Microsoft Bashing
Not a complaint, but I’m a bit curious about all of the recent Microsoft bashing from fairly high profile MS alums. A few days ago Don Dodge, a former startup evangelist at Microsoft who’s now at Google, blogged about his positive experience discovering Apple products after escaping the Microsoft vortex. This is the same guy that told Venturebeat two months ago:
“At a high level, Microsoft today is where IBM was in late ’80s, early ’90s. When I was just starting my career, IBM ruled the world. IBM was the dominant computer provider in the world — hardware, software, network, you name it, IBM was king. I think in the late ’80s and early ’90s, we saw that shift and Microsoft became king of the hill. And in 2009, 2010, going forward, Microsoft is sort of like IBM. It’s a longtime company with a great tradition and still very profitable, but it’s not the leader. Microsoft is not making the innovative leaps and coming out with the new stuff.”
But the much larger news item was yesterday’s juicy New York Times op-ed by former MS Vice President Dick Brass in which he describes Microsoft as a “clumsy, uncompetitive innovator.” Microsoft quickly posted a pretty lackluster response to the op-ed that sidesteps Dick’s points entirely and instead claims Microsoft measures its contribution by its broad impact, whatever that means.
I’m interested in this topic now because these guys are definitely not morons. And I’m wondering what’s causing this to come out now. I think it might be because of iPad. That’s a class of product that Microsoft tried to pioneer, and failed. And if iPad does turn out to be a big hit, then it could be another big blow to Microsoft’s ego/pride/morale/perception. It’s kind of like MS is the dutiful older sibling that’s repeatedly being shown up by the golden younger brother or sister, not that I would know anything about that! In either case I guess only time will tell.
