“ Microsoft’s huge profits — $6.7 billion for the past quarter — come almost entirely from Windows and Office programs first developed decades ago. Like G.M. with its trucks and S.U.V.’s, Microsoft can’t count on these venerable products to sustain it forever. Perhaps worst of all, Microsoft is no longer considered the cool or cutting-edge place to work. There has been a steady exit of its best and brightest.
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Op-Ed Contributor - Microsoft’s Creative Destruction - NYTimes.com
I don’t have a problem with Microsoft the company, but I’m not particularly fond of Windows or Office - because neither one shows much evidence of anybody ever being willing to take anything out, much less leave something out to begin with. Got an idea? Throw it in! Got another idea that makes the first idea seem ill-considered? Throw that one in too, but don’t take the first one out!
That said, though, the op-ed is worth reading because the long, slow failure of Microsoft (as it can’t come up with anything new the way Apple or Google can) is sad more than anything else. A company that mighty ought to be able to innovate, and that they can’t is very telling.
