[HN Gopher] Microsoft Is Dead (2007)
___________________________________________________________________
Microsoft Is Dead (2007)
Author : aamederen
Score : 104 points
Date : 2025-02-04 11:32 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.paulgraham.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.paulgraham.com)
| sylware wrote:
| Those toxic companies have billions of cash, then backed by the
| tens of thousands of billions from funds like vanguard and
| blackrock.
|
| This money is sort of "weaponized".
|
| If you are not "them", if you stick to the basic "economic
| rules", you are already gone as you cannot exist.
| nova22033 wrote:
| How did vanguard and blackrock get the money they invest in
| Microsoft?
|
| Hint: It's from average people investing in their retirement...
| sylware wrote:
| This is not what I said:
|
| 1 - they have their own cash from huge racketering (forced)
| monetary streams. 2 - then, you still have the tens of
| thousands of billions from funds like vanguard and blackrock.
|
| Those gigantic amounts of money are 'economically weaponized'
| to 'economically destroy' any sane alternatives, at worldwide
| scale. RIP "ecomonic competition" (who thinks nowadays this
| thing is not a scam).
|
| So you say the very average people investing there are
| plainly aware their money is engaged in 'economic tyrany'
| which forces down the throat of nearly all average people,
| that worldwide, the _amazing_ msft software ? mmmmh....
| etothepii wrote:
| The real difference with tech is that this isn't true.
|
| If you make something people want you can sell it. When I
| started our company 4 years ago I'd have considered $1m ARR a
| massive achievement. Now I'm here in my heart I feel a need to
| grow and raise or we'll die - but In my head I don't think this
| is actually true.
|
| I don't think there has been a time in human history before
| where a company of our size (30x median wages) could have been
| built without needing a great deal of capital.
|
| If Microsoft/Google et al want to use Blackrock/Vanguard's
| money to buy up small companies that creates more incentive for
| the young and idealistic to start such companies. While
| economic security is of sufficient value that resisting a first
| buyout would be hard for most (hence Sergey and Larry trying to
| sell for $1m) once a first buyout has been achieved a second
| buyout can never be forced.
| sylware wrote:
| This is delusional: If you bother them and you are to follow
| the basic 'economic rules', you have zero chance.
|
| If you want to exist in that case:
|
| 1 - you must have the will to resist them (for how long,
| since they will always be around in some shape due to
| unlimited funding).
|
| 2 - you must have some kind of mechanism to be 'outside of
| the basic economic rules' (usually subsidies or similar).
| Etheryte wrote:
| I wonder who you'd put in that bucket today, who is the looming
| incumbent who might just show up and eat your lunch. For some
| time it was Meta, they definitely strong armed a bunch of small
| upstarts to sell out rather than compete. Right now I'm not so
| sure, there isn't any single name that comes to mind.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What upstarts did Meta strong arm? From my recollection, they
| paid enormous amounts of money for websites and apps like
| Instagram and WhatsApp.
|
| There were so many threads on this website alone about how much
| extra Meta was paying and how they would ever see a return.
| roenxi wrote:
| My favourite paragraph was
|
| "The most obvious is Google. There can only be one big man in
| town, and they're clearly it. Google is the most dangerous
| company now by far, in both the good and bad senses of the word.
| Microsoft can at best limp along afterward"
|
| Is Google dying or dead in this sense now too? I can't think of
| any company they've bullied recently but maybe I'm just not in
| their space. All the excitement seemed to move over to social
| media companies and Apple, then Nvidia and all the industries it
| spawned. Google certainly aren't driving commercial innovation in
| the way they were when Gmail was a hot new topic.
| gadders wrote:
| I think google are in the enshittification phase of their
| corporate development and are currently in a cycle of making
| 0.1% more revenue on search changes at the expense of making it
| 5% shittier for users each time.
| DanielHB wrote:
| To be fair in 2007 it really did seem like google could
| completely destroy microsoft monopoly on enterprise software
| with google docs, google sheets and google workspace.
|
| And then they just didn't? They just gave up, only small
| companies use google workspace these days and excel is as
| entrenched as ever.
|
| I suppose the google meet/google talk/google hangouts
| explains a lot of why this hypothetical future didn't happen.
| If google had a serious person in the helm doing long-term
| strategy microsoft would already be dead and buried (or worse
| IBM-fied). Instead the CEOs stock market min-maxers took
| over.
| gadders wrote:
| Yes, I don't disagree. Microsoft did seem to be going the
| way of IBM.
|
| But yeah, Google had no long term strategy, or ever gave
| any impression of a road map.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I think Google leaders were smart to not take on Excel,
| especially after it was clear Microsoft was moving things
| to the cloud and spinning up Office 365.
|
| There is no way a competitor could sustainably price a
| competing product against a low monthly or annual cost
| Excel/Office/OneDrive SAAS option, since the majority of
| the workforce was already trained on Office products, and
| everyone is using an edge feature that a new competing
| product might be missing.
| DanielHB wrote:
| I completely disagree. Google was already cloud-native
| with docs and sheets in 2007 while people were emailing
| excel files back and forth. It took like 10 years for
| microsoft to get there. And one drive is still terrible
| compared to google drive to this day.
|
| The teenagers at the time (me included) were all using
| google sheets and google docs instead of MS products for
| _years_ before being introduced to the workforce. So the
| "trained on Office" argument was just an obstacle, not a
| breaking point if they kept at it for years.
|
| > There is no way a competitor could sustainably price a
| competing product against a low monthly or annual cost
| Excel/Office/OneDrive SAAS option
|
| If google had taken on microsoft heads-on they could have
| sued them into oblivion for anti-competitive practices in
| pricing if they tried that.
|
| No, they just decided to not execute on the strategy,
| they did start but didn't finish. Arguably it was to
| focus on mobile and Android, but I see no reason why
| google couldn't do both considering all the wasted
| products they had over the years.
| Attrecomet wrote:
| Where do you find these low monthly cost options? Using
| Office is considerably more expensive than it ever was
| for a business, and the profit margins are huge.
|
| And if anyone could sustain an office suite until it runs
| profitably in these circumstances, it must surely be
| Google...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I don't know that office 365 is more expensive than
| before, if incorporating time and stress into the
| equation. Businesses get to dispense with all their IT
| staff basically and just let people access everything via
| a browser. And it's a lot less technical for the managers
| to manage users and licenses.
|
| But the problem for competitors is say you are able to
| make a product just as good as Excel. You start selling
| it $x, but Microsoft can almost always go down to $x-1
| since their marginal cost is near zero.
|
| Maybe Google or some other big company has the cash flow
| to plow money into subsidizing this bet for many years, I
| can understand not wanting to make that bet.
|
| Google Docs and whatnot came out all the way back in the
| late 2000s, but it still didn't see any measurable
| adoption by the time office 365 was out. Maybe it is
| because Google didn't stick with it and develop it, but I
| still think it was a long shot.
| DanielHB wrote:
| > Google Docs and whatnot came out all the way back in
| the late 2000s, but it still didn't see any measurable
| adoption by the time office 365 was out. Maybe it is
| because Google didn't stick with it and develop it, but I
| still think it was a long shot.
|
| It didn't stick because google did not pursue the
| strategy to take over enterprise. Google Docs by itself
| is not going to displace Office 365 and IT management
| tools, you need the whole suite of products.
| nunez wrote:
| very big companies use Workspace and the full suite of
| Google Docs products within.
| DanielHB wrote:
| Examples? I right now work in one, but I wouldn't call my
| company big (<200 people).
|
| From my (limited) experience google workspace doesn't
| really offer the level of control over employee computers
| that microsoft solutions do (like limiting what you can
| install or tuning settings). So it is a non-starter for
| any big company.
| shaftway wrote:
| Of the recent places I've worked, both use it. Block was
| at ~14,000 employees, but I think they're currently at
| ~12,500. My current company uses it, and we're ~2,000.
| hawaiianbrah wrote:
| My ~3000 person company (a subsidiary of Microsoft!) even
| uses Google workspace
| karterk wrote:
| Satya saved Microsoft by doubling down on Azure and Cloud.
| Something that Balmer failed to do with Mobile.
| everdrive wrote:
| He saved Microsoft, but doomed the rest of us.
| behnamoh wrote:
| He saved Microsoft's investers' pockets, but destroyed the soul
| of Windows, Windows Phone, the Nokia partnership, the Office
| suite, etc.
|
| One could say he actually destroyed MSFT to build something
| new.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Meanwhile he allowed desktop development to become a mess, he
| was the one killing mobile, and now Microsoft is dependent on
| Google and Apple for mobile endpoints, other than laptops.
| breadwinner wrote:
| ... by becoming OSS friendly, and especially Linux friendly.
| Prior to that Microsoft and Azure were irrelevant because
| nobody wanted to run their backends on Windows.
| deadlast2 wrote:
| [Zero to One](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-
| Future/dp/0...) book by Peter Thiel. One thing I took from this
| book is that Google Micrsoft, Meta are all monopolies. There is
| no competition. Look even in
| [Russia](https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/russian-
| feder...), [China](https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
| share/all/china) they all use thsi stuff.
| baxtr wrote:
| What is this telling us about the stuff he writes with full
| conviction today?
| teekert wrote:
| That nobody can predict the future?
|
| However, there are people that have the intellect and the
| information to do it better than others.
|
| Btw, it contains stuff like this "The third cause of
| Microsoft's death was broadband Internet. Anyone who cares can
| have fast Internet access now. And the bigger the pipe to the
| server, the less you need the desktop.". Microsoft (or Satya
| did) also predicted the future, or read this post, and
| refocused (to online service such as MS365). There still
| correct, insightful stuff in this post.
|
| There is also "They still think they can write software in
| house. Maybe they can, by the standards of the desktop world.
| But that world ended a few years ago." also radically different
| now they have GitHub and WSL, etc
| discordance wrote:
| That times change?
|
| This was a lot more accurate when it was published in 2007.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I think a key aspect of calling a thing "dead" is that it
| implies permanency. In other words, it can't have been more
| accurate in 2007 if it isn't accurate now, which it appears
| to not be. Maybe if pg had said "irrelevant" instead.
|
| (Others have pointed out that 2007 wasn't even a particularly
| bad year for MSFT.)
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| It tells us that he's only human. That's what fans of him will
| say and they're right.
|
| The problem is his fans subconsciously treat Paul graham as if
| he's more right and more wise than a normal human. Makes sense
| given where we are. This incubator is founded by him so there's
| a bit of that irrational hero worship there.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > The problem is his fans subconsciously treat Paul graham as
| if he's more right and more wise than a normal human.
|
| In quite some essays, Paul Graham portraits himself this way.
| You will either be annoyed by this, or you will like his
| essays. In the latter case, you will likely self-select
| yourself for this unwitting bias.
| doppp wrote:
| That just because someone is a plutocrat doesn't make them
| experts in all things. We should not idolize celebrities and
| not accept their hot takes wholesale. Be wary of
| ultracrepidarians.
| autonomousErwin wrote:
| plutocrat is newly discovered word of the day.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| plutocrat, plutocracy.
|
| kakistocracy, kakistocrat.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > That just because someone is a plutocrat doesn't make them
| experts in all things.
|
| Of course. This is why you go to a university to learn to
| analyze the evidence for a claimed statement as
| scientifically as possible instead of practicing hero
| worship.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| He's not a plutocrat.
| roenxi wrote:
| Nothing. It is a well written essay and makes some interesting
| points about how Microsoft was defanged.
|
| What frame are you trying to put here? Do you think there is
| something wrong with the essay?
| intermerda wrote:
| Of course not, as we all know dead companies add trillions in
| market cap all the time.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| The part about startups is still true today. You don't fear
| Microsoft competing with you. Or really Google anymore.
| virgilp wrote:
| Read all of it. Go beyond just the title, and it should tell
| you that Paul Graham was more right than wrong with this one.
|
| - Google was, for a while, the "gorilla in the room" - their
| decline is recent. But Paul Graham got it right, that Google
| was more scary than MS.
|
| - Microsoft was "dead" in 2007, same as Apple was before Steve
| Jobs came back. The revival started with Satya Nadella, 7 years
| later. It is still a shadow of its former self, MS dominated
| the industry like no other player ever did (or is likely to do,
| again).
|
| - The 4 forces that lead to MS' demise are likely spot-on. And
| again "demise" in the same sense of IBM, "still exists, still
| makes money, nobody really cares".
|
| Did the "all ycombinator founders use Macs" rub me the wrong
| way, when used as an argument as he did? Yes. But I also kinda'
| understand it(*), even though I still think he should've
| steered away from that argument.
|
| (*) you can interpret it in the sense of "the future is already
| here - it is just very unevenly distributed"; that's probably
| what he meant. He knew full well the market share.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > - The 4 forces that lead to MS' demise are likely spot-on.
| And again "demise" in the same sense of IBM, "still exists,
| still makes money, nobody really cares".
|
| IBM shareholders and employees can only dream their demise
| was in the same sense as Microsoft's.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The problem with "all use Macs" is that Apple has always been
| a great hardware company with an underfunded software side.
|
| MacOS has so many problems or unsupported features it isn't
| funny, while Windows was fine.
|
| >> _I never used Microsoft software, so it only affected me
| indirectly_
|
| Hmm. The lesson here is probably don't assume you understand
| a competitor's strengths and weaknesses via secondhand
| experience.
|
| And the things MacOS historically did better, having a shell
| and integrating with unix-like software, have been evened
| with PowerShell/.NET, WSL2, and HyperV.
|
| Furthermore, a few companies started making Windows laptops
| that weren't bricks. While Apple's software budget is now
| mostly iOS/device-focused.
| wink wrote:
| > have been evened with PowerShell/.NET, WSL2, and HyperV.
|
| I'm gonna need a source for that quote because no, no one
| besides a couple of Windows admins ever acknowledged
| parity, just "meh, if I have to".
| throwway120385 wrote:
| I'm a fair hand with the Linux shell and utilities, and I
| can say that PowerShell provides a lot of useful
| analogous capability in the Windows environment. I don't
| totally understand the model for PowerShell but the times
| I've had to dip into it it's been pretty good.
| wobfan wrote:
| While I consider myself of being part of a Linux-y
| bubble, I can definitely see people around me, who are,
| or where, in the same bubble, using PowerShell more and
| more and more. And, this is the interesting part, every
| single one of them has been saying that PowerShell is way
| better than e.g. Bash, or whatever you wanna compare it
| to. This is also because of the much more modern
| architectural design of Windows NT, which is and has been
| miles ahead of Linux, because it could learn from it's
| failures when it was developed. Same for PowerShell. It
| could learn from the mistakes that Bash made, and still
| has to live with.
|
| Still, obviously, this is anecdotal evidence at best.
| virgilp wrote:
| This was not meant to transform into "windows vs mac, which
| is better". But I happen to have used both, recently, and
| can tell: no, Windows got closer but is not quite there on
| the "having a shell" chapter. It still has too many, and
| too different. Powershell.NET is powerful, but is also
| "alien" to many people - you have to know .NET! Scripting
| is meant to be quick & hacky, not "real software that needs
| a release cycle", and in that sense Powershell.NET, while
| miles better than whatever MS previously had, still misses
| the mark. You know how you can tell? Because it works
| perfectly fine on Mac, but has 0 adoption there.
|
| WSL2 is... ugh, ok, much better that WSL. And actually
| decent. But, as the name implies, is a _linux_ environment.
| Not a native Windows terminal.
|
| > a few companies started making Windows laptops that
| weren't bricks
|
| I am honestly, genuinely interested in a windows-based
| laptop that is as good as a Macbook Pro (or at least very
| close). Would like the flexibility to move away from Apple.
| Am interested in battery life, compute power (i.e. internal
| processor speed, ssd speed, memory size, decent gpu),
| screen, keyboard & touchpad, and overall build quality (the
| last one is almost guaranteed if it is close in quality on
| all the other dimensions).
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Any of the "ultrabooks" with decent IPS screens,
| keyboards, metal bodies, and battery life.
|
| Dell XPSs were a decent option for the last decade+
| (especially the refurbs), but Dell seems to be going
| through a rebranding exercise [0], so those will now be
| Dell Pro/Premium models? Maybe?
|
| [0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/01/the-end-of-
| an-era-de...
| virgilp wrote:
| I don't think battery life is close. It was the number 1
| criterion on my list.
| dijit wrote:
| the performance for electron apps on Windows is terrible,
| even my threadripper 7960X feels laggy in slack compared
| to my _fanless_ macbook air M2.
| beart wrote:
| I've struggled for years with windows notebooks waking up
| from sleep/hibernate randomly, particularly the Dell
| models. Happens all the time, cooking itself inside my
| bag. Doesn't matter what sleep, power, etc settings I've
| messed with. Can explicitly put it to sleep and then
| stand there for 60 seconds and watch it wake itself back
| up. The built in power diagnostics features of windows
| are unable to explain why this happens, or in anyway
| prevent it.
|
| This experience has kept me from spending money on any
| portable windows machine.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I bet everyone on Linux that depend on stuff IBM and Red-Hat
| contribute to, really care, a lot.
| dtquad wrote:
| He was wrong about Microsoft's death but correct about how AJAX
| making web apps feel more desktop-like would remove Microsoft's
| dominance in many categories and niches.
| caspper69 wrote:
| As a bit of trivia (because web apps have clearly outpaced
| native/desktop for a long while now), who was it that
| invented the XMLHttpRequest that formed the basis for AJAX?
|
| The Outlook Web team @ Microsoft; it shipped with IE5.
|
| I have a very complicated history with Microsoft products,
| but they have introduced a _lot_ of technologies over the
| years that we all use, even die-hard MS haters.
| bambax wrote:
| He just predicts what he wishes should happen... like most
| people. Makes him very ordinary.
| flippyhead wrote:
| Not very much. Who among is ever ALWAYS right? You have to
| consider his OVERALL accuracy.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| That 18 years are a long time, and companies can pivot and stay
| relevant. He was right about everything he said. The people at
| Microsoft agreed and here we are now.
|
| Todays Microsoft is not the same as 2007, back then it was
| windows, excel, exchange etc. Nowdays its Azure and cloud
| services.
|
| The only thing they tried and failed, that would make them a
| real dangerous company was mobile.
| leecommamichael wrote:
| More proof Hackernews is completely isolated from game
| development.
| everyone wrote:
| Yeah, game dev here.. The amount of articles on the front page
| here that are like "10 things every programmer should know" and
| then are hyper focused on only web dev specific things is
| cringe.
|
| Thats just HN though, a subset of redditors who are gonna
| "change the world" and also become a billionaire with their
| CRUD app.
| jmholla wrote:
| In case you missed it, someone posted on HN a few days ago to
| try and get a similar site and culture up here:
| https://gamedev.city/
| badgersnake wrote:
| It's completely isolated from the real world.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't sneer, including at the rest of the
| community._" It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse
| threads.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| nova22033 wrote:
| This belongs in the Hall of Infamy
|
| Along with this
|
| https://www.cultofmac.com/news/today-apple-history-michael-d...
| buran77 wrote:
| > Their [n.b Apple's] victory is so complete that I'm now
| surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly
| all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops
|
| So _nearly_ all of the (relatively) very few people that are
| funded by YC have Apple and that 's proof of Apple's complete
| victory over a dead MS. In a year when MS was still on an upward
| trend, growing by 20% market cap to become double that of Apple.
|
| Reading rich people's blogs reminds me every time that there's a
| reason wealth is also called "fortune". Because it's more about
| luck than anything else. And by luck I mean a family golden
| nugget, or lucky first investment, or both. A superpower that
| allows one to fail many times and still be able to try again
| until they hit the next fortune. Most people in the world can't
| even afford to try. Most of the rest can't afford to fail.
| hliyan wrote:
| Whenever I read these types of writing, it reminds me that just
| because a narrative is elegant, doesn't mean its true,
| especially when you're operating at very high levels of
| abstraction. Same problem I have with many pop psychology
| writings.
| dijit wrote:
| Think of it in the inverse.
|
| If you're a person who is at one end of a funnel (in this case;
| new tech companies) and you see a 100% adoption which is
| contrary to the mainstream: you would think you have good
| insight.
|
| You might forget that you're looking at:
|
| A) A cargo culture
|
| B) a homogeneous cohort.
|
| This is the same way that people knew ahead of time that
| Microsoft Office would kill off Lotus notes. Since all school's
| were transitioning (or had transitioned) to Microsofts
| products.
|
| It's also why people knew AWS would be so popular ahead of
| time, because new tech companies were not renting compute
| anymore, they were passing their credit cards to Amazon - even
| causing some companies to bet _their_ products on making
| tooling to make AWS easier.
|
| If you're at one end of the funnel, you can see the future.
|
| Was this the future? or was it a false positive based on a
| cohort? - I definitely think the market dominance of Windows on
| the Desktop has been thoroughly challenged since 2008, and it's
| rare I see people elect to use Windows for <10yo companies
| unless the founders are only used to Microsoft products.
|
| _and I work in AAA games, which is insanely Microsoft
| dominated_.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| So you're saying that new AAA game companies use macs or
| linux?
|
| I can't resolve the cognitive dissonance of that making a ton
| of sense or none.
| dijit wrote:
| There are more non-windows PC's in AAA game companies than
| there were in 2008 by a wide margin. Though usually not
| directly for gamedev.
|
| In 2008, the IT department couldn't even handle Macs at
| all, now it's a standard deployment among managers,
| designers, brand and even some programmers who only work
| with backend code. (though usually they'll have a gaming PC
| too for testing the game).
|
| That was literally unthinkable back then.
| CrimsonCape wrote:
| Sure there are more non-windows PC's but it's still
| miniscule[1]. To claim Microsoft is anything other than
| dominant is fallacious. And I understand the desire to
| talk positively about the good things (linux adoption)
| and ignore the bad things (Microsoft dominance).
|
| [1] "https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/04/linux-share-
| on-steam-b...
| dijit wrote:
| The amount of steam users is not at all what I'm talking
| about, I'm saying as a game developer (a windows
| *dominated* field) there are more people running around
| with Macs for general purpose computing than 2008.
|
| That's not wishful thinking, thats reality. Computers do
| more than play games.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| That quote is so out of touch.
|
| It was never that complete. Gamers used pcs. Paul grahams
| surprise missed an entire segment of the market.
|
| Additionally Mac usage statistically never exceeded windows.
| Paul lived a bit in a rich persons world and he's around a lot
| web developers who like osx because it's unixy without the
| issues of old Linux.
| wink wrote:
| And don't forget location. In 2007 not even the majority of
| developers in Europe had adopted the 'default developer mac',
| that only came a couple years later than in the US (afaik)
| and it never even reached that adoption rate (that is now in
| general, not only developers). If I look at my non-tech
| friends in Germany there is still just a tiny percentage
| using macs, and even iPhones are way outnumbered by Android.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| > there's a reason wealth is also called "fortune". Because
| it's more about luck than anything else.
|
| Very quotable
| behnamoh wrote:
| > Reading rich people's blogs reminds me every time that
| there's a reason wealth is also called "fortune". Because it's
| more about luck than anything else.
|
| At some point they lose touch with reality. I've found their
| "advice" often doesn't work for young people who wanna become
| successful like them. Another example is Jensen:
|
| "Nvidia doesn't have a long-term strategy, we just think about
| what to do next.
|
| I don't wear a watch, because NOW is important"
|
| and a lot of crap like that.
| matwood wrote:
| > At some point they lose touch with reality.
|
| See every rich person telling young people to follow their
| passion.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Yes, it's so frustrating to hear them talk. Everyone knows
| a great deal of their success was luck (as discussed in the
| book Outlier), but they still find it amusing to lecture
| the "lesser folks" about ways to get rich.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| > I don't wear a watch, because NOW is important
|
| That doesn't imply that Jensen thinks he's successful because
| he doesn't wear a watch. He's not that delusional.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >He's not that delusional.
|
| I have no idea whether he is or not. However I suspect it
| is very hard to remain grounded when you have so much
| wealth. Every interaction with the outside world is going
| to be clouded by it. People will be subservient in a way
| that us peons don't experience when we dine in McDonalds or
| shop in Walmart.
| behnamoh wrote:
| oh he knows... you're telling me the CEO and co-founder of
| the most valuable company in history doesn't think he's
| successful?
| RIMR wrote:
| It is an common theme with PG to write confidently about
| technology while also demonstrating that he has absolutely no
| understanding of what he's talking about.
|
| I've been commenting about this here for YEARS with constant
| pushback and excuses for him from the community. "He's a
| billionaire so he must be smart", "He personally wrote the
| entire HN codebase", "Nobody really needs a valid SSL cert on
| their website in 2023". Dang has even cited me for "personal
| attacks" for daring to point out PG's most visible shortcomings
| and knowledge gaps.
|
| I guess the inflection point was PG turning to X to screech
| about "wokism" in support of oligarchs like Trump and Musk to
| snap this community out of it's pro-PG trance. Watching a
| billionaire cheer on the billionaire class as we plummet into
| technofeudalism is a hell of a wake up call.
|
| Glad to see criticism of PG finally going mainstream here,
| especially digging back 18 years and concluding that he's
| always been like this. It's a shame he financially runs this
| place and these comments are short-lived due to platform
| manipulation.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Glad to see criticism of PG finally going mainstream here
|
| I appreciate there are people out there who have chosen PG to
| emotionally glom onto, positively or negatively, and perhaps
| you're probably an extreme case of the latter, so I would
| have to challenge a little. "Criticising someone loads" isn't
| a good thing. Just neutrally challenging their ideas
| individually is all that's needed.
| foul wrote:
| >I guess the inflection point was PG turning to X to screech
| about "wokism" in support of oligarchs like Trump and Musk to
| snap this community out of it's pro-PG trance. Watching a
| billionaire cheer on the billionaire class as we plummet into
| technofeudalism is a hell of a wake up call.
|
| In hindsight his (and Andreessen's techno-bullshit) have won
| a bet with Trump, those tweaker writings are very much
| aligning with the zeitgeist that's being imposed by Trump,
| Musk and their lackeys, they may even brag about having get
| there earlier than every other rich techbro.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| I've been hearing people say this since this incorrect essay
| was written almost 20 years ago
|
| Microsoft had 74% of the desktop then and has 72% today
|
| Microsoft had 0% of hosting then and has the world's second
| largest share, 23%, today
|
| Microsoft had, in 2007, 18% presence share in console gaming.
| Today they have 65%
|
| They were one of the four tech orgs present at the presidential
| inauguration
|
| They have grown enormously in the time this essay claims they
| were dying
| PetitPrince wrote:
| > Microsoft had, in 2007, 18% presence share in console
| gaming. Today they have 65%
|
| Source for this ? Also what do you mean by "presence" ? I had
| the impression that Sony was in a way better position than
| Microsoft, and they were both dwarfed by Nintendo by a
| substantial margin.
|
| (not that this invalidate your overall point).
| pjmlp wrote:
| PlayStation 3 went down quite badly among game developers
| given how hard Cell was to program for, and users with the
| whole OtherOS fallout, this brought XBox 360 into the
| winning round.
|
| Microsoft lost the plot afterwards with XBox ONE against
| the Playstation 4, and even with the Series S|X, they never
| recovered on the hardware side.
|
| However this is kind of relative now, even if they don't
| public admit yet, the hardware is gone, they are going
| SEGA, and by being one of the largest game publishers, it
| hardly matters if the XBox console isn't going that well.
|
| In one year they already recovered all the money lost in
| the ABK deal and litigations.
| Clubber wrote:
| >Microsoft had 74% of the desktop then and has 72% today
|
| That's only counting the latest version, if you include all
| Windows versions, it was in the high 90%. Today it's in the
| mid 90%.
|
| https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-
| share/desk...
| hajile wrote:
| Xbox One sold 57.9M and Series family has sold 28.3M by mid
| 2024.
|
| PS4 sold 117M and PS5 sold 61.7M by mid 2024.
|
| Nintendo claims 150.9M Switch consoles sold as of the end of
| 2024.
|
| That puts Microsoft at around 20.7%, Sony at 43%, and
| Nintendo at about 36.3%.
|
| Even if you exclude Nintendo with a "no-true-gamer" fallacy,
| Microsoft still has just 32.5% of the market.
|
| Windows was over 90% in 2007 and is just 72% today. If you
| include the super-important mobile market, Windows actual
| marketshare is something like 10-15% and even less if you
| include servers (where even most Azure servers run Linux).
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yes, if we are counting only game consoles, now if we count
| game studios owned by each company, and they earnings
| across all platforms, it is a complete different picture.
|
| Microsoft owns PC, and even Valve has forced to emulate
| Windows/DirectX to have any games on SteamDeck.
|
| The amount of office worker typing Excel sheets on mobile
| phones is rather tiny.
| hajile wrote:
| Even if you look at just computer games, Windows has a
| smaller share than any time since the 1980s.
|
| If you include the massive mobile gaming market, Windows
| gaming is an even tinier percentage of the overall market
| (maybe even <10%).
| pjmlp wrote:
| Have you ever played Windows games on the 1980's?
|
| That would be a first.
|
| What matters is where money is, and how much of those
| games trace back to Microsoft owned studios.
|
| Good example with mobile games though, as it is a good
| example of Valve's failure to capitalise on 80% of mobile
| games being run with OpenGL/Vulkan, on a Linux like
| platform, and yet they have to translate Win32/DirectX,
| as means to get games on SteamDeck.
| jasode wrote:
| _> I've been hearing people say this since this incorrect
| essay was written almost 20 years ago Microsoft had [...list
| of significant statistics...]_
|
| Whenever someone writes a provocative article about something
| being _" dead"_, they are almost always talking about
| _influence and mindshare_ -- rather than business statistics.
|
| Yes, Microsoft is still a huge behemoth being a $3+ trillion
| cap company with a overwhelming marketshare of Windows &
| Office installations but the _apex_ of their "industry
| influence" was the 1990s during the "Wintel" days before the
| internet came along. That 1980s/1990s was the time period
| when Bill Gates was CEO and _" everybody was scared of
| Microsoft"_. Since, then they ... lost the browser wars (both
| old IE and new IE with Trident engine failed), lost the
| mobile shift (Windows phones failed), is a distant #2 in
| search engine market. Microsoft is somewhat back in the
| influence game with AI but that's because they partnered with
| OpenAI rather than build something internally. Arguably, it's
| Meta that gets more noise with LLAMA, and China's High-Flyer
| getting everybody's attention with DeepSeek-R1. That's the
| type of _" alive vs dead"_ PG is writing about.
|
| The "dead" being a writer's rhetorical flourish rather than a
| business status is the same when applied to _" IBM is dead"_.
| In pure business metrics, IBM is still a giant company with
| $65 billion in revenue and $7 in profits. The airlines, major
| banks, and credit-card companies still run millions of
| transactions through IBM Z mainframes. Companies are still
| buying and upgrading expensive new Z mainframes. But the
| rhetorical "dead" means IBM's apex of influence was 1960s &
| 1970s. The later IBM trying to relevant with the newer tech
| like Watson and blockchain service doesn't matter to people.
|
| Maybe writers should stop using "dead" as rhetorical
| technique because it just confuses readers. E.g. saying
| something like _" DirecTV is dead"_ makes people scratch
| their head when they just watched a game on the satellite
| service last night. How would that be possible if it was
| truly dead?!?
| donny2018 wrote:
| You are missing a lot of stuff Microsoft is doing. Azure,
| .NET, server tools, databases, VS Code, TypeScript, GitHub,
| (yes, OpenAI), gaming, XBox, desktop, business tools,
| Surface, Microsoft 365, Teams and lots more. I'd say much
| of the things they are doing is quite "fresh" and it's more
| relevant as it has ever been.
|
| There is a reason it's market cap is bigger than Google's
| and Amazon's, and its downfall has been long overturned.
|
| >with a overwhelming marketshare of Windows & Office
| installations
|
| It's interesting that you mention it, as none of these are
| very important on their own to today's Microsoft if you
| check their latest quarterly reports.
| jasode wrote:
| _> You are missing a lot of stuff Microsoft is doing.
| Azure, .NET, server tools, databases, VS Code,
| TypeScript, GitHub, [...] and it's more relevant as it
| has ever been._
|
| I didn't list them because they're not "relevant" (scare
| quotes) to PG's rhetorical angle of _" dead"_. Yes, of
| course those Microsoft components are still _relevant_
| and still being updated and modernized. That said, even
| though I personally use VSCode, Visual Studio, Github
| every day, and have upgraded too many MS SQL Server
| databases... my point is those examples of Microsoft 's
| current usage is not what PG is talking about. I'm not
| saying readers have to _agree_ with PG. They just have to
| understand that he 's using _" dead"_ as a provocative
| shorthand about "influence" rather than business stats.
|
| Same confusion as IBM coming out with new Z mainframe
| models in 2025 and IBM Red Hat just released a new RHEL
| 9.5 a few months ago and yet people will say _" IBM is
| dead"_. How can IBM be dead if Red Hat Linux is still
| _relevant_?!? That 's the problem with different readers'
| interpretation of the word _" dead"_.
|
| EDIT reply to: _> Then what is he talking about when he
| says "dead"? [...] I mean for vast majority GitHub is a
| synonym for Git and VSCode is nearly a de-facto IDE for
| frontend development,_
|
| Github (2008 acquired by MS in 2018) and VSCode (2015)
| didn't exist in 2007 when PG wrote his _" Microsoft is
| Dead"_ essay. It's possible those are "influential"
| enough to change his opinion. Maybe not. The examples of
| millions of people using MS Excel and Word every day back
| in 2007 with no meaningful competition from Google Docs
| or LibreOffice didn't stop him form writing _" Microsoft
| is Dead"_. Therefore, we must conclude he's using _"
| dead"_ in a very particular way.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| > VSCode, Visual Studio, Github every day, and have
| upgraded too many MS SQL Server databases... my point is
| those examples of Microsoft's current usage is not what
| PG is talking about....
|
| Then what _is_ he talking about when he says "dead"?
|
| Also comparing those MS softwares with Z-mainframe & RHEL
| feels a bit off. If you take a 90th percentile of s/w
| developer starting career today they are more likely to
| have heard or used those MS tools than IBM's. I mean for
| vast majority GitHub is a synonym for Git and VSCode is
| nearly a de-facto IDE for frontend development,
| TypeScript I don't need to say much.
| nunez wrote:
| Watson has been around a long, long time, and they are
| still leaders in quantum computing IIRC.
| rcxdude wrote:
| It is a pretty unhelpful way to say "Is not longer as
| incredibly dominant as it was". It's a stretch to apply it
| to "Is declining into irrelevence", even.
| dijit wrote:
| > Microsoft had 74% of the desktop then and has 72% today
|
| Microsoft had 90%+ of desktop penetration in 2008; in fact,
| it made news that it had slipped to below that _at the end of
| 2008_.[0][1]
|
| Now it's around 70%, but seems to be improving?[2]
|
| [0]: https://www.osnews.com/story/20605/windows-market-share-
| slip...
|
| [1]: https://www.computerworld.com/article/1367310/windows-
| market...
|
| [2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-
| market-sha...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Reading rich people's blogs reminds me every time that
| there's a reason wealth is also called "fortune". Because it's
| more about luck than anything else. And by luck I mean a family
| golden nugget, or lucky first investment, or both. A superpower
| that allows one to fail many times and still be able to try
| again until they hit the next fortune. Most people in the world
| can't even afford to try. Most of the rest can't afford to
| fail.
|
| Is this true? Did Paul Graham have outside money to fall back
| on that was given to him to sustain him through all his
| failures?
| graemep wrote:
| I do not know about Paul Graham in particular, but it is true
| of many rich people.
| DonnyV wrote:
| Yup, nepo kid
|
| "...father worked for Westinghouse, modelling nuclear
| reactors, then was named the Director of Nuclear Safety for
| Atomic Energy of Canada"
|
| https://hsm.stackexchange.com/a/16002
| thesuitonym wrote:
| From Wikipedia: Graham received a Bachelor of Arts with a
| major in philosophy from Cornell University in 1986. He then
| received a Master of Science in 1988, and a Doctor of
| Philosophy in 1990, both in computer science from Harvard
| University. Graham has also studied fine arts and painting at
| the Rhode Island School of Design and at the Accademia di
| Belle Arti in Florence.
|
| Note that most people can't even afford to go to one
| university, let alone four. That definitely seems like
| someone who had a safety net that allowed him to focus on
| acquiring wealth, instead of acquiring shelter or food.
| foldr wrote:
| PG is from a middle class family AFAIK and probably
| benefited from some parental support. However, you may be
| missing the fact that graduate study in the US is typically
| funded. He would most likely have received a stipend or
| other funding covering living expenses while doing his PhD.
| DanielHB wrote:
| Jeez, I suppose we should only allow people in who grew up
| living under a bridge like you.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| It's not about being rich or not. People who can choose what
| kind of computer they have will choose Apple over PC. People
| who cannot choose will use work computers in their office with
| Windows installed, that corporate chose for them.
|
| People who do not want a computer at all will have neither PC
| or Mac. The majority of people do not want to have a computer -
| they see enough of them at work, and they are happy with their
| smart phones.
| globalnode wrote:
| I think Apple is a very American thing. Outside the US, which
| you may not care about, only the most aspirationally
| Americanised people I've known have gone for apple products.
| Im not sure what the reasons are.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Europeans generally don't purchase the things they want,
| they purchase the things they are supposed to be wanting,
| after having long deliberations together with relatives and
| friends. So then they'll only look at specs and price and
| not how useful a product is or how pleasant it is to use.
|
| Europeans are in general very weird about money. They are
| as greedy as anybody, but what do they do then with that
| money? They think turning on the air conditioner will ruin
| them financially and they count how many cents each person
| owes each other.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| In 2007, when the article was written, I _distinctly_
| remember being at Amazon and Windows laptops were the
| default option. So was the entire office suite, their share
| point thing, not to speak about Outlook. In fact one had to
| beg to IT guys to allow us to use Linux laptops. MacBooks
| were still a few years away if I remember correctly.
|
| It's amazing that PG looked around in his bubble, saw
| MacBooks and decided to write that Microsoft is dead.
| whobre wrote:
| | People who can choose what kind of computer they have will
| choose Apple over PC.
|
| No, we will not.
| Ekaros wrote:
| You would have to pay me considerable sum of money to pick
| anything Apple over other options.
| subsection1h wrote:
| > _People who can choose what kind of computer they have will
| choose Apple over PC._
|
| FYI, this guy is a troll.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41153109
| carlosjobim wrote:
| You are just doing yourself a disfavor by dismissing
| anybody who doesn't think exactly like you as non-human (a
| troll, a bot, a Russian, a heretic!). On that route, you'll
| end up living your life much less than to the fullest. I
| think your example speaks for this.
|
| Yes, I think that a graphical user interface would be
| excellent for a server. And I'm probably not the only one
| who would like that idea: Apple invested a bunch of money
| trying to do just that with their Mac OS X Server.
| caspper69 wrote:
| > People who can choose what kind of computer they have
| will choose Apple over PC.
|
| I have worked for an awful lot of people over the years,
| and given they could afford my services, I would guess
| they fall into the "people who can choose what kind of
| computer they will choose" category. Some could choose
| what kind of Ferrari they wanted, lol.
|
| Your intuition is anecdotal. Plenty of people either
| don't care, or _gasp_ prefer Windows. They are not stupid
| (I 'm one of them, which I'd be happy to discuss with
| anyone, up to and including Mr. Torvalds).
|
| An operating system is a tool to allow you to use your
| computer hardware and to run software. What fits your
| needs may not fit everyone's. There's nothing wrong with
| that.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > Your intuition is anecdotal. Plenty of people either
| don't care, or gasp prefer Windows. They are not stupid
| (I'm one of them, which I'd be happy to discuss with
| anyone, up to and including Mr. Torvalds).
|
| You're one of who?
| caspper69 wrote:
| > Plenty of people either don't care, or _gasp_ prefer
| Windows.
| josefrichter wrote:
| This also reminds me of "garage startups". In fact, probably
| only a fraction of people around the world own a garage. If
| your family has a garage, it means you are probably among the
| top ~1% richest people on Earth.
| why_only_15 wrote:
| Probably more like richest 10%, which applies to most people
| in the US
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Almost everybody I know drives a Lamborghini. Toyota is so
| dead...
| fogpudding wrote:
| The first time this essay made the rounds, a bunch of people
| misunderstood his point the same way you're doing:
| https://www.paulgraham.com/cliffsnotes.html
|
| He was talking about cultural dominance among people developing
| new tech, not revenue.
|
| There was a time when being a programmer essentially meant
| writing C++ on Windows. I still remember getting a Mac as late
| as ~2013 and having my normie (non-engineer) friends chastise
| me for it -- "how are you going to get any serious coding
| done?" -- because that was their genuine impression of Windows
| vs Macs. Meanwhile, imagine you're the founder of YC in 2007 in
| a city where all the new tech startups are happening.
| Everyone's using Macs. Surely it's at least a valid argument or
| hypothesis that this is a leading indicator of where the
| forefront of tech is going.
|
| And now if you go to any modern fast-growing tech company, you
| look around, everyone uses Macs. Even lots of Microsoft
| employees use Macs. It seems the hypothesis wasn't completely
| wrong. Incidentally, it's only with hindsight that we're able
| to refute this somewhat: Microsoft made a nice comeback in the
| tech world after Nadella became CEO. But that was a big
| surprise when it happened.
|
| Was it really necessary to turn this into a talking point about
| rich people and their sins?
| buran77 wrote:
| > a bunch of people misunderstood his point the same way
| you're doing
|
| Nobody implied he meant "dead dead" so that's a straw man,
| just that he completely missed the mark with his observation.
| Everything else is a backsplanation. PG even acknowledges he
| may look like a fool in retrospective.
|
| > He was talking about cultural dominance among people
| developing new tech [...] Everyone's using Macs
|
| So... a cultural thing you say, not connected to performance?
| Correlation not causation. The investor expects to see a Mac
| because that's part of the impression and everyone conformed.
| People showed up with a Mac to ask for money much like people
| show up in a suit to ask for a job. The interviewer expects
| the suit. It has no impact on the job performance or quality.
| It's just the "cultural" expectation. Wall Street people
| aren't more profitable due to the suits, and casual attire
| isn't dead.
|
| > Was it really necessary to turn this into a talking point
| about rich people and their sins?
|
| Was it really necessary to come to his defense? Was PG's
| opinion of MS really necessary? Would you have let it slide
| if I was praising instead?
| fogpudding wrote:
| They implied that he meant Microsoft's financials were in
| trouble, when he was more saying that Microsoft had become
| the new IBM.
|
| I don't think Macs are popular in tech merely due to
| frivolous or circular fashion. Basically no one used
| Windows to do 2009-2016 era web dev. Not because founders
| were pushing employees to use Macs so investors would see
| when they came to visit; Microsoft genuinely lost a lot of
| reputation among programmers prior to the WSL stuff due to
| how bad their stuff was. Am I the only one who remembers
| this? People complaining and giving each other a look if
| they had to use "Winblows" and so on? (I still see this
| today.)
|
| > Was it really necessary to come to his defense? ...
|
| I mean, no, but why does every PG essay posted on here
| spawn a bunch of comments about basically how rich and
| pretentious he is? Why does this matter? If he's wrong, why
| not just say why?
| bediger4000 wrote:
| Not only is Microsoft not dead, they're almost never included in
| the "Big Tech" that gets shouted about and cursed. Which is
| weird, Microsoft makes an OS that has a 90+% desktop share, no
| real competitors, and pretty much extract money at will for its
| software.
| luma wrote:
| I think it's largely because SV tech bros have almost zero
| intersection with enterprise compute as it's used in the rest
| of the world. PG sees nothing but Apple laptops around him,
| because everyone holding them has never worked for a diesel
| engine manufacturer in Michigan or a wood panel plant in North
| Carolina.
|
| The disconnect between SV and the rest of the world is as wide
| today as it has ever been.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Microsoft has long been included, they just didn't happen to be
| in the catchy FAANG acronym that a tv show used for a set of
| companies with increasing stock prices all the way back in
| 2013.
|
| Netflix dropped out of that a long time ago, but FAANG is still
| sometimes used since it is catchier than MAMAA or whatever a 7
| letter acronym would be if including Nvidia and Tesla.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Tech
| cb321 wrote:
| How about MANTFANG (for microsoft, apple, nvidia, tesla,
| facebook, amazon, netflix, google)? If you drop Tesla, you
| can have "MANFANG" which fits 2025 Hollywood's year of the
| werewolf or if you reorder them you could have "FATMANNG", a
| bit like the infamous FatMan and Little Boy. Or "GFATMANN".
| If you go by Google's "Alphabet" you could do "MANTAFAN". And
| probably many others _WAY_ catchier _AND_ slightly more
| complete than "FAANG", IMO.
| codr7 wrote:
| Given their trajectory at the time, they probably would be.
|
| Right now they're embracing open source and Linux, which has
| proven to be a very good idea.
|
| I'm still not convinced.
| ptdorf wrote:
| EEE
| pjmlp wrote:
| Android and ChromeOS.
|
| Google is being much better at that game with Linux.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| "[Apple's] victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I
| come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we
| fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops"
|
| He's not wrong there, I once had to use my laptop to display Jeff
| Bezos's Powerpoint when he was at Startup School because I was
| the only person around they knew had Windows. I tried so hard to
| like OSX, using it as my daily driver for two years, and I still
| wish I did.
| gigatexal wrote:
| I'd argue Paul Graham's relevance is what died. He's not worth 3T
| Microsoft is. Sure they're not sexy to startups but they survived
| and thrived and found cloud when they did and are worth buckets
| and buckets of money.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| It's quite impressive to see how much the Windows experience has
| improved for developers since this was written.
|
| I love being able to both do all of my web application work in a
| deeply integrated NixOS WSL VM and develop my own desktop
| environment power tools against a stable DWM using an officially
| supported Win32 API crate in Rust.
|
| Honestly I dread booting up my M1 MacBook Pro for work, the
| experience feels sluggish, slow and unresponsive in comparison.
| In particular the experience of using a wireless mouse is like
| dragging the cursor through heavy sludge.
| dtquad wrote:
| The _de facto_ Linux game development workflow is now literally
| just to develop a Windows /DirectX game and making sure it
| works with Proton on Linux.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| Relevant article from a few years ago:
| https://blog.hiler.eu/win32-the-only-stable-abi/
| thijson wrote:
| I've stuck with windows due to better power management support.
| Native Linux hasn't supported my hardware very well. Also my
| kids occasionally want to play Roblox or other games on my
| computers. Apple products are too expensive for me.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I too love the WSL, but at the same time--
|
| If you needed to buy software, my entire life, chances are the
| software you needed was made for Windows.
|
| I use Linux for a desktop, use it professionally, but I keep a
| Windows laptop around because every time a hobby butts up
| against software -- for instance, the control software for a
| CNC -- that software is written for Windows. (Yes, yes, there
| are open source alternatives, it's just codegen and largely
| generic APIs, but _the software everyone uses_ runs on
| Windows.)
| simion314 wrote:
| Just a rant about MS , people here claim how good they are with
| backwards compatibility. Bullshit, we were using an MS Azure TTS
| API, MS also had anew similar API but in alpha so we could not
| use that one back then. The old API has still more then 1 year of
| support but the MS "very nice guys" /sarcasm started breaking it,
| like one day one end point returns a different response
| structure, I fix it and next weak other endpoint changes the
| response structure, and the results start to bug out, returns
| success but transcription is incomplete etc .
|
| In the end I did the work and move the new API, I am not sure how
| much this new one will work, maybe the nice guys at MS will want
| to restart things again with some new even more shiny thing.
|
| Some fanboy will claim this is just a mistake and MS team are
| just incompetent and have no tests, and support if busy with
| other stuff.
| foul wrote:
| MS in fact is good with backwards compatibility only under
| windows/related software and maybe xbox, those bragging about
| MS' love of legacy aren't wrong, they are just focused on their
| almost historical product, what made Microsoft.
|
| We can't say "no big deal" tbf, because for example Office
| files had fairly good longevity across updates (not perfect, a
| lot of file broke).
|
| BUT anything else (embedded, cloud, AI, when they poisoned web
| standards, etc) isn't really under that much lauded backwards
| compatibility AFAIK.
| simion314 wrote:
| Right, but in my case the API still has 1 year of support ,
| so is negative backwards compatibility, MS devs break things
| before it;s end of life. Maybe I should be sorry, soem poor
| guy is tasked too work on the old API while the "cool" devs
| play with the new toys and maybe sabotage the other guy.
| ghc wrote:
| It's interesting to read comments about this today, written
| through the lens of the present. I suspect many commenters were
| too young to really understand the level of dominance Microsoft
| had in the market circa from 1995-2005. Just look at this chart:
|
| https://www.extremetech.com/computing/143277-microsofts-shar...
|
| In 2004, outside of education and desktop publishing it was
| extremely rare to see an Apple computer at all. Apple was the
| iPod company by that point. Almost all software of note ran only
| on Windows, and Office was required for all documents.
|
| That Microsoft is dead, killed off by antitrust remedies and the
| web. That today Microsoft is a giant company is irrelevant...it's
| not the same company at all. In fact, there is no company today
| even fractionally as dominant. Google's search monopoly or
| Apple's App Store monopoly just don't compare.
|
| It appears all the critical commenters think PG was unaware of
| these facts, but they critically misunderstand the truth on the
| ground. There was no way for PG to _not_ know that Microsoft was
| dominant everywhere because Windows ran _everything_ (even
| digital signage) and Word documents were a more accepted
| interchange format than even PDFs. He was invoking Gibson 's
| observation that the future is unevenly distributed, and he was
| right: The movement of almost all applications to the web
| absolutely annihilated Microsft's ability to dictate what
| software smaller companies could or could not publish.
|
| Edit: Also, it seems unthinkable today, but back then we all had
| a large number of devices like printers and digital cameras that
| only shipped with Windows drivers. Microsoft essentially dictated
| what hardware you could buy too.
| bkfunk wrote:
| "That today Microsoft is a giant company is irrelevant..."
|
| I am not too young to remember the old Microsoft. To say that
| Microsoft is "irrelevant" is so myopic. Despite Tesla, GM is
| still relevant. Despite AWS, DB2 mainframes are still relevant.
| Heck, I have to work with EBCDIC data, a format designed to
| _not produce holes in punchcards that are too close together_.
| Even when we eventually move to a modern db, decades of
| archival data is not going to be converted from EBCDIC.
|
| Windows might be irrelevant to FAANG or MANGA or GAMMA or
| whatever, but how many Fortune 500 companies don't have a
| significant Microsoft presence?
|
| Apple computers are pretty nice, but they're expensive, and the
| vast majority of employees do fine with a cheap PC and
| Microsoft 365--why would a company pay more for unnecessary
| hardware that also requires rebuilding a bunch of IT systems,
| not to mention retraining thousands of employees.
| teddyh wrote:
| I think you misread that. What ghc wrote was that the _fact_
| (that Microsoft is giant today) is irrelevant, not that
| Microsoft is irrelevant.
| ghc wrote:
| I didn't say Microsoft is irrelevant. I said the fact that
| it's still a huge company is irrelevant when judging whether
| the old Microsoft was in fact dead or not. The new Microsoft
| is highly relevant, but Microsoft's philosophy of "Embrace,
| Extend, Extinguish" to maintain a grip on consumer compute is
| dead. If anything is the heir to that, it would be AWS.
| echelon wrote:
| > To say that Microsoft is "irrelevant" is so myopic. Despite
| Tesla, GM is still relevant. Despite AWS, DB2 mainframes are
| still relevant. Heck, I have to work with EBCDIC data, a
| format designed to not produce holes in punchcards that are
| too close together.
|
| There's more free energy in growing things.
|
| Leave shrinking things to private equity.
|
| There might be a lot of money in programming COBOL, but who
| wants to do that? It's not exciting to be a buzzard and
| subsist on carcasses.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > "That today Microsoft is a giant company is irrelevant..."
|
| > To say that Microsoft is "irrelevant" is so myopic.
|
| That quote you quoted does not claim that Microsoft is
| irrelevant, it claims that the fact that Microsoft is a giant
| company today, is irrelevant.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| "Dead" apparently means "no longer the unquestioned industry
| leader" - which seems like an odd definition of "dead" to me,
| but ok.
|
| The industry in question being the union of personal desktop
| and laptop computers, associated software, and internet-
| related technologies.
|
| What actually happened was the internet-related sector
| broadened to include new sub-sectors - mobile, search,
| social, media, cloud, e-commerce, and ad tech - all of which
| Microsoft either ignored, failed at, or didn't dominate.
|
| The old industries are still there but they're the tail, not
| the dog.
|
| The dog is far more consumer and consumer-adjacent. MS
| culture was always more aligned with corporate goals and
| office productivity. MS never _got_ social and lifestyle
| computing, which is where the industry was heading. It still
| doesn 't, even in gaming.
|
| AI is going to see a similar shift to a completely different
| mode of computing, but it's too early to tell how that will
| work out. At a guess it's going to be much more directly
| political than anything we've seen so far. (Not in a good
| way, IMO.)
| ozim wrote:
| Agree with this take.
|
| It is also highly visible in nerd Linux circles where some
| people still think they fight to have Linux on Desktop.
|
| Linux on Desktop is irrelevant just as Microsoft pre 2005 is
| irrelevant.
|
| MSFT saw that cloud is the future and they are in that business
| and O365 is flagship product where Windows just a support nice
| to have part because they need OS so people can run their
| browser.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Linux on the desktop is irrelevant in the same way that a
| carpenter's home woodworking projects are irrelevant. I mean
| they are but that's sort of beside the point, right?
|
| People who want to beat Microsoft with Linux on the desktop
| should stop worrying and enjoy our nice ecosystem of little
| programs for what it is.
| johnea wrote:
| Your comments that MS is a completely differnt company are
| absolutely correct.
|
| MS owns github, linkedin, and it's cloud services in azure,
| etc, are outside the initial desktop OS business model. Not to
| mention it being one of the biggest contributors to the linux
| kernel (to my chagrin). All of this is because of the slide in
| significance and dominance of it's windows OS business.
|
| This OS business is still quite present though, such as in the
| h/w upgrades being pushed on users now in migrating to win11.
| The big h/w OEMs pay windows OS royalties for all those new
| computers.
|
| Also, WRT your mention of the h/w driver dominance of MS, it's
| ironic to note that in the modern world h/w peripherals still
| often come with a custom windows driver, when their use on
| linux is almost always supported by standard USB class device
| drivers. A notable failure to evolve.
| stuaxo wrote:
| I remember reading this at the time, and thinking how much of a
| bubble he seemed to be in.
|
| Macs weren't something I saw that often at this time, just like
| now most computers were PCs.
| sjamaan wrote:
| I dunno man. I just went on a tour of two schools for my
| daughter here in the Netherlands. They both use Chromebooks for
| their students as cheap machines that can be easily replaced.
| Those don't run Windows.
|
| Many "regular" folks have Mac machines because they no longer
| "have" to use Microsoft-specific software. Also, Microsoft
| doesn't have any phone OS (anymore) either - that's all Apple
| and Google.
|
| That definitely doesn't mean Microsoft is truly "dead", but
| they're no longer the giant that you can't avoid. Companies can
| afford to ignore them, and that's a far cry from the absolute
| and total utter market dominance they had in the nineties
| (which is how I read this article).
| tealpod wrote:
| IBM is Dead.
| rayiner wrote:
| Microsoft isn't dead. It's just become IBM. The gas giant phase
| of a dying star.
| programmertote wrote:
| Whenever I see posts from famous people touted on Hacker News and
| Reddit, I always remind myself about this favorite quote of mine
| from Buddha (I'm a former Buddhist-turned-atheist, but I still
| agree with _a few_ thinking and concepts from Buddhism.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kesamutti_Sutta
|
| > Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing
| (anussava), nor upon tradition (parampara), nor upon rumor
| (itikira), nor upon what is in a scripture (pitaka-sampadana) nor
| upon surmise (takka-hetu), nor upon an axiom (naya-hetu), nor
| upon specious reasoning (akara-parivitakka), nor upon a bias
| towards a notion that has been pondered over (ditthi-nijjhan-
| akkh-antiya), nor upon another's seeming ability (bhabba-
| rupataya), nor upon the consideration 'The monk is our teacher
| (samano no garu)' Kalamas, when you yourselves know 'These things
| are good; these things are not blameable; these things are
| praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead
| to benefit and happiness,' enter on and abide in them.
| yellowstuff wrote:
| I'll admit that this is a charitable reading of the essay, but I
| think that MS was dead in 2007 and is still dead in 2025, in the
| sense that Graham was focused on. In the 90s startup founders
| were scared that if they started a software company MS would copy
| their idea and crush them. Bill Gates used to talk about how he
| wanted to "monopolize" software before the lawyers caught up with
| him. By 2007 MS was mostly irrelevant to startup founders, and
| with a few exceptions it's mostly irrelevant to them now. They're
| not in the business of crushing the life out of software startups
| anymore. Paul's a VC, and that's what he was focused on.
| n4r9 wrote:
| That's a legit take. But I also think PG conveys his point
| poorly. He uses terms like "no one" and "dangerous" - and even
| "dead" - in a non-standard way without clarifying their
| meaning. Perhaps the meaning was more obvious to members of the
| startup scene in the 2000s, but then he's tying himself into a
| subcultures's perspective, which I feel is just as problematic.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Paul got married in 2008 so maybe he has kids now, maybe they can
| tell him about a gaming PC that most likely runs Microsoft
| Windows. Or even an Xbox.
|
| I hope the shock of witnessing Microsoft Windows in the wild has
| subdued with time lol.
| anothercoup wrote:
| > Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops
|
| I find this absolutely shocking. Was this a west coast thing? I
| graduated and got my first job around that time and never met a
| single developer who used an apple laptop. My CS department was
| entirely unix/linux/bsd and windows. All my internships and jobs
| post graduation was windows or linux. My experience was that the
| hacker community, cs community, developer community all looked
| down on apple laptops, especially back then.
|
| I guess we all live in our own little bubbles.
|
| Edit: Also, the worry back then wasn't so much that microsoft is
| dead, but that microsoft was expanding so much that even if you
| preferred to develop on a linux stack, you still wanted to get
| some background in C#, VB, tsql, etc to improve your chances at
| landing a job.
| shaftway wrote:
| I haven't been issued a company laptop that wasn't OSX since
| 2009. Nowadays everyone makes a big deal about having the
| latest Apple M7.2 silicon.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| The OS-based Windows 98/2000 Microsoft is dead. The Enterprise
| Microsoft is very much alive and well.
| breadwinner wrote:
| Sure they are alive, but they are not the 800 pound gorilla
| they used to be, who could freeze investments in an area just
| by announcing they are entering that area.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I think they're still an 800 lb gorilla. It's just that now
| they're not the _only_ 800 lb gorilla.
| breadwinner wrote:
| Nope. Were you alive in the 1990's? It was completely
| different. Microsoft froze innovation in the industry.
| Nobody does that today.
| anonnon wrote:
| I'm surprised no one posted this:
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost...
|
| Joel Spolsky was on the Excel team at MS, and was the lead on
| VBA. He prudently couches his doomsaying with this disclaimer:
|
| > Microsoft has an incredible amount of cash money in the bank
| and is still incredibly profitable. It has a long way to fall. It
| could do everything wrong for a decade before it started to be in
| remote danger, and you never know... they could reinvent
| themselves as a shaved-ice company at the last minute. So don't
| be so quick to write them off
| schmichael wrote:
| Alternative title: antitrust works.
|
| It didn't kill Microsoft. Microsoft isn't dead. However Microsoft
| does now have competitors. The takeaway here is that antitrust is
| fantastic for consumers and innovation.
| umur wrote:
| As a side note, and to pg's point, Microsoft did make some very
| smart Web 2.0 acquisitions from Silicon Valley in the years since
| --most notably LinkedIn and Github--, and let them run relatively
| independently.
|
| > So if they wanted to be a contender again, this is how they
| could do it: Buy all the good "Web 2.0" startups. They could get
| substantially all of them for less than they'd have to pay for
| Facebook.
|
| >Put them all in a building in Silicon Valley, surrounded by lead
| shielding to protect them from any contact with Redmond.
| ronyba wrote:
| Worst company ever no real tech all a bunch of salesman -
| CrowdStrike
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