Comments on: Microsoft, the follower

Software giant claims to be a technology innovator, but history suggests a different narrative. So let's take a closer look at the record.

[vmlenigma]

What are they going to sell at the stores? will the sales people have instant access to Tech support while they are trying to demonstrate a windows machine gone haywire? or another Zune freezing? or a bad bad virus infects the stores network? or an Xbox gets the ring of death while a gamer is playing? are they going to do demonstrations of Office (oh goody) I just hope that Steve Ballmer does not start wearing tight turtle necks (yuck) nothing worse than a fat dude trying to pack 20lbs of fat into a 2lb bag

[CDubber]

"What are they going to sell at the stores?"

Why, 80 versions of Windows 7! And Zunes! And customers will be able to look at pictures of the 8 billion different hardware configurations that run crappy Microsoft software. What a fun customer experience!

Microsoft is not only not an innovator, but they have no clue what consumers want.

[MakeCashQuickly]

They Should Buy ADLINK to gain Market Share in search engine geo targeted local advertising
http://www.makecashnow.localadlink.net/home.asp
The Company is New and on The cutting Edge of Technology when it comes to search engine seo..

[SkateNY]

Ice cream. And pie.

[vaibhav92]

I am sick of such authors who are always taking aim at microsoft just to make uncle steve happy. Have a look at this if you care aboute facts :

*Sony Playstation(Nintendo)
*Google, Yahoo ( AltaVista, WebCrawler etc etc)
*Apple iPod (Sony Walkman)
*Apple's Mac OS X ( Straight Source Copy from Linux/GNU)
*Apple's Mac vs. PC campaign ( Has apple invented advertising...Cant any organization put on its marking campaing on television)
*Documentum ( Thanks for mentioning this i didnt knew if such a product exists... got my point? )
*Tabbed browsing and other features in IE (Firefox) -> Remember Opera

To add more
* Speed Dial in chrome and firefox ( copy from opera)
* Apple iPhone ( LG parda)
* Multi Touch ( more copy of surface... MS has been doing research since 2000... Just try using google)
and lot lot more....

I think you are selectivly distoring facts to prove your point. Microsoft has been doing innovation but taking some one eleses idea and improving up on it doesnt mean balaintly copying it. When apple does this they are hailed as innovaters. But when microsoft does this they are called copiers.

PC revolution is attributes to both microsoft and IBM and if it werent for these companies we all would have been waiting with our punch cards next to a mainframe waiting for out turn.

[bbneo2]

Microsoft does a great job ?!? Not.

That is the *biggest* part of Microsoft's problem... not only are they a follower, they do a crappy job of implementing the stuff they copy *and* they use their monopoly position to jam it down everybody's throat.

Death to Ming!

[experiencemusic]

Are you deleting comments? Several posts from yesterday have been removed.

[odubtaig]

Looks like a standard database snafu (annoying too, someone actually posted links about actual backdoors in Windows instead of gibbering at me).

Last I saw this happen CGTalk had got hacked and the hackers had boned their cron backups for three days before they found out.

I also want to know what bbneo2 has against the LibDems.

[jonniesavell]

It isn't the fact that Microsoft is not an innovator that bothers me. Yes, the innovation talk is pure hypocrisy, but that's all butt warts.

The thing that bothers me about Microsoft is that they are a predator. They like selling me platform and applications, but they will absolutely not hesitate to club me to death once they realize that my margins are good and they learn how to do what I do.

[stevemur]

I wrote a blog post called "Getting pretty tired of this 'Microsoft Doesn't Innovate' Zeitgeist" back in July: http://stevemurch.typepad.com/blog/2008/07/index.html

I'm not here to argue that Microsoft is the *most* innovative company out there. And they surely aren't as innovative as they should be for their size and R&D budget.

But to say that Microsoft doesn't innovate is either deliberately ignorant or buying into a tired old narrative just because you think it's cool.

Who was the first company to put an online mapping service on the web using satellite imagery? (Answer: Microsoft, about two years before Google existed as a company.)

Why can we log in here and post our feedback on this website without having a page-refresh? (Answer: Because of AJAX, which relies heavily on a magical feature called XmlHttpRequest. Invented by Microsoft in 1995, and first released in -- gasp -- Internet Explorer. Then, adopted by the standards bodies.)

Who delivered the first web-based multiplayer gaming service embedded in a web browser? (Answer: Microsoft, in 1995. I actually led the team that did that work.)

Who released the first high-speed online multiplayer gaming network for consoles? (Answer: Microsoft.)

Who created a way for all databases to connect at the middleware layer sort of like printer-drivers? (Answer: Microsoft, with Open Database Connectivity.)

Who released the first touch-based multi-tasking OS for mobile phones? (Answer: Microsoft, with Windows Mobile.)

Who released the first Language-integrated querying capability, with full ORM (object-relational modeling) support in the language? (Answer: LINQ. Have you tried it? It's astonishingly cool and useful from a rapid development standpoint.)

I *love* Apple, and Google and other great innovators. I'm an ex-MSFT employee, but I also write iPhone apps and I own an iPhone because I think it's simply a better product.
Google is also my start page, because it's better. But Google's amazing Maps product relies upon XmlHttpRequest, invented by Microsoft, and it followed a good 4 years after Microsoft had a free satellite-based mapping service on the web. And the iPhone is a killer product, but Jeff Han demonstrated multi-touch at TED a full two years before the iPhone was released. The iPod is a terrific music player, but far from the first digital music player; just a far better one. Even the Mac, as innovative as it was, took many great ideas from PARC and commercialized them. (Read "Dealers of Lightning" if you disagree. The graphical user interface, the Mac, ethernet and more emanated from that terrific R&D lab.)

My point is that we all stand on the shoulders of giants. To say that Microsoft always follows is a canard, and it's lazy journalism.

[bbneo2]

If that's true, I will modify my comments:

Microsoft does a lousy job at implementing and marketing their own innovations.

[stevemur]

(PS: Typo above -- I of course meant the mouse, not the Mac, in my reference to Xerox PARC.)

[WealthAlchemist]

I think they would suffer big time from the retail store strategy. Microsoft lacks cult image in retail business. THey should stick to their walmart strategy and remain in the license sales business:

What's more interesting is that, Sony is just about closing their Sony Style Stores

http://www.wealthalchemist.com/Blog/2009/02/microsoft-retail-stores-collision-apple/

[colum07118]

uhmmm I'm pretty sure I heard of/saw the MS Surface way before the iphone was ever announced.

[S!egfried]

Your examples are horrid. The Playstation wasn't the first console, Google wasn't the first search engine, the iPod wasn't even close to being the first digital music player, Mac OS wasn't even written by Apple... In short all the examples of leaders you gave are actually followers....

Research.