Posted on April 1st, 2009 by Jon Honeyball

What’s next on Microsoft’s kill list?

$Just a fraction of Microsoft\'s product list$ So Microsoft continues to kill off the backwater products in its vast product set. The latest to go is MSN Encarta. According to some reports, Encarta has a truly microscopic share of the marketplace, at least compared to the big monster known as Wikipedia.

What else has gone? OneCare, the really not bad antivirus engine, has been axed to be replaced by a free thing called Morrow. The entire Flight Simulator team has gone, as has staff in the Equipt division.

Is this a hint of things to come? Given that the word on the street is that Ballmer will not last till Christmas, there is a strong likelihood that the next boss will be an accountant. And I doubt Ray Ozzie has the strength to keep the large company away from the beancounters. After all, the share price needs to be bounced back in an upwards direction, and cutting off the supply of money to loss makers would be a good start.

What else to hive off? How about selling Xbox to Electronic Arts? The in-car division to either Ford or Clarion/Alpine? The Zune portable to Creative Labs? And so on and so forth. Keep the core web services, OS, core apps and development tools. I wonder what would happen to the share price then?

Tags: encarta, Microsoft, Steve Ballmer

Posted in: Software

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6 Responses to “ What’s next on Microsoft’s kill list? ”

Mac | What’s next on Microsoft’s kill list? | Download Free Software Says:
April 1st, 2009 at 5:37 pm
[...] here to see the original: What’s next on Microsoft’s kill list? Nessun tag per questo [...]
Zune Car Pack » Blog Archive » What’s next on Microsoft’s kill list? Says:
April 1st, 2009 at 5:42 pm
[...] Read more here [...]
Joshua Davison Says:
April 3rd, 2009 at 5:01 pm
MSN Groups have just gone, But this was expected, since the multiple times they announced closure of MSN Chat.
Steve Says:
April 3rd, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Steve Balmers departure has been on the cards for years… But he just seems to hold in there. As suggested in the article above I can see Chris Liddell t(CFO) taking over the reigns & doing some big time streamlining / cutting loose unprofitable products/divisions.

I see microsoft as a company in big trouble, perhaps even more so than the share price reflects. If the Google Android OS ends up on OEM PCs this year as rumors indicate, this will remove the base of what microsoft calls the “stack”. If they lose fight for the underlying OS, the slipperly slope starts to get very steep. WIndows & office are the big revenue drivers for MS (50+%) but there are growing numbers of truely viable alternatives.

I don’t think the company is going to crumble overnight, but more of a polar bear like road to extinction. Just less & less enhabitable environment every year.

Stevo
DG Computers » Blog Archive » Microsoft Trims The Fat Says:
April 8th, 2009 at 10:17 am
[...] with what I’ve been saying for a while now, PC Pro has extrapolated Microsoft’s recent department-culling [...]
Jeremy Pontwaithe Says:
April 8th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Selling Xbox to EA….Xbox is hardware and EA are software developers you idiots.

Besides, it’s not hard to see why OneCare was culled, considering that Symantec has got a firm grip on 70% of the internet security market.

This seriously is journalism of the lowest quality.