This feels like PowerPoint-driven strategy. All of the executives in Microsoft are like circling vultures, fighting with each other over the flesh of the Windows cash flow stream, trying to get their organizations funded.

You’d think they could just leave and found their own companies, but no, they’d have to make something people wanted relatively immediately, instead of being able to mouth platitudes about being “strategic” and “building moats” to “protect” Windows and so on and so forth.

Or if you prefer, there is a Windows Tax, and these divisions are like government projects, each trying to justify their existence and draw upon the tax revenues. Like government projects, they are not accountable to the people who pay the taxes, just faceless mandarins at the top.They only lose if they are silly enough to cause a scandal with their foolishness and embarrass the company into firing them and defunding their projects.

Building Kin, then killing it, then getting into bed with Nokia, then building their own tablet... Reminds me of the way the city contractors tear up my street, then pave it, then tear it up again, then pave it again, and so forth. As long as the bureaucracy is in control, and as long as the tax dollars keep flowing, it’s a game of who has the best PowerPoint.