Finnish Government Criticizes Microsoft for Job Cuts,' Broken Promises'

[Johnw1104]

GoOnKid said:

Johnw1104 said:

They have the right to be concerned or disappointed, but not nonplussed at what Microsoft has done here. Again, this isn't a charity. Microsoft decided to cut them because that venture (Nokia) has been failing, and Microsoft was losing money. To continue on funding that would be to subsidize a failed venture, and they'd have to make their cuts elsewhere in areas where they're seeing more success to compensate. It is precisely the opposite of a "stupid" decision; it was a necessary and practical one.

Microsoft doesn't owe Finland its tax money; to the contrary, if it meant so much to Finland they should have done more to keep Microsoft invested there. Whining like a bunch of children over it will not reflect well on them when trying to attract other big investors in the future.

Don't get me wrong, I should have clarified myself. The stupid decision was not the recent job cut, but the venture itself. Nokia wasn't in a good shape back then, sure, but it went completely downhill from that point onward and this evolution was somehow predictable. The worst decision in my oppinion is the killing of the Nokia brand. While I don't have any significant data, I believe that the Nokia brand name had been pretty strong.

Of course it's not charity, we all know that, but MS shouldn't even have entered the mobile market in the first place.

Well I'd certainly never sit here and say that Microsoft is good at avoiding stupid business decisions... Really, the Xbox is about the only successful brand they've managed outside of their over-the-moon success with the Windows operating system (pictures show it's even used in North Korea haha) and even it had to run at a severe loss initially, had perhaps the worst and most costly initial error in console history in the Red Ring of Death that cost roughly $1.15 billion to fix, and even now is getting smashed by the PS4 due in large part to what they initially had planned and presented for the Xbox 1. Actually, have they ever begun to make money on the Xbox brand?

...So I just looked it up. In 2013 they'd lost about $3 billion in the preceding decade on it, and thereafter lost $400 million in the Xbox1's first year. I'm going to go ahead and say Microsoft has yet to profit a dime from the Xbox brand either lol

Finland should probably just ask China for money, their state policy seems to be to just throw money at any country that will take it.