Microsoft RIP? (and DIY KFC)

Beautiful plumage on Monday's IT Blogwatch: in which we ask, "Is Microsoft dead?". Not to mention how to make your own Kentucky-style fried chicken...

Paul "Plan for Spam" Graham opined:

A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to a young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo. I said that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft. That was why they'd positioned themselves as a "media company" instead of a technology company. Then I looked at his face and realized he didn't understand. It was as if I'd told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow in the mid 80s. Barry who?
...
No one is even afraid of Microsoft anymore. They still make a lot of money—so does IBM, for that matter. But they're not dangerous ... What killed them? Four things, I think, all of them occurring simultaneously in the mid 2000s ... Google ... Ajax ... broadband Internet ... [and] Apple.
...
If they wanted to be a contender again ... they could buy all the good "Web 2.0" startups ... [and] put them all in a building in Silicon Valley, surrounded by lead shielding to protect them from any contact with Redmond. I feel safe suggesting this, because they'd never do it. Microsoft's biggest weakness is that they still don't realize how much they suck.

Harry McCracken muses:

Graham does neatly sum up some of the reasons why the Behemoth of Redmond is no longer the scary, competition-crushing monster it was for a couple of decades--and why it's struggling to remain relevant ... most of his argument boils down to one overarching point: Desktop applications are no longer the center of the computing universe, and Microsoft is barely even on the map as a developer of Web-based apps.
...
So is Microsoft dead? Not if number of customers or profit have anything to do with it, and it may have plenty of both for decades to come. But right this very moment, it's sure in the process of failing to change as computing does ... just as Lotus and WordPerfect and Harvard Graphics never recovered when the world went from DOS to Windows ... You gotta think that the chances are increasing every day that the world will eventually look back on Microsoft as a company that had it all and then fumbled it.

But Paul Thurrott disagrees:

Microsoft is Dead? Kind of like Paul McCartney was dead in the late 1960's, I guess ... I agree [that Microsoft isn't dangerous]. But that doesn't make Microsoft dead. It makes Microsoft less evil. They're still powerful. They can still throw their weight around. And in some ways, they could certainly be more forceful than they are in the market. I guess all those antitrust cases had their intended effect after all.
...
Microsoft's inability to anti-competitively tie everything to its dominant products (thank you, DOJ) has resulted in ... The Xbox 360, Windows Mobile, the Windows Live stuff, and various other "new" Microsoft products ... and though their successes are not a given now, they can certain compete on their own. Finally, Microsoft is slowly, and painfully, getting rid of the old guard.

Tony Hung scoffs:

Well, if this isn’t one heckuva piece of linkbait ... I suppose its easy to hate Microsoft. There are lots of legitimate reasons to do it. You’ll find yourself in pleasant company as most of the tech community seems to have a bottomless well of hate for the blue beast out of Redmond. But is it “dead”? Please. Of course these sentiments are not surprising from a VC who is backing small nimble startups who are writing (or trying to create) the next great web application.
...
To link online applications with Microsoft’s demise is wholly premature, if for no other reason that while its true TODAY, Microsoft has so much cash and Microsoft’s Windows is the de facto standard for businesses and consumers, that it has a commodity that almost no other tech company has. That commodity is time ... [and] they have the cash to do desperate things to buy themselves more time. Like discounting their latest OS or core products to ridiculously low prices.

As does Duncan Riley, who doesn't mince his words:

If you were ever looking for evidence that Web 2.0 is a bubble because its leading players live in a fantasy land, a world were reality and Venture Capital rarely meet, much like the players in Web 1.0 land did, let me introduce Paul Graham ... If Microsoft is dead then I’m the Queen of England and I hereby demand that you all bow before me and call me “Your Highness”.
...
My immediate message to Mr Graham: f*ck you ... lets step out of fantasy land and take a look at the real world, the one in which Graham quite clearly doesn’t live. According to PC World April 6, Apple’s marketshare: 6.08%. Oh yeah, I nearly forgot, it declined in March.

Paul McNamara injects some perspective:

If you read the Graham's essay, you know that the headline - "Microsoft is Dead" - wasn't meant to be taken in the literal pushing-up-daisies sense. Instead, Graham was arguing that Microsoft no longer has the grip of fear over entrepreneurs that it enjoyed and employed so freely back in the day.

Jeff Ventura is graceful:

Graham ... provides reasons that ... shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to you ... As I’ve said all along, Apple’s threat just isn’t because of the iPod, it’s because of OSX. OSX is the trojan horse for Apple, and it’s being expanded to the device level with AppleTV and the iPhone. And of course OSX powers every Mac out there, making a computing platform so attractive that you simply just don’t hear about many Windows enthusiasts outside of hardcore gamers and those still infatuated with building their own rigs part-by-part.
...
Apple made the platform the nucleus while every other OEM couldn’t — because they didn’t own the platform. They were just hardware partners for Microsoft ... Apple never licensed OSX out and ditched their hardware business, because if they had, their platform penetration strategy would have died on the vine. They needed the control of the experience , and that meant platform plus hardware plus design. This is how Apple is threatening Microsoft, no matter how many smug Microsoft MVPs will scoff and say otherwise.

HangingChad finds compelling evidence that Graham is correct:

Look, they haven't even gotten rid of Ballmer yet. As long as he's on top it's going to remain the same stodgy old company it is now. MSFT reminds me of some 40 year old guy who thinks he's cool hitting on his daughter's college friends. He's the only one who doesn't realize he's creepy and pathetic.

Buffer overflow:

Around the Net

• Doc Searls: Context is King
• Om Malik: 12 tips before you buy Nokia N95
• Educated Guesswork: Key equivalence II: Symmetric Cryptography
• James F. Koopmann: Application Tuning=Storage Tuning
• RMorril: Web 2.0 Information Security is Booming
• Howard Price: Bloggers beware

Around Computerworld

• Preston Gralla: Is Google giving the go-ahead to Thai YouTube censorship?
• Michael R. Farnum: Log capturing - event correlation, forensics, or audit / compliance widget?
• Frank Hayes: Software doesn't help kids learn...if it's not used
• Evan Koblentz: HP-35 / 35th Anniversary Edition expected soon
• Robert L. Mitchell: Vista a dog? No way. A yawner with users? You bet.
• Shark Tank: Why we love users
• Douglas Schweitzer: Here we go again....

Previously in IT Blogwatch

• Ray Ozzie breaks cover (and geek bagel holder)
• Mozilla Coop fixes frail Flock (and roboflea)
• Vista incapable: very irritating (and tenure abuse)
• Microsoft's .ANI bugfix (and body hacking)
• EMI and Jobs blow away DRM (and historic Beatles)
• Older posts

And finally... How to make your own KFC

Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk. Bereft of life, it rests in peace.