Microsoft might not be the leader that it once was but they've done a very good job of reinventing themselves. It's a little unfair to call them dead.
I think Nadella took Microsoft for a turn no one had expected, especially tackling open source software so differently that they now drive the leading open source hub on the web. Given this, I'd say this article is an interesting historical document that bears little relevance today. It's one that would probably hold true if Microsoft had never reacted and still tried to drive their company mostly through Windows and Office sales.
The one point that I think still stands though is that "No one is afraid of Microsoft anymore" -- this is true especially because they couldn't enter the mobile market like they intended and that's where computing is radiating from today in so many respects (and especially those of which where Microsoft has traditionally often operated in).
But they're absolutely alive and kicking!
Sure, developer's perception of m$ improved, but the what I find surprising is then buiding Azure / Teams.
If Microsoft introduces a new product today, a new browser, a new toolset, a new standard -- even a new OS -- it Just Doesn't Matter to most people. You can be perfectly content ignoring them entirely and if it eventually rises through the market naturally, maybe then give it a bit of attention.
In Microsoft's halcyon -- smaller revenues but exponentially more influence -- Microsoft's every move shifted industries. You'd sign up to every beta program and read every tea leave to know what they'd do before it kills your product or renders your work futile.
That Microsoft is very much dead and buried.
At least start to read the article.
> They still make a lot of money—so does IBM, for that matter. But they're not dangerous
It's not "unfair" to not match your definition. The author is making the case about a particular definition of a predatory force in software, at large.
There's perhaps an argument that they are dangerous in a way we haven't yet seen, due to their involvement with the US military and the corruption inherent in that terrible choice.
In some of their other businesses, I'd argue that they are very scary. If you work at AWS they are a formidable competitor. If you are in the video game industry, they are a behemoth. But very few startups can really compete in this space, other than for the niches.
Can you elaborate?
On the other hand, Azure is the closest thing to an actual competitor to AWS, and in that sense Microsoft is very much not dead in the sense that pg means it.
Nope. Once the net became fast and mobile devices became prevalent, it was inevitable.
True, they were late to the game, but they still had enormous piles of cash, existing relationships with virtually all corporations, and a strong brand.
Nadella finally stopped leaving all the money on the table by pushing to embrace open source, web-based apps (Office 365), and Azure, and now Microsoft is back to being the third-largest company by market cap.
Frankly while I do use some web apps / services like Netflix, Amazon store etc. for which web app model is a natural the rest of my the software I use on Windows or Linux is native. The sheer amount of high grade consumer and pro level native applications for Windows is insane. I do not think Windows is even remotely close to being dead.
My workflow includes locally installed IntelliJ, Confluence, Jira, GitHub Enterprise.
And somebody on HN told that 90% of the people use Phone/Tablet for those tasks. Not PC.
From what I see in practice PCs and native applications are abundant in way too many work places.
That too. I also use a browser (or Workday's Android app) to do a lot of things that used to require a physical trip to HR or an unpleasant session with SAP.
A lot of professionals, depending on what area they are in, need to run tools that work best when locally installed (even though I saw some interesting things going on with CAD over web interfaces that'll end up being like Google Docs in terms of collaborating over complex designs). Besides, it makes it possible not to have a ridiculous 17" laptop heavier than most boat anchors and still run the heavy stuff on a beefy server somewhere else. Locally installed software is also a bit of a pain for the user, as they need to jump through different hoops to keep everything up to date, something that is simply not there with web-based software.
When computers got high speed always on connections, distributed computing became the norm. Kind of the same we did with X11 in ages past (and I'd gladly do again - I just love my IBM RS/6000).