Microsoft has frequently said that it sees a world powered by software, and that it (Microsoft) wants to be the source of that software, be it for corporate servers, office workstations, home entertainment, robots, etc. Microsoft is all about software.
In the beginning, licensing that software drove Microsoft’s revenues beyond the stratosphere and into the heavenly glories. It didn’t always (or ever, for some) make the best software, and certainly placed innovation second to pushing Microsoft versions of existing technologies, but for many years it did make some of the most widely adopted technologies (Windows and Office).
That, along the way, it came under fire (and even under anti-trust) for the methods in which it sought to expand, control, and preserve it’s markets (GUI desktop, browsers, media players), will no doubt haunt them in the history books. But what they accomplished is undeniable.
And writing about it, consciously, as something that seems in the past tense seems odd. As Google and Amazon consume the cloud, as Apple takes consumer mindshare, as Microsoft comes to be perceived as too little, too late (Vista, Zune, Windows Mobile, Windows Live) or as money-bleeding (Xbox), as Allen left long ago and Gates is poised now to leave as well, and as they (perhaps smartly) seek out Danger and try to find a way into the 21st century with Yahoo, it seems not only odd, but equally undeniable.
Is it Karma as Roughly Drafted details, with unabashed bias, below? A reaping of what was sewn? Or is it all just business, and the same natural flow that saw IBM tumble and Microsoft rise during the last paradigm shift?
Lessons from the Death of HD-DVD — RoughlyDrafted Magazine
The death of HD-DVD says more about Microsoft and its future than the general media seems to recognize. It’s not a format war, its a culture war between industry players working to advance the state of the art collectively in partnerships, and one company working to own everything while contributing very little. It’s not hard to see why Microsoft’s bruised and abused former partners are working to align themselves with open solutions rather than buy into more pain with technology tied to Microsoft. That’s very bad news for a company that exists solely as a licensee of third rate product ideas.
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