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Thursday, October 6. 2005
Microsoft's Doomed Play
Infoworld's cover this week, just like the magazine itself, gives an unflinchingly accurate view of the present and future of the computing industry. There are so many elements in this picture which allude to the doom of Microsoft that I can tell the artist is someone who really has a deep understanding of the industry.
The first element that really caught my eye is the mad gleam in Gate's eye in this picture. He's doomed, he knows it, and he's going insane trying to come up with some way to save himself. He's depicted like a coach at halftime 40 points down desperately seeking an answer. Microsoft is aggressively building hordes of fat-client application development tools tied to the Windows operating system when AJAX and web applications have already made their efforts a pointless, inferior, and far too late replication of technology.
Notice the player in the background. The look on his face is one of stupor and misunderstanding. He has no idea what the coach is talking about. This is a perfect match for the stumbling within Microsoft itself. Their different divisions no longer work as a single unit, or even effectively separately; with increasing missed deadlines and software that is a rehash of the same year after year.
Notice how they're huddling in the locker room, using an antique chalk board to make their plans. In typical Microsoft style they're making plans without consulting their customers; "these are the plays we're going to use and our customers are going to like it," and we'll push these productivity tools which are a re-hash of the same ones we sold 10 years ago while giving them this pretty piece of chalk so it looks better.
The article itself, outlining their new 'client focus' and 'fat client push' only serve to further make this image more dramatic.
