It wasn’t so long ago that Microsoft was generally considered a dirty word. Dare defend the company and the outpouring of scorn was enough to leave you wondering whose puppy you’d just shot.

To be fair, the software giant hadn’t done itself many favours. Its response to antitrust investigations stopped marginally short of certifiable paranoia, while Vista turned out to have all the charm of a broken bottle being waved at a bar fight. Office 2007 was brilliant, but conspicuously so among a product list that had come to represent the best cure for insomnia.

Microsoft seemed adrift, bereft of ideas or inspiration as its empire was systematically hacked to bits by Google, Apple and Mozilla. And yet, two years later and the company is once again the toast of the tech press. Windows 7 is good, but one product’s not enough to rescue an enormous company’s reputation. What on earth has happened? Is it really okay to like Microsoft again?

The answer’s yes, and the reason is that everybody’s favourite corporate bogeyman has done the one thing we never saw coming; it’s changed. It had no choice. Vista bombed, Bill Gates left and Microsoft was forced to begin the tortuous process of reinventing itself.

The first step was an unexpected promise to open up that’s bearing fruit through code issued under the General Public License and interoperability agreements with Red Hat and Novell. Then the products came. The sweeping changes made to Office 2007 had already shown that Microsoft understood it could no longer consider its cash cow sacred, but the fact it’s taking the fight to Google with an online version of Office 2010 is impressively bold.

Apple and Linux had a field day with Vista, but Windows 7 is brilliant and anybody who disagrees is clearly doing so through padded walls.

Apple and Linux had a field day with Vista, but Windows 7 is brilliant and anybody who disagrees is clearly doing so through padded walls. And the excitement’s not only confined to the headline stuff; Photosynth, Seadragon, Silverlight, Surface, Project Tuva – all of these suggest a company brimming with ideas.

Project Tuva, for example, is the title given to a series of physics lectures conducted by Manhattan Project collaborator Richard Feynman in the 1940s and now posted online. Google’s been banging on for years about making all the world’s information searchable, but Project Tuva isn’t only about indexing historical data, it’s an object lesson in how to present complex information (using Microsoft’s own Silverlight, let’s not forget). A timeline beneath the video is peppered with additional content, including formulas, definitions and audio commentary from noted physicists.

It’s ambitious, slick and brimming with the confidence that’s been so lacking from Microsoft’s products in recent years. It seems odd to accuse Microsoft of performance anxiety, but if you want to know how a company perceives itself you need only look at its advertising.

The psychology of advertising

Apple’s “I’m a PC” adverts had all the subtlety of a Geordie chat-up line, but Microsoft was dumbstruck. This cluelessness was most devastatingly summed up by Bill Gates’ response to the ads in an interview: “I don’t know why [Apple is] acting like it’s superior. I don’t even get it. What are they trying to say?” He whined.

The answer was indicative of the fact that Gates didn’t understand the importance of presentation – everything he did was a mental pursuit, aesthetics he left to people who looked at their clothes before putting them on in the morning. However, Steve Ballmer has always been more commercially savvy, and freed of Gates’ presence Microsoft has started throwing punches of its own.

The strategy is simple. Advertise your own products with humour, and take a sledgehammer to those of your rivals. The Laptop Hunter ads highlighting the “Apple Tax” have been so successful that Apple was reportedly ready to call in the lawyers before Microsoft subtly changed them. That sound you can hear is the Jobs mob running face first into the walls of its glasshouse.

And it’s not only Ballmer who’s blossomed since Gates’ departure. Ray Ozzie has picked up Bill Gates’ technical mantle and seems obsessed with transferring Microsoft’s desktop hegemony to the “cloud”. Perhaps its most important general, however, is Steven Sinofsky, the man responsible for Office 2007 and Windows 7. An engaging speaker and engineer, Sinofsky also understands the importance of putting the user first. Sinosfky is everything Microsoft has been missing and could very well prove to be Redmond’s own Steve Jobs if his rapid rise up the ranks continues.

So, it’s all rosy in Redmond then? Not quite. The patent infringement suit aimed at TomTom is indicative of a continued suspicion towards open source, and Internet Explorer 8 was too conservative to be interesting. It’s also going to take a long time to shake off the EU, which still wants its pound of flesh for alleged anticompetitive practices.

There’s no doubt Microsoft’s made plenty of mistakes during its tenure as king of the hill, too many to repay in just a couple of years, but the signs are good. So good, in fact, that if Microsoft continues down this road we may yet learn to love this most unlovable of companies.

[First published in PC Pro issue 180]