__/ [ John Bailo ] on Saturday 05 May 2007 07:16 \__
>
> What choices do Microsoft employees have?
>
> Invent a new OS that will defeat Linux?
> Tried that...failed.
>
> Combat java with a new CLR?
> Nope...java won.
>
> Open source /some/ code with Silverlight?
> Yeah...who's gonna buy it?
>
> OR...
>
> Backpedal slowly and just spend the remaining $60 billion in the bank.
>
> I vote for the latter.
The amount spent on PR (AKA propaganda) is very well illustrated by the
charade that recently accompanied the Silverlight announcement. It wasn't
/genuine/ hype, but there was hype. Recall the Vista madness. It's very a
very organic (and expensive) sense of excitement. As the Inquirer says,
Microsoft has advertising allies to bombard the journalists. Among many
losing divisions, consider all the money paid to Google through AdWword in
order to ridicule Linux (spreadheaded by "Get the Facts").
I sometimes wonder if these spendings exceed the amounts of cash which is
collected through the cash cows. After many years of no forced upgrades,
there is still no compelling reasons to upgrade (Office and Windows).
Attempts to force the upgrade are defeated by anger that leads people to
other platforms and Free software such as OpenOffice and Google Apps (Free
and free, respectively).
You can be a big company. You can work in many parellel lanes. It does not
guarantee, however, that all divisions will be profitable. As I said before,
ODF is poised to assassinate Microsoft Office (as we know it) and Linux has
already reduced the price of Windows down to $3 in some places.
--
~~ Best regards
Roy S. Schestowitz | Useless fact: the buttocks is the largest muscle
http://Schestowitz.com | RHAT Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
11:05am up 6 days 19:27, 5 users, load average: 0.47, 0.63, 0.45
http://iuron.com - Open Source knowledge engine project
|
|
