Microsoft's 10 Luckiest Moments
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It's Friday the 13th, and, even today, some companies have all the luck. How lucky has Microsoft been over the years? |
My list of Microsoft's 10 luckiest moments:
10. AOL's acquisition of Time Warner, which early on looked like bad luck for Microsoft. The merger later defanged a long-time rival—or competitor—as perceived by Microsoft executives.
9.The February 2003 acquisition of the virtual machine technology of Connectix. Four years later, Microsoft is well positioned for a booming enterprise virtualization market.
8. Outlook 97. The e-mail, calendaring and contact program created a sales pull between Office and Exchange Server. The combination is the centerpiece of Microsoft's desktop-server's successful push into the enterprise and is serves as the model Microsoft seeks to recreate with it newer desktop and server products.
7. Software Assurance. Microsoft's Licensing 6 riled customers in 2001 and 2002 but Software Assurance smoothed out Microsoft's balance sheet with billions and billions of dollars in recurring revenue.
6. The browser wars. Internet late-comer Microsoft bolted Internet Explorer onto Windows and forestalled the Web's inevitable negative impact. A decade later, Web 2.0 is bad luck.
5. U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's closed-door discussions. Jackson's meetings with journalists during Microsoft's antitrust trial led an appeals court to remove him as the trial judge. Microsoft later avoided the breakup of the company and settled with the Justice Department.
4. Separate, early-1990s Lotus and WordPerfect decisions to delay Windows versions in favor of MS-DOS. The delays opened the way for Excel and Microsoft Word to eventually dominate their respective software categories.
3. Windows 95. The planets aligned and people waited in line to buy Microsoft's pseudo-32-bit operating system.
2. Compaq's "Luggable," which opened up the PC clone market, widespread licensing of MS-DOS and the supporting partner channels.
1. Microsoft's MS-DOS licensing deal with IBM for its personal computer. Maybe in a parallel universe, IBM favored CP/M.
What would you add to the list? Or what would your list be?
Comments (18)
Sun getting all upset over the addition of delegates to Java. .NET was a direct result of that legal battle and the obvious shortcomings in COM 3.0
Posted by Paul | July 13, 2007 3:47 PM
Connectix?? Reeaally!!?
If you haven't been keeping track of current events, VMWare has been eating Microsoft's lunch in virtualization for the past few years. "Poised" doesn't cut it, the technology has been here for awhile and VMWare has been at the helm. Meanwhile, Microsoft can't even get their basic management tool (VM Manager) out of beta.
The typical day-late, dollar-short Microsoft approach.
Posted by Devnull | July 13, 2007 5:56 PM
If Microsoft managed and marketed VPC better it could dominate the virtual market.
I'd say typical buy great technology product and mismanage it into obsolescence.
Posted by NicholasVL | July 14, 2007 11:24 AM
How about MS luckest future moment?
A slashdot link about MS patenting a way to install advertising (adware) and spyware embedded into the kermel of Windows operating systems. This from the company that gave us DRM in Vista.
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/07/14/043200.shtml
Really liked some of the comments in this link, like;
"I suspect that once the patent gets a little further along that MS will begin introducing bits and pieces of this bullshit as a service packs into Vista. These unwanted 'features' would blend right into Vista's DRM system. Given Vista's new security emphasis, I imagine that MS will make it damn hard to block any of the this by hacking or using external ad-blocking software."
and;
"Microsoft has realized that protecting consumers and selling high quality products are not ways they can make money any longer. Getting in bed with corporations and ad agencies and selling out the customer is looking to become much more profitable for them.
What really scares me is that for this to be successful, without some type of backlash from the user community, it would have to be forced on us. As in, forced so you could no longer install another operating system on your computer. Perhaps this is there for when they sue Linux out of oblivion, or at least try to. Otherwise, who would ever use another Microsoft product. "
Posted by chps b malroy | July 14, 2007 2:36 PM
1. Who gives a flying f*** about the DRM. If you don't like it, then don't buy any HD DVD or BD movies. I swear, some people are such whiny babies. If MS hadn't supported HD formats, they'd complain that MS making it impossible to build a good media server. They support the DRM and they complain that there's DRM. If you don't like the DRM, go complain to the studios and the MPAA. Go call your congressman and complain about your Fair Use rights being infringed upon.
Complaining that MS has DRM for HD content is like whining about Pioneer have DRM embedded in their Blu-Ray drives.
2. If you're going to proved a quote, then quote FACTS from a reliabe verifiable source, not some anonymous poster on slashdot.
My guess is that a primary purpose of it'll mostly be used for advertising supported software and games that have ads embedded in them (Hockey, Football and Basketball are 3 obvious places it'd be used) If done correctly, I wouldn't care.
Frankly, ads only bug me when they're Flash, or some other animated ad, or those context links that pop up a little box when your mouse goes over them. If not for those, I wouldn't block ads at all.
Posted by Gimme a break | July 15, 2007 9:04 PM
to; Gimme a break,
1. First of all there are those who care that DRM is not embedded into the OS. So you wrong there. Also, a lot of us who unlike you are not M$ fanbois or just on break at Redmond also care. Just because you are a fan of MS and adware dosen't mean everyone else is.
2. If you bothered to actually read the "slashdot user" post, you would have seen his link the proof.
Posted by chips b malroy | July 15, 2007 11:01 PM
chips b: Microsoft has no 'fanboys'. Just defenders. Linux, Open-source etc is the fanboy culture.
Also, 'gimme a break' didn't say he loved adware, or MS, he said that the real pressure for DRM comes not from Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, it comes from the MPAA and the RIAA.
Work it out and stop blaming Microsoft for everything.
Also, no, I don't work for MS. Or buy or sell anything of theirs. Or have anything to do with them.
Posted by ben | July 16, 2007 7:03 AM
(1) is completely incorrect.
Microsoft was not favoured by IBM.
IBM wanted CP/M for the operating system and Microsoft for their Basic language.
CP/M didn't want to know (iirc Greg ?) and said no. Microsoft even went to CP/M to plead with them to work with IBM as they knew if CP/M wasn't selected then IBM wouldn't have a use for Basic.
IBM then asked if Microsoft could write the OS and the rest is history.
CP/M later released CP/M for the IBM, but priced it 5 times more than similar operating systems.
Besides, if CP/M was selected then we'd all be cursing CP/M instead of MS.
Posted by Graham Reeds | July 16, 2007 7:48 AM
To Ben;
or should I say "to Ben, or his alais "Gimme a break" who I perfer to call "just on break at Redmond." Ben, is very clear from you last post you are all one and the same person. And that person is the self appointed defender or the rich and powerful, Micro$oft, none other than "Neil."
How you doing Neil? Did you ever get Vist installed on those 3 computers yet? Give us a report on hows it going and how much you had to spend. And Neil, you still are a M$ fanboi (misspelled on purpose).
Cleaver trick though, to write in trying to be several people, to make it look like everyone loves M$, DRM, and Adware.
Posted by chips b malroy | July 16, 2007 1:34 PM
Dear chips b malroy:
Last time I checked, ad hominem was not a valid form of argument.
--Krankor
Posted by Captain Krankor | July 16, 2007 5:24 PM
DEFINATELY agree about excel and lotus 123. That was a huge stroke of luck for MS that lotus stupidly delayed the windows version so long. Now virtually everyone uses excel, and lotus now has 1 main product left, lotus notes, and I think even that has less market share than outlook.
Posted by some one | July 17, 2007 2:51 AM
PS3 delays allows XBox360 to capture the market, even XBox360 got enough time so that people stopped waiting and bought XBox360. It hurts Sony PS3 launch as well, as there were 100s of games available for XBox 360 while PS3 was having few games.
Posted by Faraz Siddiqui | July 17, 2007 8:50 AM
To Faraz Siddiqui;
LOL, the XBox360 is not going anywhere, unless you count the trashbox as soon as the new "extended warrenty for the ring of death" expires. Funny thing about warrenty's, as soon as a warrenty expires, your Xbox360 will too, as its still the same box with a defective design with a 33% failure rate, waiting to die. And then, there is the even bigger problem that MS does not reimburse users for there badly designed XBox360's that are scatching up their 3 party game disks.
The lession here is, avoid this defective product and support, like the plague. By I do agree with you that Sony failed at first with the PS3 being so expensive, that MS was able to sell more of their defective designed XBox360.
Posted by chips b malroy | July 17, 2007 12:17 PM
Chips B: I'm Ben, not Neil, not someone else, I have no affiliation with Microsoft. I'm from Perth, Western Australia, I'm sure you could find out more about me if you want.
You are paranoid, you are a linux fanboy, but most of all, you are an idiot who regularly has his ass handed to him by other posters with actual arguments. We're done here.
Posted by ben | July 17, 2007 11:55 PM
Good job Ben. MS has done lots of underhanded things, but DRM is definitely not one of them. If you want to be in the HD game you have to play by the MPAA rules unfortunately (at least until someone hacks them). Chips seems like a lot of Mac people I met while developing Mac software for MS. Zealotry knows no end and they'd rather die a painful, agonizing death than use any MS software, no matter how good.
Posted by Trent | July 19, 2007 12:06 PM
How about Lindows folding at the verge of winning their lawsuit over Microsoft's trademark of "Windows". They were within days of a court decision where they had pretty much proven prior use of "Windows" as a generic term and therefore Microsoft had no claim to the trademark. But I suppose it wasn't luck, it was a big payoff.
Posted by Roger | July 20, 2007 9:34 AM
MS was lucky to find Tim Patterson's QDOS (Quick & Dirty OS) right there in the Seattle area to use as the basis for PD-DOS. Bill Gates and Paul Allen paid him a pittance ($5000?), and parlayed it into their multi-billion dollar empire.
Posted by Phil | July 20, 2007 9:55 AM
Most "luck" is self created and Microsoft is no exception, you don't get to be Microsoft by luck alone! This is not to say that other companies’ poor business decisions or lack of vision for the market did not benefit Microsoft. It definitely did, but you still have to know what you are doing in order to capitalize on these moments. While I am not always a fan of Microsoft products and scratch my head on some of their product/program decisions, they are right more often than not over the years and have put themselves in a position to dominate the market with or without luck.
Posted by Brian Conlin | July 23, 2007 12:52 PM