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Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

This is the natural end-game of being a hugely successful company: you box yourself in. You make so many rules about what can happen and how it all has to work that nothing can escape.

They have to break up. I just don't see any other way around it. Each little new idea that might help somebody competes with dozens of special interests all looking out for some little fiefdom or concern that may or may not be important -- nobody knows. The place becomes a huge echo chamber where outsiders can't be heard except through marketing studies and sales staff reporting through the chain of command.

I wish this situation was unique to Microsoft, but it is not. Any large shop that makes software ends up creating their own prison.

The open question is whether Google and Facebook will also end up in this same spot.

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The open question is whether Google and Facebook will also end up in this same spot.

As you said, everyone will end up here. There's virtually no way a rational company can avoid it. It's textbook Innovator's Dilemma. Eventually you're faced with a situation that there is a new product/service that is cannibalizing your product. You can hasten the cannibalization of your cash cow and maybe succeed in this new space (or maybe not), or you can milk you cash cow for all its worth. If you do the math its almost always better to NOT hasten your own demise for an uncertain future.

But even if you were to break them up, there's really no good way to break them up that really helps all that much. Windows and Office? Nothing else can really exist on its own. Now you have two big monsters that have the same problems, but spread out in two companies.

I think you have to let nature take its course. Which probably means some breakout technology that lets them continue their cash cow while providing new scenarios. If Windows 8 can actually merge the desktop, tablet, and phone in a way never even envisioned, that would be a shot. But it's such a long shot I wouldn't hold out much hope.

Even if integrating desktop, tablet, and phone in a way that has never been envisioned is a good idea at all (and I can't say). I feel that Windows 8 will either be way too soon to do it well, or they will way take too long to ship Windows 8. We haven't even got one proven good iteration of anything Windows on phone or tablet yet.

I agree... I suspect if it is a good idea it will be too soon to do it well. And in five years Apple will do it well. That's the story of the MS product pipeline. Do something five years too early to do it well -- get stuck in the decisions made at that point in time and can't come back and realize that the decisions of five years ago no long apply.

But Apple in contrast has turned out to be surprisingly nimble and my impression is that their employees are quite happy.

I imagine Apple as an absolute monarchy, with Jobs handing down dictates from on high. If I imagine decisions at MS, I imagine a committee process.

I think the results the companies are having bear out those impressions.

Its interesting to me that one of the most successful absolute monarchies, Great Britain, in the end became ruled by committee.

And eventually lost its empire, with the next great power ruled a committee constrained by a constitution. And that constitution eroding away has led to the committee pretty much pissing it away.

So, yeah, committees are not good. A system governed by sensible rules that rewards smart action, punishes bad actors and forgives errors is better.

True, but there is no evidence that such a system can remain for any significant length of time (or in most cases even come about in the first place) in practice. If you look at any country of significant size they mostly appear to be ruled by a committee or an absolute dictator. The committees could be said to generally be doing a bad job but nowhere near as bad as the worst cases of the dictators, but nobody has this ideal system governed by sensible rules - possibly because when you get enough human beings together in the first place they can't agree on what any sensible rules would be.

An absolute ruler who is competent can get a lot done. An absolute ruler who is incompetent or bad for his people, OTOH, is hard to remove.

I think those absolute rulers whose territories are small and whose populations can easily leave probably make more sound decisions. Singapore seems well run, for example. The people can remove a ruler by removing themselves.

"A system governed by sensible rules that rewards smart action, punishes bad actors and forgives errors is better."

Good luck writing that RFP. Especially the "smart action" part.

The best government, in the end, is one that's transparent and, ultimately, replaceable. Whoever is in power is always going to seek to retain power; you want that to be dependent on them making decisions that benefit everyone else.

Even if you had a "perfect" government, but it lacked transparency, you'd have a problem as that lack of transparency would make it difficult for everyone outside the government to make long-term decisions about investment, etc.

> Its interesting to me that one of the most successful absolute monarchies, Great Britain

Was Britain ever an absolute monarchy? Possibly under its first king, James I, but none of the succeeding monarchs ever had absolute power.

I guess that's true. It's real strength was probably the rule of law and property rights, which Parliament didn't erode while the House of Lords had power.

Yes, but what's going to happen once Jobs retires/steps away? I imagine he's been very busy at choosing/grooming possible successors for a few years already, but usually empires ruled by a powerful individiuals crumble after the change at the top.

They probably made the necessary changes in the 90s.

I credit Apple's nimbleness with the way their product design teams limit the scope of what they're working on at any given time - they fight project creep, focus on creating a great user experience, and get the 10% of the product that users use 90% of the time right.

Microsoft, on the other hand, tries to be all things and spreads itself out like crazy. It's easier to be nimble when you're more focused.

Microsoft's software runs on a billion computers. The alternative is to choose whose money they're going to reject in the next version.

Won't be too long until Android runs on a billion computers

I was told projects in Apple are generally endeavors by small teams. Five people write this app, four people write that subprocess. While feature staffing is similar at MS, the overhead of management, program management, and test often smothers any attempt to move fast at MS.

I don't think Microsoft's lack of innovation has anything to do with moving fast. The article nailed it by saying Ballmer and Co are in denial about their competitors.

I remember an article here on HN about how he mocked the single iPad user in the audience (I paraphrase): "look at that poor guy, slouched over his knees, trying to type awkwardly on that tablet. This isn't the wave of the future."

I understand that being an over-the-top company man is part of his public persona, but I truly believe that at some point after Bill Gates stepped down, Ballmer stopped acting and started believing the very public denial and actually living in it. And coincidentally, this is when everything started going wrong for MS. Management drank the "kool-aid", they became an organization of yes-men, following a delusional leader.

The problem isn't that middle management is smothering innovation, it is the result of upper management not providing clear, well-thought-out direction.

  >> If you do the math its almost always better to 
  >> NOT hasten your own demise for an uncertain future.

In the short run it is always looks better to not cannibalize your products, and managers are driven mostly by short term objectives.

  >> for an uncertain future.

If you don't cannibalize your products what is almost certain is eventual failure:

http://www.economist.com/node/14248815?story_id=14248815

> If you don't cannibalize your products what is almost certain is eventual failure

What I see happening is smartphones and tablets taking over much of the territory where people now use laptops and desktop PCs. Which is why Microsoft's failure in those two markets is so damning.

But even if (especially if?) you confidently foresee eventual failure, the net present value of your assets may be maximized by milking them right now. Just because there also exists a profitable market in cannibalizing your product, doesn't mean you have to be in that market.

When the secret copyright-related Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty made Hacker News, I asked "Any idea on how to finally fix all this?" partly due to the fact that I was getting frustrated with what was happening and what was causing it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2315729

Agreed. But I don't think the situation is as dire as the article paints it. Office is not going anywhere anytime soon. The rise of smartphones does not suddenly mean that there is any lesser demand for Office. The enterprise trusts Microsoft (with good reason IMHO) and if they stay on their game they can continue to dominate the market. Can you imagine trusting your billion dollar company to Google's half-assed support, or some upstart pitching support for OpenOffice (okay maybe eventually)?

Microsoft should spin off everything except Windows and Office. Let all those divisions and products sink or swim on their own merits. Ultimately they will get more value from the ability for some of those units to have a breakout success than the marginal benefit they get from twisting all products to serve the "Windows Everywhere" strategy. Not that "Windows Everywhere" is inherently a bad strategy, but if you have a CEO lacking vision, and a glut of middle management politics, it just makes sense to gut the inefficiencies and scar tissue in the middle of the organization and give the rank and file the opportunity to rise to their abilities.

This would also play to Ballmer's strength as a salesman. I get the feeling he looks at how Apple is thriving on a closed ecosystem ("OS X Everywhere") and wants to succeed in a similar way, but he is utterly incapable of it. If he were to focus on Windows / Office and say how can we sell more of this on its own merits I think he would be more successful.

Except, it's not "OSX Everywhere" - Apple doesn't have an OS integration in automobiles (Ford deal), refrigerators (http://www.zdnet.com/news/microsoft-plans-to-sit-inside-your...), and they're not trying to right now. That said, if they entered those markets, it'd probably be good. :)

I get the feeling he looks at how Apple is thriving on a closed ecosystem ("OS X Everywhere") and wants to succeed in a similar way, but he is utterly incapable of it.

Ah, but that's the thing-- Apple didn't go for "OS X Everywhere", they were willing to segment their OS strategy, and developed iOS for the iPhone and iPad. There's no telling what the tech world would look like now if Microsoft hadn't tied their tablet strategy to Windows XP.

iOS is based on OS X though, but anyway the technical distinction is irrelevant to my point.

The point is that Apple integration is very tight across devices, in a way that must be very appealing to Microsoft from a business perspective.

But Microsoft has it's own strengths, such as catering to the support and feature needs of the enterprise. In a way it mirrors Apple's strategy of targeting the high-end consumer market, Microsoft targets the highest-end software market, period.

The difference between "based-on" and "Windows everywhere" is subtle, but makes for a huge difference. Apple is willing to fit the right parts in place where Microsoft has made some truly bad and confusing technology selections (e.g. full Windows on tablets instead of a grown-up phone OS).

The difference is the quality of execution. I don't think "Windows everywhere" implies the crap they've been putting out. I chalk it up more to incompetent middle management.

Perhaps not for certain definitions of OSX. Have you shopped for a car recently? Look how many different automobiles have dock connectors these days...

Those Fords with Windows in the dash are the same ones with ipod cables in the glove box.

> Can you imagine trusting your billion dollar company to... > some upstart pitching support for OpenOffice (okay maybe eventually)?

Perhaps Microsoft could hasten that day by increasing their prices for office licenses by, say, five-fold. OpenOffice is looking better and better every day.

That "upstart" is IBM -- Lotus Symphony (the current product carrying that name) is an OpenOffice fork.

These problems have nothing to do with software. Every major company that makes innovative products have had this issue for the last few hundred years.

That also means that ways to fix or prevent it have been researched extensibly. It's doable, just take a look at Drucker. Of course, it's also often not done.

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