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Comment by statictype | Hacker News Reader

Of course not. It's akin to saying any successful Rails app is an embarrassment to 37signals because they had the technology to create it but didn't.

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37signals takes Rails and makes the products they intend to make.

Microsoft has attempted to make a successful cloud platform - their commercials all proclaim, "To the Cloud!" - and yet, they fail, while someone else takes their technology and (potentially) succeeds.

>Microsoft has attempted to make a successful cloud platform - their commercials all proclaim, "To the Cloud!" - and yet, they fail, while someone else takes their technology and (potentially) succeeds.

I don't really think that MS has targeted Windows Azure towards the general consumer market, though. It's basically the same as Amazon Web Services. Apple using that tech gives them an incredibly strong marketing tool, especially for companies that are trying to decide between using Amazon or something else for cloud-based services.

Not Azure per se, but Microsoft did try to bring cloud to consumers. Does anyone recall Livemesh

http://explore.live.com/windows-live-mesh?os=other

Am not sure how much traction it finally got

AWS is cheaper. It matters less to me what companies the size of Apple do, as I'm not Apple.

Erm.. Apple uses both according to the article.

And yet they fail? They've got Apple using their service for iCloud, how is that a "fail"?

I think there is a difference. Microsoft has tried to build and market various synchronization/collaboration/cloud solutions for over a decade, without any success to show for.

If Apple succeeds with iCloud, and that's a big if given their own track record in the internet space, it'd ought to be pretty awkward for Microsoft.

Microsoft mostly marketed those to businesses, though -- Apple is marketing towards their base, viz. recreational computer users.

I'm not sure if Windows Live Mesh is their latest cloud offering or the one before that, or whatever, but Windows Live Mesh certainly is marketed towards regular consumers:

http://explore.live.com/windows-live-mesh

Yes, in the land where everyone is logical and only makes decisions based on pure reason, that's true. But on planet earth, people act irrationally.

From a strictly logical sense, it's meaningless. But symbolically, it says a lot. The fact that Microsoft failed at something and then got bested by someone using their technology is symbolic of how far Microsoft has fallen.

Microsoft shines when they provide infrastructure, not finished products (with a few exceptions).

Services like Azure are what Microsoft should be about.

I think Karl meant infrastructure, not technology.

Well, I think my reply stands. What I'm trying to say is that just because Apple made a successful product on top of Microsoft's infrastructure, it doesn't reflect badly on Microsoft that they didn't do it first - with Azure, it wasn't their intention to build a cloud-based product - it was their intention to build an infrastructure to support cloud-based products.

Your analogy would only make sense if 37Signals was actively trying to compete in the Rails startup's space.

I think a better analogy would be if Barnes & Noble built a more successful online bookstore than Amazon using Amazon's own AWS cloud.

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