Microsoft Troubles

Microsoft’s shares have tumbled after it failed to convince investors that its investment in new products will pay-off. I’m not surprised.

The former near-monopoly of the software world faces a number of problems, not least that its current release of Windows, XP, is pretty good. In the past it made enemies and money in equal bucket-loads by being crap. Remember Windows 95? It was so frustrating, and crashed every other minute. When a new release of Windows came along, you would rush out a buy a new computer in the hope that it would give you better service.

There’s not much to complain about XP, so there’s no great rush to upgrade. Even if Windows Vista turns out to be pretty good, I’ll probably just wait until my faithful IBM Thinkpad T23 finally kicks the bucket before I’m into a new Windows product.

Microsoft’s next problem is that applications are moving onto the Web. Sure, Microsoft Word, Excel, etc will run off a web server soon, but Google’s Writely costs nothing and is pretty good. One day it will be even more powerful. So why fork-out for Microsoft office?

The “free” web will do for Microsoft in the long run. Armies of motivated geeks can can produce better products than big bucks. One day Microsoft will be a bit like a utility, boring but necessary, cranking out its Windows operating system for the benefit of the world, but struggling to succeed in other fields against its nimbler rivals.

This entry was posted on April 28th, 2006 and is filed under Blog Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.