Microsoft is Dead (2007) http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
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Posted this because 10 years is a long trajectory to try to predict anything! And context/players change a lot over time. A lot of points in the essay - including relevance for startups - were spot on. But the “is dead” seems off today, tho it was a fun title at the time
People misinterpreted that title even at the time. I had to write this to clarify what I meant. http://www.paulgraham.com/cliffsnotes.html … Scanning it, it still seems to cover the case. Although I admit Microsoft is doing better than I'd have predicted.
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Microsoft is one of the best corporate ecosystem citizens out there. Companies make $9 for every $1 Microsoft makes. And they’re a huge company so they always have blind spots. Not much to worry about. Also every spreadsheet in existence is a $1B SaaS business waiting to happen.
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The essay was 100% correct! Microsoft was dead then and still is. The body is still warm because the Wintel monopoly is still hanging on, but iOS and Android continue to chip away at it, and Microsoft continues to acquire companies pointlessly in hopes of resurrecting itself.
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Lol. Do you even know what Microsoft does outside windows? Hint: Cloud Computing, AI, AR, Office 365, Developer tools
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All said, there are lots of revisionist bandwagoners who would have predicted something similar back then. Suddenly taking a stance now that MSFT tripped the arbitrary success metric of surpassing AAPL in market cap.
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1/ I keep noticing my friends who are part of the "Microsoft hate-wagon" are slowly making concessions. "MS sucks except VS Code is my favorite IDE on Linux". "MS sucks but Linkedin/Github were great acquisitions". "MS sucks but C# is a great language".
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2/ They are not experimenting as much as the other tech giants, which I'm assuming is why they aren't feared by those starting startups. However, it does seem like they are consistently making brilliant moves -- possibly enough for a comeback
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Owning our mistakes and being humble is key to hapiness. The initial article was a bold assumption that went wrong, while the response here doesn’t dignify anyone. Ego is everyone’s enemy, and this is a prime example of how one succumbs to it.
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