I know that there are a lot of talking heads in the tech blogosphere who want nothing more than to see Microsoft collapse in to a great big pile of FAIL, and of course have their name up there in lights as the one to predict it.
It seems that every couple of months, or following any new Apple or Google announcement, some know-it-all looks to make some pageviews by talking smack about Microsoft.
The fact is that Microsoft can do a good enough job shooting itself in its foot all by itself, but that doesn’t mean that all the doomsday scenarios that tech bloggers love to dream up hold any water. Such is the case with Henry Blodget’s post with all the pretty graphs that he used to point out that Microsoft was destined for the trash heap.
On the surface his argument has all the right talking points and make sense if you are willing to believe that Microsoft is a stupid company. Every point that Blodget uses to try and support his view of Microsoft and its future is based on the idea that Microsoft is incapable of understanding the market and change to meet it.
Mistakes made
I will agree that for most of the company’s past it has been extremely single minded and that in the area of the consumer marketplace they have made a lot of mistakes. At the same time Microsoft has also shown that when it needs to make a change it can do it with amazing speed. We saw this when Bill Gates belatedly realize the mistake the company had made in its estimation of the importance of the Internet.
Unfortunately as Microsoft was shifting gears they were also came at it with their typical corporate-centric mindset and this cost them a lot of consumer, and developer, goodwill. It has also created a perception with consumers that Microsoft is a monolithic company that is evil and greedy which is compounded by people who aren’t willing to look past their prejudices and preconceptions.
Opinions are good except when biased without understanding
This is apparent when it comes to Blodget and his own opinions when he writes the following:
The desktop PC isn’t the center of anyone’s universe anymore. The Internet is. And the Internet doesn’t require Windows.
You might as well say that the desktop PC doesn’t need Linux, doesn’t need OS X, or the iPhone doesn’t need iOS, or that the Nexus doesn’t need Android. Or how about all those servers that are what make up the Internet?
The fact is that the Internet will not exist with out the different flavors of operating systems but to people like Blodget the Internet is an operating system; but then for the most part they have very little understanding of how the technology works let alone how the Internet is powered.
He continues to show his ignorance and bias when he writes the following:
In fact, it’s not hard to envision a future in which the “desktop PC,” as Microsoft currently defines it, becomes an oddity–a strange throwback to a world in which a single local hard drive (or a box of floppy disks) constituted the center of someone’s work life.
For someone who claims to know what is happening Blodget obviously missed an important statement that Ballmer made at the recent D8 conference. That statement being when he called the iPad a PC in a different form factor. Ballmer phrased it this way because he understands that the term PC means nothing more than personal computer.
Changing form factors don’t mean the death of Microsoft
Microsoft, more than anyone other than Steve Jobs, understands that the form factor of the personal computer – PC – is undergoing a radical shift. Just as Jobs and Apple have redefined the form factor with things like the iPhone and iPad the same can be said of Microsoft. One just has to look at things like Surface and Kinect with its potential beyond just the Xbox.
Blodget continues to push the idea that the term PC is a Microsoft creation as a way to feed its money machine and that if it changes Windows is no longer relevant. Bullshit!
Once again I point to things like Surface and Kinect to show that Microsoft gets the fact that form factors are changing. The money that Microsoft spends on pure R&D – often as much as some companies revenues – is another way to see that they know things will change.
To assume though that Windows will always be that monstrosity forever locked into a monolithic past is incredibly short-sighted and stupid. Even though Windows 7 still contains much of that old DNA it doesn’t mean that it is going to stand still as the world changes around them. Just look to things like Midori or Singularity to see that Microsoft understands that Windows has to change as well.
I have said more than a few times recently that within 5 to 10 years the desktop as we know it today will be history but that doesn’t mean, no matter how much Blodget wishes it so, that the PC – personal computer – is history or that Windows will not have morphed, like the desktop, into something new.
The new attitude towards the consumer.
Not to be outdone by his other stupid statements Blodget brings up the fact that just as Windows’ days are numbered so to is Office. It is these two linchpins of the company that Blodget believes will also herald its downfall. Not surprising he claims that Google Apps will be the knife in the side of Office but like most people trumpeting this angle they fail to understand that the version of Office that most of these touters of Microsoft doom like to point to is the corporate version.
They neglect to mention the fact that the more home and student oriented version is actually inexpensive especially when you take into in account that it can be installed on three computers. As well they most definitely ignore the recent launch of Office Live – which is free – and the seamless integration with the desktop version.
The biggest problem Microsoft has had for years is that it considered the corporate marketplace to be the most important and that the consumer market would be happy with the leftovers of their corporate efforts. This was a major mistake and it has cost the company dearly but at some point they realized their mistake and are now turning their attention to that market with the single-mindedness the company is famous for.
Windows Phone 7 is a prime example of that shift in focus as this is a smartphone that is being targeted directly at the consumer market with a corporate version not being available until late 2011. Even a few years ago this would have been unheard of in the halls of Redmond.
This doesn’t mean that Microsoft still doesn’t have more than enough problems to deal with as it makes this shift. However unlike the past it is obvious that the company understands the need to change – it no longer resembles a huge ostrich with its head in the sand. As Kara Swisher writes:
Microsoft, as all tech companies do, needs to change and a lot faster than it has been; it has been trying mightily to do so in search and, recently, in mobile, where it is woefully far behind; its leadership under Ballmer, who took over from Co-founder Bill Gates, has been meh enough to keep its stock moribund.
But, by no means recently–even if there is a better CEO for Microsoft out there than Ballmer–have I found the company execs ignorant about the tougher issues or unwilling to consider changes needed.
Part of this make-over requires a major diet plan
Kara quite rightly points the finger at Ballmer and his leadership as being probably the biggest stumbling block that Microsoft faces right now. I have been saying for some time that Ballmer needs to take a long vacation to some deserted island and that Microsoft is in bad need of new leadership blood.
The thing is that this isn’t the only thing holding the company back. I have been a long-time follower of the Mini-Microsoft philosophy of performing a surgical strike against the middle management of the company.
If there is one part of the company that is its biggest downfall it is in the staggering size of the bureaucratic middle management level of the company. The number of levels of managers, vice presidents, and product managers is staggering and is the biggest detriment to the company moving forward.
Every time one hears of a pending re-org within the company one always hopes that Microsoft will finally have seen the light and reduced the number of managers clogging up the halls of innovation; but unfortunately this never happens. Except that it really needs to happen if Microsoft really wants to be taken seriously as something more than an archaic monolithic software company happy in keeping the status quo instead of changing the world.
Even battleships can change direction and then really watch out for their guns
People love nothing better than to count Microsoft out of the game but they do that at their own folly. Microsoft as a business has been around since the very dawn of the PC movement and to suggest that they are willing to give up their position without a fight is incredibly stupid.
They may have been slow to change at one time but that is the past and regardless of one’s feelings about the company and Ballmer’s leadership the idea that they will be gone within the next five or ten years as Blodget likes to suggest shows only one thing – you don’t have the first frikken clue about this business.
Say what you want about the company but that they have weathered far fiercer storms that the one they are currently in and now as then they will survive this one. The only question is will they do it with a new and more vibrant leadership or will Ballmer use it as his swan song of success as he heads to the exit.
I’m hoping that they see sense and go the new and vibrant route. As for Blodget – go back to selling stocks because you are an idiot – oh wait you can’t can you.
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