Personally I think their big, incomprehensibly stupid manoeuver was the Skype vs Skype for Business (Link) split. Had they merged them into a single client that could speak either protocol and share contact lists the story would have been very different.
Why are megacorps so incomprehensibly clueless about this? Is the money pit so deep that they knock each other in while in-fighting for control on the edge of it?
Skype for Business, which was really just a rebranding of Microsoft Lync, destroyed the Skype brand.
But it also indirectly damaged both variations.
Skype for Business became less of a “business” software like Lync was. So unlike Lync, which was fairly spartan but information dense, Skype for Business added a ton of white space, colors, icons, etc making it less efficient and less serious than Lync.
At the same time, Skype itself became purely consumer and went way down that route, focusing more on Temu like animation gimmicks than actually being a communication tool for friends and families.
> Is the money pit so deep that they knock each other in while in-fighting for control on the edge of it?
I remember somebody saying "Micorosft is an amalgam of different power centers and dynamics. Some people inside genuinely loves open source and wants to be part of that, and some hate it like it's the evil itself. So, there's in-fighting and power struggles in many areas in Microsoft".
I think the comment came after a project manager personally gutted .NET Core's Hot Reload support to give closed source parts a boost, and things got very ugly both inside and outside of Microsoft.
This is what happens when you hire leet code engineers and they become managers. Look at Google now. This isn't some magical outcome of big corps. A big corp is practically the people who work there.
America has multiple examples of companies that thrived for decades until a certain type of manager showed up (of which leet code engineers are an aspect; clueless MBA grads are another; there are more). Sears. General Electric. IBM. Companies need to develop a sort of immune response to this type, as they are as charismatic as they are deleterious to company outlooks, and WILL worm their way in if not checked. A more effective Matthew Broderick to stay the Reese Witherspoons of the world.
This is assuming that companies are initially led and managed by people who actually care about it and the service/product produced, and that the bean counters and corporate climbers only show up later, when it becomes clear that the business is ripe for exploitation.
It’s not really about ‘leet code engineers’ getting into management but the perverse incentives involved in climbing up the corporate ladder.
It’s as if it doesn’t matter what project you pitch and what the fallout is as long as some KPI somewhere gets a boost. Just get your promotion and ride off into the sunset, someone else will deal with the aftermath.
It's not just about incentives. It's about selecting for the kind of people who succeed under those incentive structures.
Even if you're hiring a cross section of the population or a cross section of software developers or management professionals only a slice of it is gonna stick around long enough to influence the organization.
For example, you don't find a lot of Ron Swanson types working for insurance, the court system, or health and safety. Those personality types are either gonna find a new job, turn into a bitter shell of a person counting the days to retirement or go postal and finding a new job is obviously the superior option.
The comparison between Google and Microsoft (or whatever) is gonna be similar though the differences will be more nuanced. Same thing for big banks. Same for big oil. Same for big anything. You've got these differing corporate cultures and incentive sets and they select for different people.
Microsoft is built on completely different ethos and evolved from there.
(I think it was Paul Allen is who said it) "Microsoft is a corporation built upon the idea of intellectual property". So being closed source, aggressive safeguarding of IP and locking users in is the DNA of Microsoft.
Yes, company is made of people, but there's also a foundational DNA. When you keep that DNA alive, the company changes and eats the people fed into it, without evolving (See Apple, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, OpenAI, etc.). Google's DNA has been changed from the top from a powerful but gentle giant to subtle but very evil giant.
I mean time has proven over and over that Gates and Microsoft were right.
If your business is developing and selling software to businesses then you want a proprietary license and usually to give it away for non-commercial use. If your business is selling direct to consumer then you need a proprietary license, no source available, and probably DRM.
If your business is something unrelated to software, and uses software as a means rather than an end then OSS is your friend.
There is a bit of irony in this comment since many of the original Skype engineers are now seniors managers at Google still working on communication (they left MS a long time ago).
Google has many issues but I don't think technical competence is one of them.
>Why are megacorps so incomprehensibly clueless about this?
Management by committees. Lots of office politics. Most senior execs have successfully failed upwards. Once every 18 months they let go of people they stick the blame on thereby losing any memory of design decisions.
I know, that's my point - branding Lync (thanks for the correction, I forgot the spelling) damaged the Skype brand to no real benefit.
I know Teams is fairly pervasive, but that's on the usual Microsoft Enterprise stranglehold, certainly not on Teams' merits or riding the popularity of Skype pre Microsoft.
I don't much care for Teams but I write that off to basically not using the Microsoft Office suite at all and maybe doing a Teams call once every 6 months, if that.
It's not just the enterprise stranglehold, though that's surely part of it. But Teams, at least today and on Windows, is GOOD. It works well for internal meetings and chat, calls are good, and on the unregistered outsider webinar attendee experience, Teams has just been better than Zoom in my experience.
Also, even if you just want to buy Teams, from what I've checked the barebones Teams only packages MS sells for smaller orgs are still cheaper than Slack. Actually, let's see... yeap, Slack Pro's 8€/mo/user, Teams Essentials is 4€/user/mo, M365 Business Basic is 6€/user/mo.
Microsoft had MANY opportunities for this, Google as well for that matter. Especially if you consider Instant Messenger clients. I absolutely loved Google Hangouts when it was the all in one solution (including GV and SMS integration on the phone). MS(N) Messenger could have been very close as well a couple times.
It's the management decisions to try to dramatically change or replace things that lands with lesser solutions in the end. Because the incentives and bonus structure are mostly screwed up in many of these companies.
Skype could have been the best, be all, end all solution for MS and brought everyone to their knees and just killed them. But it wasn't the first, or last time this would happen.
I think it was the other way around, they know about the issues with Skype and built something new, but they knew the power of the Skype brand so they slapped it onto their new product.
I think that must have been the logic. I just contend that it was a stupid approach! They damaged their consumer brand badly to give an imperceptible boost to the business product their customers were already locked into.
Why are megacorps so incomprehensibly clueless about this? Is the money pit so deep that they knock each other in while in-fighting for control on the edge of it?