Mention a brand name, and then mention qualities you'd like to have associated with that brand name. Lather, rinse, repeat. That's all it takes. Eventually, people will think of those qualities when asked to think of the brand name.
Re:It IS about Marketing. (Score:1)
Relative profit (Score:2)
Exactly. (Score:4, Insightful)
But this subject is one of my premier hot button issues.
I don't understand it. If you're confident in your product, trust in that confidence- don't use obfuscated file formats to cause interoperability problems.
The only thing I can think of that keeps this anti-customer attitude going is corporate culture. Off the top of my head, Lotus and Autodesk seem comparable, in their persistence with a worldview. Lotus, at the beginning and for quite a while, used copy protection methods. They'd not use them for a while, but pretty soon, they'd come back again. Autodesk has gone back and forth on using dongles (or at least, until 10 years ago they had- my cad days are behind me.)
Corporate cultures seem to have memes associated with them, and Microsoft's appears to be one of paranoia- regardless of the quality of their products.
I'm Microsoft certified. I even can say I like Word, minus clippit, and I even think XP has its merits. I even think, with Server 2003's installation and granularity, they might even be getting a clue.
But they make it damned hard to stick up for them, and until they open up items such as file formats to all takers, it will be useless to measure the quality of their products.
My take (Score:3, Insightful)
Opening up CIFS, or the file specifications for their Office suite, or their ABI spec would really cut into much of their FUD. This is a good part of any dominant player's business model (I won't limit this stritctly to monopolistic behavior). A perfect example is the IBM/Wang situation, where IBM flung FUD about lack of the Wang's compatibility (which was simply untrue). In the end, IBM's sales stayed strong, and Wang went the way of...well...Wang. Microsoft does the same thing with their proporitary formats. "Sure, you can use a Samba server, but are sure you want to entrust your network to a hack of our 'real' stuff?". Same deal with OpenOffice.org (Microsoft actually published some FUD about this, which I can't seem to find) -- Microsoft basically said "Yeah, it'll probably work, but wouldn't you rather have a guarantee than a reverse-engineered hack of our stuff? Besides, you don't get Access with Oo.o, and you need that. You'll also have to shell out to pay to retrain your employees. Lost productivity!"
Actually opening this stuff up would likely cause a major shift in their FUD activities. A good thing, perhaps...but asking why they don't do it is asking why someone hasn't opened up another hole in their head yet. Because it'll hurt!
Re:My take (Score:2)
Good post. Trouble is CIFS a joint collaboration between MS/IBM/3COM. They don't own it. They just modified it a bit. IBM/Samba/Everyone else needs to stick to he spec. If windows isn't compatible, so be it.
Wang is now own by Unisys, which for the longest time only sold 8/16/32 Windows cluster systems. Now their selling Linux as well. Go figure.
Enjoy,
Re:My take (Score:2)
Wang has been bought by Getronics.
It's the lawyers (Score:2)
A lawyer doesn't think in terms of right or wrong,
Damaging? (Score:2)
Let's see: Windows is sold on nearly every x86 computer sold in a store. Office is the de facto standard for the business & academic world. Internet Explorer (like it or not) has a market dominance of over 90%. My guess is that they can take pretty much any attitude they want, cuz they're not going anywhere now or any time soon. As long as they
Want to bet? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's suppose that most computers are bought by either gamers or people who use Word/email/web/IM. We have damn good alternatives to Word/Outlook/IE/MSNIM, and reasonably good alternatives to things like ACT and various niche business-oriented things.
That leaves gaming. When you buy a new box, what game do you want to play? How well do you want to play it? Gamers probably won't settle for wine/cedega, due to slowness/bugginess (teh fps!).
Re:Want to bet? (Score:1)
Does MS even have the specs? (Score:2, Informative)
My point is, maybe the only useful spec is the code, which MS is unlikely to share.
(Anyone able to find the quote?)