So, iTWire -citing Reuters- is claiming that Microsoft is developing an MP3 player and online music service to compete with Apple's iPod and iTunes. While I don't doubt that they'll try, I don't think Microsoft has it in them anymore to defeat Apple at this game.
I'm sure there was a day when the modern software giant had the capability and willpower to muscle their way into the digital music market. Joel Spolsky remembers a less bloated Microsoft:
June 30, 1992.
In those days, Microsoft was a lot less bureaucratic. Instead of the 11 or 12 layers of management they have today, I reported to Mike Conte who reported to Chris Graham who reported to Pete Higgins, who reported to Mike Maples, who reported to Bill. About 6 layers from top to bottom. We made fun of companies like General Motors with their eight layers of management or whatever it was.
That day has long passed, however. On top of that, this week we hear that the hero of Microsoft, Bill Gates himself, is stepping down. Given the company's current size and management bloat, it's easy to overestimate Gates' impact on day-to-day operations. His leaving at this point in time may have as much effect as the Democrats in Congress. Even so, his leaving says a lot about the current direction of the company. Mr. Spolsky again:
Bill Gates was amazingly technical. He understood Variants, and COM objects, and IDispatch and why Automation is different than vtables and why this might lead to dual interfaces. He worried about date functions. He didn't meddle in software if he trusted the people who were working on it, but you couldn't bullshit him for a minute because he was a programmer. A real, actual, programmer.
Watching non-programmers trying to run software companies is like watching someone who doesn't know how to surf trying to surf.
"It's ok! I have great advisors standing on the shore telling me what to do!" they say, and then fall off the board, again and again. The standard cry of the MBA who believes that management is a generic function. Is Ballmer going to be another John Sculley, who nearly drove Apple into extinction because the board of directors thought that selling Pepsi was good preparation for running a computer company? The cult of the MBA likes to believe that you can run organizations that do things that you don't understand.
I have to suspect that Mr. Gates' leaving has something to do with the modern culture in Microsoft. You don't have to look far for stories on the internal strife and mismanagement happening in Redmond. From a post by Mr. Philip Su:
Imagine each little email you send asking someone else to fill out a spreadsheet, comment on a report, sign off on a decision -- is a little neutron shooting about in space. Your innocent-seeming little neutron now causes your heretofore mostly-harmless neighbors to release neutrons of their own. Now imagine there are 9000 of you, all jammed into a tight little space called Redmond. It's Windows Gone Thermonuclear, a phenomenon by which process engenders further process, eventually becoming a self-sustaining buzz of fervent destructive activity.
This is the culture of the modern Microsoft. This is the giant, tripping over its own feet, that plans to take on what is perhaps the most successful personal music player in history. Apple succeeds with the iPod largely because of their focus on form and elegance. Apple thinks hard about the user experience. Microsoft thinks only of the bottom line. Blake Ross laments the Microsoft attitude toward users in this plea to Microsoft employees:
Then I see the IE7 homepage proclaiming that “we heard you” and I just get furious. I get furious because I know that “you” isn’t really you, grandpa, Meredith, Jamie, Fletcher, Matt, Mike, Phil, it can’t be, because you complained for years and nobody heard you. It’s not you; it’s us. It’s Firefox, Safari, Opera, Flock, Maxthon. Only the drip drip of leaky marketshare echoes in Redmond.
I know this is just the game, know that the IE marketing team wrote that sales pitch. The pitch I’m writing now isn’t to them but to the developers. You are working at a company that finds positive impact a mere side effect of competitive destruction. In thirty years, do you want to look back and think “I did that” or “I stopped that company from doing that”?
I urge you to find a company that truly listens to them, not us. It is much more rewarding.
"Positive impact a mere side effect of competitive destruction." This is the face of Microsoft. At least, this is how they're perceived. Given this face, you'd expect the Redmond campus to be staffed by legions of gremlins, goblins, and parodies of Dr. Evil. I think we all know that's not the case, but the emergent behavior of all those kind, well meaning, intelligent people is what we see and react to.
Sure, Microsoft has nearly endless supplies of capital to throw at Apple. They're massive enough to fight simply by throwing their mass around. I imagine soon we'll see a media marketing blitz like none we've seen since the release of Windows 95. I simply ask the question: is it enough this time?
