Well, the truth hurts, or else the trolls wouldn't be out in such
force. As for Joe Potter, doesn't he look a lot like the Ezekiel
troll? You know, pops up out of nowhere like flatfish and his gang
and their million nyms.
Dan Dilger says, "If big companies can’t adapt, they die." Recently
PJ posted a YouTube interview with Ballmer, which she said Microsoft
should have used instead of their Steinfeld series, that is, it would
have served their interests better. She's right, I think. In it,
Ballmer was pretty frank about what he was doing in all these
alternative enterprises, search, Zune, WinCE, Xbox, etc, even though
they don't bring in nearly as much cash as the old standbys (in fact,
they're losing money overall). And what he said was essentially the
same as Dilger.
Of course it's true, if you don't move forward, you die. So, although
Microsoft's cash cows are delivering the goods, the attempts to move
into new areas aren't doing so well---significantly, areas where there
is real competition. Meanwhile, I gotta say, the advances made by
Linux recently---in the notebooks, with Dell and HP, etc---certainly
look threatening, as does the competition from Google and Apple.
Personally I can't say whether Dilger is right about the stock buy-
backs being a sign of decay, but Microsoft *is* failing to advance
into new areas very well, and the external threats have grown more
serious than ever.
|
|
