Microsoft and Luck, Fate, Whatever
February 15, 2009
I read eWeek’s Microsoft Watch column by Joe Wilcox tagged “Microsoft’s 10 Unlucky Breaks.” You can read it here. The hook for the write up was Friday the 13th, an “unlucky” day. Mr. Wilcox romped through a collection of challenges, gaffes, and fumbles. You will want to read the top 10 unlucky breaks in their entirety, but I want to give you a flavor of the analysis.
For example, Mr. Wilcox points to the lack of “luck” about Microsoft’s share price. He also flagged “the Google economy”. And he identified the World Wide Web as another unlucky factor.
Let’s think about Microsoft and “luck”. I am not certain the word “luck” is the appropriate one to describe the challenges and issues identified by Mr. Wilcox. I recall reading a play in college with the interesting title Oedipus Rex. Oedipus “knew” that he was going to whack his dad and then marry his mom. As Oedipus reacted as a thinking person with some emotional triggers, he did indeed off pops and woe his mother.
The point was that good old Oedipus “knew” what would happen and then he made decisions that delivered his mama to the marriage bed. At the end of the play, poor old Oedipus figured out the consequences of his actions and embraced a life without YouTube.com. Teiresias’ comment sticks in my mind: “It’s a terrible thing to be wise when there’s nothing you can do.”
Microsoft seems be operating within an ecosystem in which failure is predestined. Let me recast these three points in Sophoclean terms:
- Microsoft’s share price. This is a reflection of investor perception about the value of a company. Microsoft’s share price has been in the value stock range for years. Keep in mind that Microsoft had and still has a monopoly of the enterprise desktop operating system. The company’s revenue is north of $65 billion a year. The company is profitable. Yet there’s that share price. That’s not a matter of luck. The share price is an indicator of perceived value. Actions and decisions create the perception. No luck involved.
- The Google economy is not a matter of luck for Microsoft. In 1999, Microsoft hired some AltaVista.com talent but decided to follow a different path. Google hired some AltaVista.com talent and went a different way. Microsoft decided and took actions that today have significant impact on the company’s competitiveness. Google was able to overcome its early mistakes and act opportunistically to implement another company’s business model. Microsoft hired one of the Overture wizards and made decisions that keep Microsoft far behind Google. No luck. Just actions based on what Microsoft executives believed to the appropriate. This is not luck; this is decision making that did not pan out.
- The World Wide Web. No luck there. Microsoft smothered Netscape with “love” and then watched or sort of watched as the Google moved into Web search, then Web applications, and then into the enterprise. Now the Microsoft managers have to get out of the NASCAR grandstand and behind the wheel of a race car. No luck involved. Microsoft watched and now has an older race car which seems to defy souping up to beat the Google’s ride.
I think the unfolding of events documented in Mr. Wilcox’s good list is little more than worry beads that remind me of decisions and actions that have created the present situation. The only predestination is that Microsoft has not learned from its past. Now, like Oedipus, it is in some sense, blind.
Stephen Arnold, February 15, 2009
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