The Underscore Archives

On 13 Feb 2008, at 11:20, Richard Davey wrote:

> You don't have to be the best to be the biggest.
> I can't think of an industry this doesn't apply to!


Of course, but the thing is, Microsoft have some seriously smart  
people working for them, and the cash on hand to use them well.  They  
still manage to bollocks it all up, though, and then use aggressive  
marketing, acquisitions, strategic partnerships, and eventually dirty  
tricks to make a success of things.

As Aaron said, they've so far failed to make a success of any online  
properties.  While Microsoft, per se, were fairly late to the game,  
some of their current properties (eg. HoTMaiL) were early.  Then, MS  
completely failed to make use of that experience.

Throw in all the advantages Microsoft had over Yahoo, Google,  
Netscape, etc. at the time (cash, infrastructure, established R&D  
setup), it's staggering they didn't manage to come out with anything  
innovative, and have merely _reacted_ to others' innovation.


Tom

-- 
Tom Gidden
http://gidden.net/tom/