Two clues Microsoft is losing its way
Steve Ballmer needs to brush up on Roman history. Otherwise he seems doomed to repeat it, as two recent Microsoft campaigns suggest.
Microsoft has been dominant for so long that it has grown soft. As Edward Gibbon wrote in his exceptional "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," it is not outside enemies that crushed Rome so much as its own effete greatness:
The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight.
Two new Microsoft directives suggest that the writing is on the wall for the once-great company. And this isn't even to mention Microsoft's tactics to squash Linux's growth in the Netbook market.
First, Microsoft has kicked off a "Get the Facts" browser campaign that is long on hyperbole and short on facts. Reading Microsoft's browser comparison chart, one would think that using Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome is a fast track to leprosy: IE apparently dominates in security, privacy, ease of use, healing the sick, and causing the lame to walk.
Speaking of "lame," IBM's Savio Rodrigues warns us to not be fooled by comparison tables that dramatically favor one product over others. Internet Explorer has gotten better over the years (It only had one way to go), but Microsoft's claims aren't even credible when it skews the results so dramatically in its favor.
Mozilla's own marketing for Firefox is very, very different.
Not content to let false advertising do the trick, Microsoft has also resorted to paying people to use its browser and calling users "idiots" if they opted to try something else. As TechCrunch reports, Microsoft has backed down from the ad hominem attacks, but the company is starting to look desperate.
(In need of charity itself, Microsoft is contributing to charities for every download of IE8. Awww....)
As if this browser desperation weren't enough, Microsoft has kicked off a second initiative that reveals just how unloved its "innovation" has become. Microsoft has confirmed its 18-month Windows 7 to XP downgrade policy.
There are very good reasons for software vendors to prod customers into staying current with software releases, but it is amazing just how hard Microsoft has had to work to convince Windows customers to leave XP. Apple and Linux customers seem to upgrade to their latest and greatest operating systems, while Microsoft customers seem to be pining for the good ol' Windows days.
It's one thing to have an upgrade policy. Having to articulate a downgrade policy is a signal of Microsoft defeat, not victory.
Gibbon wrote that "instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long." I feel the same way about Microsoft. It has done so much for the software industry--some very negative, much very positive--but it seems to have lost the plot. It is telling when the company's best product in years is the XBox, a hardware platform, as Bob Rosenberg noted to me over email.
Microsoft is a victim of its own desktop success, a fact that Google is using against it. Unless Microsoft can break out of its downward spiral of negative advertising born of stifled innovation in its products, it will fall. Sort of like Rome. Because of immoderate greatness.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
This guy Matt Asay is just trying to make some money so how can we blame him. He is not a journalist nor does he pretend to be. If MS becomes the "good guy" he will stop bashing them because it serves him no purpose. If Google or Apple were to become the "bad guys" then he would go bashing them. You do what you have to do to keep a following, you see it in politics all the time.
But in the end, remember that Matt is not a reporter and cannot be expected to hold to the same professional standards that those highly trained inviduals are responsible for. It's just a blog.
Just curious: Why is your blog listed under "news" for cnet? The navigation path to your piece "Home > News > The Open Road"
Clearly this is pure personal opinion, which has it's place, but I assume you are not presenting this content as "news" for cnet, are you?
@giovanni
The title of this blog, "Two clues Microsoft is losing its way" indicates that it is a psychological/cultural commentary on what Matt observes when he thinks about Microsoft's current state within the tech world. A post doesn't have to be lined with stock market numbers or benchmark tests or quotes from experts in order to be respectable journalism. The author draws interesting parallels between Microsoft and other large empires, pointing out the "clues" that he has identified in Microsoft's recent behavior as possible indicators that the corporation could be crumbling.
While the content of this post may not have the same "hard fact" satisfaction as, say, benchmark results between FF and IE, it still has merit as quality philosophical analysis of the collective psyche of a tech empire.
It's just odd that he would expect any report from an OEM to NOT be glowing about that product itself.
If Apple releases a report about operating systems, do you think it would be about how great Linux or Windows is? No, of course not- it will be a self promotion piece of Apple products. That's to be expected with any report released by an OEM. To then write about it as a mistake comparable to the fall of the Roman empire? Wow... that takes a lot of leaps of credibility there. I don't think I'm willing to jump that far.
Well, maybe I would if the Roman empire releases a report on how great bungee jumping is...
These are the points, where Microsoft is either incapable of introducing a technology whose basic problems were solved in the 60's, blindly introduces security holes as a form of monopoly maintenance, or tries to blame the user for their own bad technology decisions -- these are the points that show Microsoft has lost its way.
Does this mean failure equals success? Your points would suggest this to be the case.
A commercial success is not always a technological one, it's usually quite the opposite. High quality products get niche markets while popular products get the mainstream market.
The concept of promotion and adverising might have gotten past you on this one. If Microsoft releases a study on browsers, how do you expect them to say that some other product is better than theirs? What would be the point of releasing such a study or report? Come on now, think about it.
Apple ads don't go on about how superior Linux is for file servers. They don't go on about the greater selection of applications, support, and third party options that Linux and Windows users have. Apple does spend a lot of time promoting Safari and iTunes.
Opera keeps releasing studies about how superior the browser is- amazingly, when they talk about browsers, they don't say that Chrome is better than their own product. Funny how that is.
Google has their own press releases talking about how much faster and better their browser is over Safari, IE, and Opera. Their tables are tailored to fit the outcome they want to report.
The fact that you have overlooked or forgotten this after being embarrassed by this very same mistake in prior blog postings indicates that you and the Roman empire have similar issues with history repeating itself..... :/
I think I understand that the majority of this piece is the bloggers opinion - and, it's his blog - he can do whatever he wants. I just prefer the posts where Matt is not out to convince us all that Microsoft is doomed to failure by being swallowed up by all the open-source companies he advises. I was merely stating a preference for his blog posts that are a bit more rooted in fact and creative thinking, rather than Microsoft's "impending" demise. Reading the other comments, I guess there are a few other folks that read this blog that might have this same preference.
JM
"He's a Mac fanatic and hates Windows. Matt also admits to a bias against 20th-century proprietary-software models. Sorry."
That pretty much explains this anti-MS bash and shows how brainwashed he is since Apple is pretty much the definition of "proprietary".
"Your comments are interesting, and indicate that Microsoft has failed at everything they have attempted to do, making a mistake in all the fields you brought up, and yet they are the leaders in each of those very same areas. "
Microsoft has succeeded very well at one thing and one thing only: The use of illegal and unethical marketing methods to eliminate competition in the OEM operating system market. This has been established in US Federal courts as well as the European legal system.
When you can eliminate the competition, your product can still suck raw sewage and still sell like hotcakes, because the consumer is not given a choice. When was the last time you could walk into, say for example, Best Buy, and find a desktop PC offered with OS/2 Warp, Linux, Solaris, BSD, or indeed *any* OS that wasn't a Microsoft product? How many *decades* has MS Windows been the *only* desktop OS choice for the average consumer?
And that's why MS Windows dominates the market: they are the Borg, and you will service them.
This might have been true maybe 10 years ago...and still, look at what happened to Netscape.
By the way it's not 0.8%, even M$-paid Net Applications says it's higher now. By the way 1% is still like 10 000 000+ customers. Such online shops do exist now by the way, zareason and System76 are the most reliable examples and they are growing and not fading like people would like you to think.
MS is desperate and it shows. I can't believe they didn't learn from the disaster that was the "smear Linux: campaign.
Maybe if MS started making quality software, they wouldn't have to resort to lies, threats and mocking those who enjoying using better browsers then IE.
You'll have a medal for that ;-)
Once people see the new features.. they will upgrade.
I'm wondering if Microsoft AstroTurfs are still spaming critics mailboxes with personal insults. If so, then fasten your seatbelt ;
I hope the Evil Empire will fall soon. I will be dancing on their grave!
With kind regards,
Marti van Lin (Netherlands)
http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/#feature-vsie
If MS refuses to admit to customer complaints and insists on forcing WIndow 7 or Vista down customers's throat, I am sure we will hear about it in the blogs, now Balmer is allowing XP downgrade path for Win7, people still want to complain.
I am no Microsoft fan, but I think when compared to similar companies like Apple or SONY, Microsoft is at least 100% more customer and consumer friendly, and a lot less (especially lately) insistent on shoving their own agenda down their customer's throat.
BTW, IE8 is not that bad, not saying MS is 100% honest on advertising for their browser, but who is? Compared to SONY's insistence on their silly memory stick and Apple's strangle hold on i**** (iTuen, iPod, iPhone, etc, etc....), Microsoft doesn't look half as bad.
If consumer friendly is what takes for a company to survive, so be it!!
- by workshopmusic July 5, 2009 11:42 AM PDT
- I'd like to address this comment to those rushing to Microsoft's defense. <i>Microsoft does not need unconditional love.</i> They need to continually improve, like everyone else, and to stand on the merit of their product, not market numbers or advertising.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (33 Comments)As another post said, sheer corporate heft and momentum has made it possible for Microsoft to prosper in the market on work that may be good but often does not measure up. If we were rational consumers instead of fans, we'd be rooting for competition to drive quality and performance as high as they go.
I agree with Matt that Microsoft has somewhat lost its direction. Never fear, people, this does not mean near-term demise. Corporations muddle through on merely so-so performance. Sometimes they are forced to realize that muddling is not good enough and reinvent themselves. The rise/fall/rise of GM may be a glimpse of Microsoft's future.