Microsoft Toast

It takes a crisis to raze a company.

Financial Times article
reference from a recent
href="http://microsoftok.blogspot.com/2005/03/old-school-competencies.html#c111
169691086672418">comment:

and as if on cue we get:

"Is Microsoft
Toast?"


href="http://news.ft.com/cms/s/0fa4c038-9c8b-11d9-b1c2-00000e2511c8.html">ht
tp://news.ft.com/cms/s/0fa4c038-9c8b-11d9-b1c2-00000e2511c8.html

ockquote>

Well, Thomas Hazlett's "
href="http://news.ft.com/cms/s/0fa4c038-9c8b-11d9-b1c2-00000e2511c8.html">Is
Microsoft Toast" article at least ends on a high-note:

Its dominance challenged, Microsoft is naturally striking
back – with a new, more bug-resistant Internet Explorer web browser, with
vastly expanded email (Hotmail and MSN) offerings, and an array of intensive
counter measures. This looming competitive Armageddon may well rock
Microsoft to its core, it most certainly will produce a new bundle of
benefits for consumers – something the “antitrust case of the century” never
did.

High-note to me because a rocking of Microsoft to the core, let alone an
Armageddon, will hopefully be an all-around beeyotch-slap to our fouled-up
product-team bureaucracies that also blows away the
process-for-the-sake-of-process-to-keep-all-these-middle-managers-employed.
I truly believe all these people we've hired has resulted in us shipping
less products than more. There are more people in a product-planning room
telling why it's too difficult and hard to ship a feature vs. defending why
it's so desperately needed and would make us money. Small teams with a
vision and a touch of enthused-naiveté would help us start the long scramble
upwards.

Note: Scoble has a post related to this as well: href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/03/25.html#a9734">Financial
Times asks if Microsoft is feeling the heat.

A few more random things:

• Unsurprisingly, lots of interesting comments in href="http://microsoftok.blogspot.com/2005/03/better-off-without-ballmer.html">
  Better off without Ballmer?


• Another call-out from the world of PSS in href="http://microsoftok.blogspot.com/2005/03/better-off-without-ballmer.html#c
  111189746032929355">comment that says that any cut-backs right now are
  unbalanced and especially hurting the public-face of Microsoft as our
  support quality dwindles.


• Sorry, no apologies from me from being too href="http://lowlytech.com/2005/03/27/10">Redmond-centric. Though it's
  very interesting to hear what's happening in the rest of Microsoft in the US
  / World because, well, I don't have much visibility into the goings on in
  North Carolina.