“Microsoft has had many lucky breaks over the years. The company’s rise through the 1980s and 1990s is really a series of lucky breaks combined with business savvy and execution on the vision of one PC on every desk,” Joe Wilcox reports for eWeek.
“More recently, Microsoft hasn’t been so lucky,” Wilcox writes. “Since the mid-1990s, the company has stumbled a few times and been unlucky even more often. Recent unluckiness is so great, I had a really hard time whittling down this list to just 10 items.”
Wilcox lists Microsoft’s unlucky breaks in order of descending importance, with No. 1 being most significant and No. 10 the least:
10. Windows XP launch: Subdued due to Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
9. Stock doldrums: Microsoft’s share price peaked at around $58 in December 1999, and it has not gone much of anywhere since.
8. Passing on YouTube: In October 2006, Google announced the acquisition of YouTube for $1.6 billion. Six months earlier, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer passed on buying the video startup for about $500 million. If ComScore ranked YouTube as a search engine, the video sharing site would be No. 2, ahead of Yahoo.
7. Linus Torvalds develops Linux: Consistently causes sales problems for Microsoft.
6. Apple’s May and October surprises: In 2001, three seemingly small Apple events kicked off pebbles that later set off an avalanche. In March, Apple released Mac OS X and again in September with the 10.1 upgrade. In May, the first two Apple retail stores opened in California and Virginia. In October, the first iPod shipped. Folklore has it that bad luck comes in threes.
5. Windows Vista: No Microsoft competitor could have launched an anti-marketing campaign as effective as Windows Vista. The operating system damaged Microsoft’s brand and the company’s credibility with customers, particularly businesses.
4. The Google economy: Google succeeded at the search advertising business pioneered by Overture. Finally, somebody figured out how to generate real revenue from the Web.
3. September 2008 economic crisis: Global economic gloom is bad luck for pretty much everybody. But Microsoft has unique exposure… Microsoft is in a unique position of misery. Among various companies, cutbacks here, layoffs there, bankruptcies elsewhere will have limited impact on technology and other suppliers. Microsoft’s products are used *everywhere*, so the potential sales harm is greater.
2. The United States vs. Microsoft: The May 1998 antitrust case left deep scars on Microsoft, and forever damaged the company’s image. Microsoft carries the stigma of convicted monopolist. The U.S. antitrust case led to more than 100 other lawsuits, most of which Microsoft settled. Dissatisfaction with the outcome here spurred on competitors and antitrust investigators in Europe. In March 2004, the European Union’s Competition Commission found that Microsoft violated local antitrust laws. An appeals court would later agree. Since the ruling, the European Competition has fined Microsoft and launched two other antitrust investigations. The damage to Microsoft is simply incalculable.
1. World Wide Web: Microsoft can’t put the Internet genie back in its bottle. Too alluring is the promise of anytime, anywhere informational access on any device, with no Windows required… Microsoft can’t succeed. The mobile phone and Web browser is the killer combination that will eventually undo Microsoft’s desktop hegemony. What bad luck.
There’s much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Wilcox calls it bad luck. But, we know it’s karma. Microsoft is simply reaping what they’ve sown – even as they continue today to sow seeds of their own destruction with their blatant and incompetent attempts to mimic Apple’s innovations.