Things I don’t get, an ongoing series…
If you want to pick on MS for their direct actions, then I get that. Though I would like to remind people the MS of today isn’t the MS of the 90’s. But! — I hear you say — they still do things like the OOXML naughtyness, and they are still so huge. They could buy Apple out of their petty cash. To that, I would say you are technically correct, but aren’t understandin.
When people started calling IBM a dinasour, it was when IBM was still number one. I would love to find the quote, but I remember an IBM exec making a comment about how they could buy MS out of their worldwide petty cash. But they didn’t, and finally their iniertia ran out and they stopped being #1.
This is where MS is right now. They still have a chance to turn their supertanker around, but not much of one. They are still making they same mistakes, they are still clinging too desperately the business models of the past, and not the ones that will take them in the right direction.
So this is why I don’t get people who seem to hate MS for being MS (and not their direct actions) and make silly statements about Silverlight. Judging them by what they do, lets you recognize when they actually do good things. Like Silverlight. Do you really want Adobe to own that part of the market? Isn’t it better when there are a couple of dominant players?
MS (INHO) is going to go they way of IBM, they are going to be big, they are going to be relavent; but they aren’t going to be the BMOC for much longer. Who will be next? It could well be Google, and it might as likely be someone we don’t suspect.
