“Two successive Microsoft chief executives have long tried, and failed, to refute what we might call the Single-Era Conjecture, the invisible law that makes it impossible for a company in the computer business to enjoy pre-eminence that spans two technological eras. Good luck to Steven A. Ballmer, the company’s chief executive since 2000, as he tries to sustain in the Internet era what his company had attained in the personal computing era,” Randall Stross reports for The New York Times.
“Empirical evidence, however, suggests that he won’t succeed. Not because of personal failings, but because Mother Nature simply won’t permit it,” Stross reports.
“Maybe this was why Mr. Ballmer flirted with Yahoo,” Stross reports. “That prize, however, seems a mirage. You can’t merge-and-acquire your way around the Single-Era Conjecture. Just ask I.B.M., which gobbled up Lotus Development Corporation to no avail.”
“It’s Google, of course, that has developed the musculature to step forward and lay claim to being Microsoft’s successor as industry leader in the Internet era,” Stross reports.
“It’s no secret that Microsoft’s online businesses have failed to gain leading market positions. But what is not widely appreciated, perhaps, is that the company’s online initiatives have lately been doing worse than ever,” Stross reports.
“In the 2006 fiscal year, Microsoft’s online services produced a $74 million loss after the previous year’s profit of $402 million. Since then, the numbers have become uglier, as Microsoft’s online segment has added employees and absorbed growing sales and marketing expenses. In the 2007 fiscal year, the online businesses lost $732 million. In the next nine months, through March 31 this year, they recorded a loss of $745 million, almost double the amount in the period a year earlier,” Stross reports.
“According to Hitwise, an Internet research firm, Google’s share of searches in the United States has increased to almost 67.9 percent in March 2008 from 58.3 percent in March 2006. During the same period, Microsoft’s share has dropped to 6.3 percent from 13.1 percent,” Stross reports.
More in the full article here.
Microsoft made its fortune on the back of general tech ignorance in the 1980’s and ’90’s. “Hey a PC is a PC, right? And besides, Joe from work told me to get one of them Dells.” That level of ignorance, Microsoft’s lifeblood, has begun drying up. Everyone who gets a Mac and tells their friends and family about it increases the evaporation rate exponentially.
Direct link via YouTube here.
@ KenC
“The Hungarian egging was odd. I would have expected the others in the audience to tackle the crazy nut.”
What? You thought they’d all have brought eggs?
Oh, wait a minute, by “the crazy nut” you didn’t mean Ballmer.
Why would they? He was no threat to anyone — not even Ballmer with an aim like that. Everyone was just embarrassed, including the thrower, who didn’t know what to do after his “grand gesture”, and it all just fizzled out.
As for Monkey Boy, he passed it off rather well.
But that someone wanted to throw the eggs tells you something. No one ever wanted to throw an egg at Steve Jobs that I know of.
http://www.rcrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080519/FREE/634314814/1026
He’s at it again.. Listening to the guy, you’d think Apple was in decline!!!!!!!!!!!!
You really don’t get much Panic Tackling for anything less than a bomb belt these days, anyway. Dude should’a tried some road flares, or something.
Hilarious article. Damn near fell out of my chair laughing until Nancy looked over her side of the cubicle divider in disgust. Sorry, Nancy. I can’t stand the ‘soft rock and dusties’ on her radio station. How much Sting and Olivia Newton John can you hear in a day and not go nuts? Thankfully once in a while one of those REO ballads makes it through to restore my sanity. Timeless stuff.
Anyway, Microsoft continues to skyrocket to new heights in market share and revolutionary innovations while you MAC dorks fiddle with your dopey I-Pods and so-called computers that can’t play games. I don’t think there will ever be a decline for the geniuses in Redmond. Hey MAC lemmings, wishing Microsoft will go away won’t make it so. Apple has to get off their duff and make something people actually want for a change. Dorks.
Your potential. Our passion.™
Waste of bad eggs.
I think zuny is only imagining the REO is getting through.
@almux
I hate to be negative here, but no MS will not fail or crash to the point of irrelevance. They will suffer a bit, lose some customers. Thats about it. Remember they have a Monopoly in the business world and now 3rd world countries.
Microsoft past its prime, destined for decline? – This is 2008, how slow people are to see what is in front of their faces.
MS, Crooks and Liars, since day 1.
Microsoft = world’s biggest (non-governmental) criminal organization ever (well maybe excepting the East India Company 200 years ago, and maybe not non-governmental).
Not taken the red pill yet? – being a Mac user doesn’t absolve you.
I think many people here are missing the larger point: This isn’t just a “Microsoft problem.” What happens in ten or so years when there is another paradigm shift in computing? Will the Apple of 2018 be like the Microsoft of today? Steve Jobs stepping down; a new CEO at Apple who, for whatever reason, can’t build on or even continue Apple’s past success; a new way of computing or using the computer; other smaller, more nimble companies moving in on Apple’s turf… I’d like to think that Apple is creative enough to either embrace and succeed with whatever new technology emerges, or will create the very technology of the future, but who knows?
@John
Alex Bogusky needs to take some advice from the late Hank Stramm regarding the creation of an advertising campaign for M$ to compete against Apple – “it’s like trying to dress up a pig – it ain’t gonna make much difference”
@ Mark, “clogs to clogs in three generations” (Google) – W H Gates junior was the second.
More importantly. What happens when nature’s resources are so constrained (insert alternative word here ………… ) that much fewer people can survive?
It’s just an illusion (that was too).
Thank Steve for iTunes, makes the illusion more palatable – for now.
Will you sign up for the Steve Jobs podcast?
In super-cryptic mode today
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Which color would you take?
Is that Vern Fonk thing for real? Ga-ga-ga-going! The girls are hot though.
There will be no fast decline for Microsoft. There are too many businesses and consumers who don’t know any better, and so they’ll keep buying Windows until it’s no longer available.
Microsoft will slowly shrivel up and exist as a smaller company. X-Box will be sold to someone, and the other businesses will be jettisoned except for Windows and Office products, since those are the only ones which make money.
Too bad for Yahoo! that they’ll be forced by shareholders (Icahn) to merge with Microsoft. That will be the end of Yahoo!.
MDN Magic Word: growth, as in none for MS (or Yahoo!)
@ James
Vern Fonk is a western Washington car insurance salesman. He’s the bald guy in the ads. The commercials are real. Check out the Napoleon Dynamite one, it’s pretty sweet.
@ ChrissyOne,
“And if history is any guide at all, this can only mean that Microsoft will one day be run… by this guy.”
Is this fellow too a Harvard graduate?
@ Yikes,
He says wait a couple of weeks before you buy it:
“I doubt you’ll need to wait a month but it probably would be prudent, given what happened with the first generation, to at least wait a week or two while following any breakage reports to ensure your experience will go seamlessly.”
But within that fortnight, buy a competitor’s phone!
“It is likely Apple will respond to known threats by competitors like Samsun, LG, Asus and RIM in any case and one of these phone designs may be a better choice for you.”
Who takes advice from this guy? Let’s see a show of hands.
New issue of Fast Company:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/126/believe-it-or-not-hes-a-pc.html
“Alex Bogusky built the country’s slickest ad shop using Apple products. His next challenge: Persuade people like him to buy Microsoft’s stuff.”
Read this article. It’ll make you laugh your ASS off. This egomaniac and his ad agency had a few winners with Miller Lite and Burger King, and now this guy is convinced, with his deluded thinking, that he can destroy Apple by changing Microsoft’s advertising.
Puleese. No amount of cool advertising can prop up uncool, unstable, unusable products. It’s like crapping in a box and backing it up with 100 million bucks in advertising. Doesn’t work.
NOTHING can make MS’ crap look cool anymore. Too little, too late. Their time as a dominant force is coming to an end.
You left out Stereo Warehouse (on Aurora).
Enjoy
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http://www.superstereowarehouse.com/tv.php
@Asmodeus:
Yeah, their uber-hip Zune advertising was so effective they apparently forgot all about it. Making your geeks go to the gym, shave their heads, and pierce their ears, and concocting a cool persona for them, I’ll buy that.
And ye Gods! Honk for Fonk? Is your insurance at Steak? We just don’t have advertising like that around these parts, LOL! Somebody should forward those to Redmond.
You mean you can search the Internet via Microsoft?
Who knew??
M$ is like a twenty+ year old car … still runs, but boy, does it show its age!
The M$ mechanics are trying to keep this old heap [OS] running but the technology is past its prime, the repairs [patches] don’t seem to help much get more out of the old bucket.
Sure you can still drive the old heap, but it keeps on breaking down just to get to the corner store.
I think MS got to where they are because of being in the right place at the right time. First, an operating system was needed for the PC. IBMs didn’t cut it. MS gave them DOS. It worked better than IBMs and other comers. Then the Mac came along. This was MS’s second big break. In the beginning, MS wrote apps that worked on the Mac and took advantage of the Mac’s OS and UI. This was good for Apple as well (Developers, Developers, Developers….
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”raspberry” style=”border:0;” /> ). But it also gave MS a good look at the OS and the UI. And it gave them something to COPY. They have been doing it ever since. The only reason that the copy outsold the original was because the hardware was an order of magnitude cheaper. But now that just ain’t so. And Mac OS became harder to copy. The business model that made MS great (i.e., copy Apple and sell for less) isn’t viable because they can’t sell for less and there copies are grossly inferior. Look at Zune. Zune might have been successful (I say might, mind you) if the cost was half the iPod. But at the same price – pulleaze!
MS is clearly on it’s way out. But it’s so big, its just going to take a while to die.
To HMCIV:
Regarding your comment :Is it me or does Ballmer look like he’s squeezing out a really big brown Zune in that photo?”
I would have to say no, there is a photo MDN has put up a photo of Ballmer that looks like he is squeezing out a really big brown Zune and another that looks like Zune Thang is pulling out a really big brown Zune out of Ballmer, but this one looks new and different.
It looks like Ballmer is squeezing out a really big brown Zune….sideways.
Man you guys get worse with every passing day. You really think Microsoft is going to crash. Give me a fucking break. der fueher really brain washes you guys! Microsoft with 95.61 of the market on OS is in the world. Who in the hell is ready or even wants that kind of responsibility. Or how about the Office suite dominanace or the Browser dominance.
You forget they are inovating with new products every quarter. The cloud is a reality right now whith them. Surface computing is there already as well. Mobile technologies gets more market share every quarter. Oh and the gaming consoles, the media player.
You guys are a bunch of brainwashed Apple wannabes shouting to the mountain, ME TOOOOOO.
Go get a life.
It’s as if M$ were selling VCR technology in a world in which DVDs are beginning to catch on with the masses.