it's also interesting to note that Microsoft, a company that many software experts agree makes inferior products, is also a huge market leader. This hints at something a lot of technically minded people oversee: Sales and marketing is what drives a company. Microsoft is probably the most savvy tech company out there when it comes to sales. Yes, they are stuffing things down people's throat, abusing their monopoly, and generally being a nuisance. But it works, and it works well.
This steve Ballmer quote sums it up pretty well "well, we've been accused of a lot of things, but not being able to make money isn't one of them"
The article misses a very important thing Microsoft still does very well: makes money [0]. Irrespective of one's opinion on the quality of their products, they still produce software the provides value for real people. They employ a ton of people, all across the world [1]. Microsoft may have lost a decade in the visible consumer segment (mobile phones, tablets), but they still make boring, profitable, enterprise software that helps them on their way to $22B in annual profit. They're not shrinking either, according to their fast facts page [1]. Microsoft still does business very, very well. Even though I personally don't like most of their products, I'm genuinely excited by the change of CEO, because Microsoft has the resources (perhaps not the culture) to build awesome new technology in the next few years.
Nobody wonders why Microsoft is still around. Selling a technically inferior product is not a problem if you can find customers. There can be many reasons. Markets are far from perfect.
Microsoft built its business by selling software products. If they had meddled with Fortune 500 companies running their business-critical information on top of Windows, Microsoft wouldn't be here now. There are situations to be wary of MS, but I don't think this is one.
I always love to piss off my tech friends by reminding them that Microsoft didn't get to where it was by having the best engineering in the world.. Sales, Marketing and making hard deals that put their products in front of the most customers.
I'm not saying I love their tactics but the "Build it and they will come" really is a field of dreams and young engineers are all dreamers thinking Sales and Marketing is a waste of people and money.
Tiny nitpick: Microsoft was the 8th most profitable corporation in the world, last year. I am sure there are a lot of products that they sell extremely well, besides Windows / Office.
Also, while they may not have produced many successes over 3 decades of platform wars, they have certainly ruined many competitors.
Microsoft has always been full of marketing shitfucks. Like when they rebranded Lync to Skype just because and dumped a whole communication campaign on their paying customers just for one marketing goon's KPI.
But they get away with it. Nobody buys Microsoft because they're good. It's because they have so many fingers in the pie that you can't do without them. They know it and make their products just good enough to not be dropped in favour of something much better.
Microsoft was never consumer-oriented, it was always a B2B/Enterprise-catering firm. They only tolerate retail customers because they don't want us getting used to something else.
Their sales is doing what sales does: try to find a method to sell licenses. That has nothing to do with company philosophy but the percentage the sales person get. That is capitalism but nothing special to Microsoft.
And Limux was a troubled child anyway (users, it organization and political leadership all along).
I would have loved Limux to succeed, but unfortunately it did not.
You seem to be getting close to saying that the product actually being sold hardly matters, which I find hyperbolic.
This is the kind of thing that used to be said about Microsoft, that they were good at selling in spite of having bad products. But the truth was that Microsoft knew very well what their customers needed and wanted, and for the most part did a better job building something that met those wants and needs than their competitors.
Network effects are not the only reason that Microsoft has been successful. Companies have failed to compete with Microsoft for many reasons. Although the technology is often second rate management at Microsoft has been able to broker the right deals, destroy the competition or let the competition destroy themselves.
Microsoft has also benefited from the fragmented market that existed for many years and a clear sales pitch to different levels in the industry from the consumer to the corporation.
The great mistake that many have made is not to appeal to the corporate desktop. This requires Sales people to play golf in my view: not just writing useful software.
This attempt to rattle Google is just another example of these tactics at work.
after all the companies Microsoft has destroyed using this tactic, I'm surprised anyone even picks up their call. Sure the lure of big bucks is appealing, but their track record is very clear. This has been their M.O since the beginning. Just ask Steve Jobs.
Microsoft’s PR department is seriously doing the best job, it‘s insane.
Anecdotal evidence suggests they are now almost beloved. In the tech community as well as enterprise (where they have always been). They are almost never mentioned in Antitrust discussions. Many seem to hate/distrust Google, Facebook and to some extent Amazon.
All the while MS has the highest market cap and is integrating and consolidating right, left and center.
I can only imagine it is because they have fewer touch points with consumers. They rake in insane amounts of cash with Azure, almost automatically. They don‘t have to deal with republicans accusing them of “liberal bias” or end user privacy in general. Even though WIN10 has telemetry just as deep as Android.
Life sure is nice when your main source of revenue is enterprise.
Given that Microsoft still has a boatload of money, market share, and deep-profit products, you have to really give them props for realizing that doesn't really mean that much to the future. Their product lineup has always been confusing, they've been pimping that awful "Windows Live" brand for years, and their branding has been a mess. Worse yet, for a long time their products were not up to standards.
You can love Microsoft products or hat em but it's hard to argue that they aren't taking on all of these issues head first. Xbox is probably the premier home entertainment product on the market, Windows Phone is actually really good now, and much of the problems with Windows from horrible security to poor performance have really been improved.
No one should underestimate how hard it is to admit your company kind of sucks, especially when you are still raking in billions. They deserve a lot of credit.
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