BBC says Microsoft is facing “middle-age at 30″
Microsoft must be ruefully contemplating the Tall Poppy Syndrome in these days around its 30th anniversary. Commentators are queuing up in droves to take a pot at the Redmond outfit, it seems. Now the BBC wonders if the company is facing middle age and a process of gentle decline.
The effect of companies like Google “begins to push Microsoft off the PC”, says George Colony, chief executive of research firm Forrester. “Microsoft has always been terrified that there would be a big change in software like this.”
Bill Gates, though, claims different underlying trends : “We’ve always wanted to be a company that got the benefit of the scale, going back to the beginning where we said: ‘Hey we’re not a one-product company’. So is it a benefit to us that we work across these realms that we can expose you to the same user interface at home that you get at work? We think so.”
Analysts agree, says the BBC : “the shake-up will allow Microsoft to shed its image as the ‘big daddy’ of office software and broaden revenue streams. … Despite his core software products coming under pressure, Mr Gates is not unduly worried because ’some things that are actually the biggest opportunity for us I think people miss.’ ”
Microsoft is one of the few companies asking “how can scheduling be better, how can meetings be better”?
“The next 10 years we’ll make as many advances as we’ve made in the last 30,” Gates predicts.
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POSTED IN: Corporate News, New Products, Speculation
3 opinions for BBC says Microsoft is facing “middle-age at 30″
Mac beach
Sep 24, 2005 at 12:52 pm
Credibility is a terrible thing to waste. And you can’t get it back easily, if at all.
As I recall, mainstream publications were gushing compliments about Windows 2000 too, and XP, and Office 2000, and so on. As a result, I take everything CNet and a few others say with a huge grain of salt these days. Even when they CRITICIZE Microsoft, I think to myself: “I wonder what’s up with that? Maybe MS welshed on the last ad payment and this is their ‘reminder’ notice.”
Why would anyone in there right mind accept as valid any evaluation of products from a publication that makes millions in advertising from the vendor of said products?
Of course there ARE those who look to such publications as unbiased sources of news, even if Microsoft is probably their single largest customer (and certainly among the largest). For such people, is it such a leap to expect an unbiased view from actual Microsoft employees? Oh why not. Next time around we can dispense with all the middle-men and just ask Bill Gates himself if buying the next version of Windows is a good idea. I’m sure all he has is our best interest, and the future of technology, at heart.
Alex Goad
Sep 25, 2005 at 5:58 pm
I used to believe that Microsoft was unstoppable. I now believe that about Google, and i’ll probably be proven wrong again somewhere down the line.
For now I think it’s a question of momentum, of which Microsoft has lost a great deal while Google shows no sign of slowing down its impressive growth. The BBC suggests an interesting point with the idea of middleagedness, in other words vitality, another all important ingredient to corporate success. Bill Gates is going to have to roll his sleeves way up on this one.
John
Sep 26, 2005 at 12:58 am
I suppose if Bill Gates is middle-aged it’s hard for the company not to take on that image too, especially in its recent rather lumbering organizational form. Maybe the new slimmed down Microsoft will project more dynamism.
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