This article is filthy with mis-information. Just to give a few...
* Microsoft did make mistakes in it's early days. To make that point I need only cite all the Microsoft Execs who were quoted saying "OS/2 is the way of the future and We'll be phasing Windows out"
* Vista isn't popular with "die hard Windows fans". In fact, a big part of the reason Vista is failing is because there are a lot of things you can do in XP that you can't do in Vista (try right clicking on a network drive and looking for "Search" if you don't believe me)
* I don't see how you can have this sentence "Today’s Microsoft is impulsive and sloppy." and then follow it immediately with this "It has become massive and complex with too many layers of management, committees, and bureaucracy to produce anything great " You're either bureaucratic or impulsive but you can't really be both
* Microsoft did not "rest on their laurels" after IE6. What did happen is that Jim Allchin decided Windows = IE and disolved the IE team by integrating them into the Windows team. So when Vista's development timeline went to hell so too did IE. But there were always people working on it.
* Microsoft did not "get lazy" and miss the Internet boat in the mid-90s. What they did do was "get proprietary" and back MSN as a competitor to the Internet (remember that back then AOL was the competitor to beat and they didn't even have Internet access integrated yet).
I could go on but the point is made I think. You should know a little something about Microsoft before you write a post on how the company went wrong.
It's largely irrelevant to most startups wether Microsoft went wrong because of X, or because of Y. Point is, they don't matter any more. Interesting from a historical point of view, but not much more.
MS still shows at every single opportunity that they do not understand the internet, and they'd actually rather it didn't exist. That's unlikely to change.
I would tend to disagree since nearly 30% of web servers run IIS, and ASP.NET is one of the most popular web frameworks on the market today. Considering that it is largely competing with free servers and frameworks, that's fairly impressive.
I don't think it's useful to just go for raw numbers - it'll be skewed in ms favor with tons of big irrelevant corporations using it by default. How many big consumer sites use IIS/ASP.NET? How many startups? How many high traffic sites use it?
A web startup using IIS/ASP.NET is quite a rarity. I'd expect maybe 2% of startups? If that.
The fact the xBox doesn't even have a web browser should be reason enough for alarm.
I don't think irrelevant means what you think it means. I'm no fan of Microsoft, but they are certainly relevant. And those "big corporations" are certainly relevant too - they spend billions of dollars on hardware and software.
Microsoft might own a 30% of the web server market share, but that makes them just a glorified tool vendor. A far cry from Microsoft's earlier potential as humanity's gateway to the "digital age". So they created a popular web framework, wooptidoo, and so has every 2cent PHP developer.
Thanks. I was hoping someone would point out my same thoughts after reading Marco's post. Also +1 to the individual who posted relevant stats about MSFT to paint a more holistic and objective picture.
Comments
This article is filthy with mis-information. Just to give a few...
* Microsoft did make mistakes in it's early days. To make that point I need only cite all the Microsoft Execs who were quoted saying "OS/2 is the way of the future and We'll be phasing Windows out"
* Vista isn't popular with "die hard Windows fans". In fact, a big part of the reason Vista is failing is because there are a lot of things you can do in XP that you can't do in Vista (try right clicking on a network drive and looking for "Search" if you don't believe me)
* I don't see how you can have this sentence "Today’s Microsoft is impulsive and sloppy." and then follow it immediately with this "It has become massive and complex with too many layers of management, committees, and bureaucracy to produce anything great " You're either bureaucratic or impulsive but you can't really be both
* Microsoft did not "rest on their laurels" after IE6. What did happen is that Jim Allchin decided Windows = IE and disolved the IE team by integrating them into the Windows team. So when Vista's development timeline went to hell so too did IE. But there were always people working on it.
* Microsoft did not "get lazy" and miss the Internet boat in the mid-90s. What they did do was "get proprietary" and back MSN as a competitor to the Internet (remember that back then AOL was the competitor to beat and they didn't even have Internet access integrated yet).
I could go on but the point is made I think. You should know a little something about Microsoft before you write a post on how the company went wrong.
Maybe you can't be bureaucratic and impulsive, but you can be bureaucratic and sloppy.
It's largely irrelevant to most startups wether Microsoft went wrong because of X, or because of Y. Point is, they don't matter any more. Interesting from a historical point of view, but not much more.
MS still shows at every single opportunity that they do not understand the internet, and they'd actually rather it didn't exist. That's unlikely to change.
I would tend to disagree since nearly 30% of web servers run IIS, and ASP.NET is one of the most popular web frameworks on the market today. Considering that it is largely competing with free servers and frameworks, that's fairly impressive.
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2009/04/06/april_2009_web_...
I don't think it's useful to just go for raw numbers - it'll be skewed in ms favor with tons of big irrelevant corporations using it by default. How many big consumer sites use IIS/ASP.NET? How many startups? How many high traffic sites use it?
A web startup using IIS/ASP.NET is quite a rarity. I'd expect maybe 2% of startups? If that.
The fact the xBox doesn't even have a web browser should be reason enough for alarm.
I don't think irrelevant means what you think it means. I'm no fan of Microsoft, but they are certainly relevant. And those "big corporations" are certainly relevant too - they spend billions of dollars on hardware and software.
OK to clarify, Irrelevant if you're doing a consumer based web startup.
If you're doing B2B or corporate stuff, then sure, you have to deal with that rubbish along with everything else.
You're so wrong. And even if you weren't wrong,writing off the huge B2B market is pretty silly.
In any event, MySpace and PlentyOfFish both run off of .NET
So the largest dating site in the world, and the second largest social network. I'd say that's pretty relevant.
> So the largest dating site in the world
Ahem, largest FREE dating website :-)
I could say the same thing about any Linux stack. Do you have any stats for that 2%, because my gut tells me 98%?
Microsoft might own a 30% of the web server market share, but that makes them just a glorified tool vendor. A far cry from Microsoft's earlier potential as humanity's gateway to the "digital age". So they created a popular web framework, wooptidoo, and so has every 2cent PHP developer.
Thanks. I was hoping someone would point out my same thoughts after reading Marco's post. Also +1 to the individual who posted relevant stats about MSFT to paint a more holistic and objective picture.