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The Death of Microsoft?

While reading GrokLaw, I saw a link to an interesting opinion piece from Michael S. Malone titled “R.I.P. Microsoft?”. Aside from the metaphysical approach of “smelling” the slow rot of a dying company he also makes points out some interesting signs that may be indicating Microsoft’s coming demise:

Great, healthy companies not only dominate the market, but share of mind. Look at Apple these days. But when was the last time you thought about Microsoft, except in frustration or anger? The company just announced a powerful new search engine, designed to take on Google — but did anybody notice? Meanwhile, open systems world — created largely in response to Microsoft’s heavy-handed hegemony — is slowly carving away market share from Gates & Co.: Linux and Firefox hold the world’s imagination these days, not Windows and Explorer. The only thing Microsoft seems busy at these days is patching and plugging holes.

Speaking of Gates: if you remember, he was supposed to be going back into the lab to recreate the old MS alchemy. But lately it seems — statesmanship being the final refuge of the successful entrepreneur — that he’s been devoting more time to philanthropy than capitalism. And though Steve Ballmer is legendary for his sound and fury, these days his leadership seems to be signifying nothing.

There are other clues as well. Microsoft has always had trouble with stand-alone applications, but in its core business it has been as relentless as the Borg. Now the company seems to have trouble executing even the one task that should take precedence over everything else: getting “Longhorn,” its Windows replacement, to market. Longhorn is now two years late. That would be disastrous for a beloved product like the Macintosh, but for a product that is universally reviled as a necessary, but foul-tasting, medicine, this verges on criminal insanity. Or, more likely, organizational paralysis.

Does anyone out there love MSN? I doubt it; it seems to share AOL’s fate of being disliked but not hated enough to change your e-mail account. And do college kids still dream of going to work at MS? Five years ago it was a source of pride to go to work for the Evil Empire — now, who cares? It’s just Motorola with wetter winters.

While most of these are tenous somewhat, the Longhorn delay is an important point. It has been quite some time since a new version of Windows has come out, and keeping people in wait only makes them anxious to switch to a competitor. With the growing improvement of interoperability tools like Wine and SAMBA, by the time Longhorn rolls around Linux usage might be widespread enough to seriously hurt MS.

Here is one thought that might be keeping Microsoft executives up at night: When you build it, will they buy?

Tags: microsoft —

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