Paul Graham is an essayist, programmer, and programming language designer. In 1995 he developed with Robert Morris the first web-based application, Viaweb, which was acquired by Yahoo in 1998. In 2002 he described a simple Bayesian spam filter that inspired most current filters. He’s currently working on a new programming language called Arc, a new book on startups, and is one of the partners in Y Combinator, a venture firm specializing in funding early stage startups that helps startups move from idea to company.
Graham blogs, “A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead.”
“Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years starting in the late 80s. I can remember when it was IBM before them. I mostly ignored this shadow. I never used Microsoft software, so it only affected me indirectly—for example, in the spam I got from botnets. And because I wasn’t paying attention, I didn’t notice when the shadow disappeared,” Graham writes. “But it’s gone now. I can sense that. No one is even afraid of Microsoft anymore. They still make a lot of money—so does IBM, for that matter. But they’re not dangerous.”
Graham writes: What killed them? Four things, I think, all of them occurring simultaneously in the mid 2000s:
• Google
• Ajax
• broadband Internet
• Apple
Graham writes, “Thanks to OS X, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare in technology. [2] Their victory is so complete that I’m now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at startup school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s… And of course Apple has Microsoft on the run in music too, with TV and phones on the way.”
Full article here.
Related articles:
Microsoft faces mutiny: Dell to expand Linux factory-installed options; HP dumps Media Center PCs – March 29, 2007
Spate of recent Mac security stories signal that Microsoft, others getting nervous – March 06, 2006
Apple’s Mac is not doomed to small market share forever; the ‘Ignorance Lag’ is ending – February 11, 2005
Defending Windows over Mac a sign of mental illness – December 20, 2003
This IS news to me. Maybe it happened a while back, but the significant point here is that VCs aren’t afraid of MS any more. Back in the 90s, VCs would actually meet with MS and take their guidance on what not to fund.
If that fear and shadow is gone, MS as we knew it, in the 90s, IS dead.
The company and Windows and its products will last a looooong time of course. After all, General Motors is still alive. But GM was once DOMINANT… so dominant that they organized the company to compete with itself. And MS might not evolve into GM (that is a terminal patient with a long decline before death). It might wind up more like IBM. IBM is a big company that makes a lot of money and isn’t going away. But it is nothing like the IBM that DOMINANTED computing, which it did as late as the 80s. And it never will be again.
ps…
I love my macs but I actually make my living today using MS technologies. So this isn’t exactly good news to me. But it is soooo obvious when I consider my status as a technology professional. I am working in MS technologies because my current (long-term) gig is based on it. But, as a long-term career matter, I feel very insecure about being MS-based.
If VCs aren’t afraid of them, young entrepreneurs don’t think about them, and more experienced technology professionals (me) don’t feel secure being MS-based, that is a complete and utter sea change. MS has lost its mojo. It may have enough momentum to be big and profitable and sustain windows for years or decades. But the MS of the 90s IS dead.
My take is that the whole Web 2.0 movement is largely a RESULT of MS. MS sooooo dominated the desktop that the talent and money went elsewhere. I don’t think the internet killed the desktop, I think MS killed it back in the 90s by crushing competitors instead of letting the ecosystem bloom. Web 2.0 is “advancing” because the desktop has been weakened by over a decade of the MS monopoly.
Microsoft’s partner program will kill the company.
They are manufacturing products for partners, not users. The best example is the Zune. Squirting tunes is really squirting advertisements, which is attractive to partners, but not to users. Microsoft tries to make it a user feature with “welcome to the social,” but when was the last time you went to a party where everyone sat around listening to iPods? “Squirting” solves an imaginary problem for an imaginary user in an imaginary scenario–but it gets the music company to sign on. But that is myopic business model, because if no one buys a Zune, the partners go away.
Unless Microsoft’s qualities satisfy end users, all those contracts become nothing more than papers with signatures. Manufacturing autograph collections is not a profitable enterprise.
Microsoft is focusing on making deals with partners and putting in features that look great at first glance. They are not focusing on management, development, quality, or even end users, which is why their products look great until you use them.
In other words, Microsoft is caught up in the glitter of big-business deals and the lure of easy money, but it is all an illusion. They will find out the hard way that you can’t outsource marketing and there is no substitute for making quality products that people need.