Microsoft is Dead, according to Paul Graham.
Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years starting in the late 80s. I can remember when it was IBM before them. I mostly ignored this shadow. I never used Microsoft software, so it only affected me indirectly — for example, in the spam I got from botnets. And because I wasn’t paying attention, I didn’t notice when the shadow disappeared.
Or maybe not?
Assertion that Microsoft’s ‘dead’ doesn’t compute
Plain and simple, Graham is wrong. There’s no way anyone could argue that Microsoft is dead. Just look at the numbers. When a software runs more than 90% of the desktops on the planet — and will for the foreseeable future — it’s simply not dead.
Oh, well, if USA Today says it ain’t so, they must be right. On the other hand:
Microsoft admits Vista failure
These two actions by Microsoft are proof of what I suggested three years ago. Microsoft has lost its ability to twist arms, and now it is going to die. It can’t compete on level ground, so is left with backpedalling and discounts of almost 100 times.
I bitch about Microsoft as much as anyone, but do I want them “dead”? No, other than in the sense that IBM is now “dead”: still around, still big, still profitable and influential, but no longer the tyrannical force in the industry they once were. Humbled and forced to play nice. In other words, “dead” in exactly the sense Paul Graham intended it.
The USA Today column is especially risible. The writer contorts Graham’s statement into a claim that Microsoft is “no longer innovative”. But if death is the lack of innovation, Microsoft was stillborn. They were never innovative. They were experts at taking ideas other people had come up with, commoditizing them, and driving the original innovators out of business. They were experts at milking every last drop of advantage out of the monopoly position that IBM foolishly handed them. They were conquerors, not builders. And now their conquering days are coming to an end.
Good riddance. And time for the folks in Redmond to start building Microsoft 2.0.