Our culture often counters success with the rebuke of pridefulness, the font of tragedy. News.com reports from a Stanford MBA panel, where a Google exec (Salar Kamangar) gave the reporter, search beat veteran Stefanie Olsen, the sense that he was “downplaying the looming threat of search competition from Microsoft, saying his company doesn’t expect to see a credible product from the software giant for years.”
I dunno if this was a misinterpretation, but…this reminds me of what Marc Andreesseen said lo so many years ago (the famous quote where Windows was dismissed as buggy device drivers…). Also, new Google recruit Anna Patterson dismissed MSFT’s search in this story a month ago. A trend? Probably not. But it’s not beyond many to call it so.
It’s very un-Microsoft to ignore a multi-billion dollar software market forever.
Marc Andreessen was right way back then. Correct me if I’m wrong, but MSFT didn’t have a credible product for 2-3 years from the time they recognized the potential threat the internet faced. What they did (and why they’ve lost so many lawsuits since then) is leverage their OS monopoly to fend off Netscape.
‘Font of Tragedy’ my A__; spend some cycle time thinking about how MSFT will fight in the search market *without* a credible product ’cause that’s what’ll happen.
> What they did (and why they’ve lost so many
> lawsuits since then) is leverage their OS
> monopoly to fend off Netscape.
Hmmm. They also happened to build a *way* better browser.
Ev., what you forget is, the *reason* Netscape couldn’t build a better browser was MSFT’s anticompetitive practices precluded Netscape from charging for it.
Don’t even THINK of defending MSFT, as the best trial lawyers have already tried and failed.