Microsoft and Business Realty

In the IT world its hard not to like Microsoft, especially when you consider the competition and other alternatives that many of us have been burned by in the past. However, to the people outside the IT world, Microsoft is not as grand as it appears. The following article from Fortune is the most succint piece of Microsoft factual bashing I’ve seen in well over a year. Pretty entertaining, unless you own shares:

“Pick up a newspaper or magazine lately, and you’d think the roof was about to fall in at Microsoft. Revenue growth, once routinely more than 30%, is barely into double digits. Vista, its new operating system, formerly called Longhorn, is a year behind schedule and won’t be out until late 2006. Its efforts to beat Google in search and Apple in music have yet to bear fruit. Many of its new businesses, like Xbox, are not making money yet. In Asia piracy and the free Linux operating system have forced it to do what was once unheard of—cut prices. Some critics say that Microsoft is becoming the IBM of its generation—a hugely successful company that is getting itself in trouble by allowing years of success to go to its head.”

Ouch. I guess one point they come short of making is that Microsoft is trying to grow out of the software maker and is now trying to “conquer” the media, entertainment, business solutions and nearly every other piece of the puzzle. By stepping on the toes of former partners in each segment it enters, it may ruin the goodwill it has with its partners whose business its now threatening. All is fair in business.