So is Microsoft Dead or Not?

Way back in 1998 or so, I decided that Microsoft was dead. Netscape had popularized the web, which had rapidly established itself as the new desktop. Since web apps ran everywhere, operating systems were now irrelevant. And these were just the root causes of the real problem: since Microsoft stock was in the doldrums, the company could no longer attract the best and brightest by tangling in front of them the prospect of rapid riches.

Well whaddaya know? Instead of dying, Microsoft ramped up its web development activities, made a heroic effort to improve Internet Explorer, and in the end it was Netscape who kicked the bucket. Among other things, this left me with a healthy respect for their resilience and a marked reluctance to predict their demise. I was therefore a tad non-plussed when I came across Paul Graham’s recent essay “Microsoft is Dead“.

I read pretty much all of Paul’s essays, and he’s a brilliant guy with a lot of great insights. But I think he may have been spending a bit too much time with 20-something tech entrepreneurs lately. Certainly basing your theory of Microsoft’s death on the fact that young startup founders aren’t afraid of them is a bit dubious. His specific justifications (”There can only be one big man in town”) are only slightly more convincing, and his prescription (”Buy all the good Web 2.0 startups”) is silly and presumably tongue-in-cheek.

But reading carefully, what Paul is really saying is that Microsoft is no longer dangerous to up-and-coming startups. The “Microsoft is Dead” thing is just to grab attention, perfectly justifiable in this age of information overload. But is this actually true? Certainly Microsoft has a lot of arrows left in its quiver. When I speculated about the “Future of Applications“, I wrote off .NET as being neither fish (a full-blown O.S.) nor fowl (a lightweight internet-friendly runtime). But recent announcements about Silverlight appear to show that Microsoft really gets this and is determined to fix it. And early reviews are glowing.

Now, rumors have hotted up about a putative merging of Microsoft and enemy-of-my-enemy Yahoo. I find it hard to believe that this will ever happen, if for no other reason than the fact that Yahooligans might not want to work for their former arch-rival. But hey, you never know. The match up would make a strange kind of sense.

The bottom line is that Microsoft still has the potential to be plenty dangerous to budding startups. Will it be? I wouldn’t presume to say, but it’s certainly far too early to sign their death certificate.

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2 Comments »

1. But I think he may have been spending a bit too much time with 20-something tech entrepreneurs lately.

   So right, so true, so my thoughts exactly…

   Comment by Steve — 5/7/2007 @ 6:54 pm

2. now, talking about MS, when can we expect to allpeers become truly relevant and launch a ie7 plugin?..

   look what it did for foxytunes and stumbleupon…

   Comment by Avatar — 5/10/2007 @ 11:46 pm

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