Friday, July 20, 2012

At What Point Is A Company Too Big?

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, presents his pre...
Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, presents his pre-show keynote at the 2010 International CES in Las Vegas Wednesday evening. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Microsoft’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Decade
Technically Windows 8 is a step in the right direction, but there are plenty of folks who are stuck at XP and ain’t going anywhere. Those same people will complain when Windows 8 won’t run on their hardware
Whose problem is it that a lot of people still use Internet Explorer 6?

Okay, okay, I am not trying to come up to Microsoft's defense. I have no dog in the show. But I also don't feel like Microsoft should have come up with the search engine that Google did or that it should have come up with the social engine that Facebook did. I don't begrudge Microsoft for not having bought or begot Instagram.

And I think Microsoft could still get back the sexy in the gestures department if they could make it as fundamental as touch.

But that having said I do think Microsoft has been more slothful than it needed to be. It has not been a lost decade, but it sure has been slow.

Gesture will do for Microsoft what Big Data will do for Yahoo. Getting the sexy back is hard work. Some of it is to do with youth.

And I don't think a CEO change is in the offings. Through Ballmer Bill Gates gets to feel like he is perhaps still remotely running the company. That feeling. And he probably feels like noone else could do better.

Bringing touch to the PC is a big deal. Bringing gesture to all screen sizes is an even bigger deal.

I guess both Ballmer and Microsoft could lose some weight. 92,000 is a lot of people reporting to you. But then FoxConn hums just fine at 1.2 million workers. What gives?


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