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walsufnir on 05 December 2014
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pokoko said:
walsufnir said:
pokoko said:
If you look at the entire picture, Microsoft seems to make a LOT of mistakes. They come late to so many markets then try to bulldoze their way in with money. I suppose the reasoning is that they can afford to lose a lot of money in the effort to make even more money, as Windows will always bail them out.

Still, some of these decisions just seem bad. B&N was never going to win against Amazon and everyone knew it. It seems more like a reactionary move intended to throw up roadblocks for Amazon more than anything, which I suppose is similar to how Xbox got started. I really can't see the logic in this case, however. I would imagine that the Nook only generates a fraction of the sales that Amazon gets with the Kindle.

And, yes, I will admit to being biased, unlike others. I adore my Kindle Paperwhite.


Thing is, they also make a lot of decisions right. This happens all the time with big companies. They acquire stuff because of analyzations and decide to buy themselves into the stuff. If it doesn't play out as expected, well, this happens. But to remain competitive you have to invest into new tech/companies and ideas, even existing markets.

Do you think MS would be the second most valuable company if they do THAT lot of mistakes?

Well ... kinda, yeah.  Like Google, the core business of Microsoft is strong enough to off-set some monumental failures.  Owning a monopoly gives you a nice amount of cushion.  I'm not even sure they care about these other avenues even being all that profitable, they just want massive overall market penetration.

Zune, Kin, Origami, Courier, GFWL, the inane rebranding cycle, paying billions for that web ads service to take down google ...  and, to reinforce the point about Microsoft often being late to market, this from Captain Ballmer:

""There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance," said Ballmer. "It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.""

They really have made a ton of mistakes.  I don't think that's an exaggeration at all.  Not that I'm complaining, mind you.  I don't want ANY company to own markets across the board.


But as always, media is especially mentioning more the bad decisions than the good ones. And of course representatives talk bullshit sometimes, not only Ballmer. Pointing to the failures we all know of doesn't help as MS is healthy as never before.

Making "tons" of mistakes in this time we live is as natural as breathing. You can't be a dynamic and evolving company and make only decisions which are completely safe to foresee in the future.