Simplifying Google and Microsoft: Okay, Just a Wild Swing
February 20, 2015
I know the feeling. A deadline looms and the “real writer” casts about for a trope, an angle, a hook on which to hang a story. I read “Microsoft Is the New Google, Google Is the Old Microsoft.” The write up is a stuffed with product names and MBAisms. Here’s a passage I noted:
Meanwhile Microsoft makes the point that it is still thinking big with arguably the most interesting moonshot program in all of tech right now: Windows Holographic. Holographic is an eye to the future to excite consumers and investors while the company still remains laser focused on the present.
Prior to 2006, Google wanted to squish Microsoft. After 2006, Google began to show signs of progeroid syndrome. The problems had more to do with management issues than flaws in the company’s engineering. By 2010, engineering showed signs of reduced blood flow to the brain of Google. The manifestation of these problems were evident in the reorganizations and the drift from the company’s push to capitalize on research computing harvested for ideas that could be integrated into the firm’s information factory. The problems Google faces are rooted in management and engineering. The visible effects are some wild and crazy decisions about products, what the company can do to deal with the non Google world, and the realization that the business model inspired by GoTo, Overture, and Yahoo was getting long in the tooth.
Microsoft, on the other hand, had its own set of problems. These ranged from bureaucratic hardening of the arteries to really bad engineering. Toss in the shift from the desktop monoculture to a more diverse ecosystem. Microsoft became a value stock and uninteresting to all but the most devoted resellers, Windows lovers, and corporate information technology gurus certified by Microsoft. After much thrashing, the company moved from Gates Ballmer to a manager less inclined to chase his tail without snagging it.
Net net: Both companies have challenges, but there firms have not swapped outfits like twins in a slapstick comedy. Both companies are making decisions in an effort to maintain their revenue and profitability. It is unclear how each company will deal with the challenges in enterprise markets, consumer markets, non US markets, and management processes.
Forbes wants to paint a simple word picture for these two large and deeply stressed organizations. My focus is search. So consider that utility function. Neither company delivers high value findability for its constituents. When two firms whiff at bat, one must look beyond the appearance of failure to identify the root cause. Why has Google search gone off the rails? What’s up with the Bing thing? Is a failure with a utility function a manisfestation of more substantive issues?
For now, considered analyses of the weakness of Google and Microsoft is what I want to find in “real journalism”, not generalizations about goofy products or “moon spoon” metaphors. Even I tire of referencing the Loon balloon.
Stephen E Arnold, February 20, 2015
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