Microsoft is "clumsy and uncompetitive"
By Barry Collins
Posted on 5 Feb 2010 at 15:11
A former Microsoft vice president has accused the company of becoming "clumsy and uncompetitive" in a forthright newspaper column.
Dick Brass, who served at Microsoft between 1997 and 2004, accused the company of stifling creativity and thwarting good ideas with poor management, paving the way for competitors such as Apple and Google to gain market share.
Microsoft's products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason
"Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator," Brass writes in the New York Times. "Its products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason. Its image has never recovered from the antitrust prosecution of the 1990s. Its marketing has been inept for years; remember the 2008 ad in which Bill Gates was somehow persuaded to literally wiggle his behind at the camera?"
Referring to Apple's iPad, Brass claims Microsoft could have sewn up the tablet PC market as early as 2001, but bad decisions damaged the product.
"When we were building the tablet PC in 2001, the vice president in charge of Office at the time decided he didn’t like the concept," he writes. "The tablet required a stylus, and he much preferred keyboards to pens and thought our efforts doomed. To guarantee they were, he refused to modify the popular Office applications to work properly with the tablet. So if you wanted to enter a number into a spreadsheet or correct a word in an e-mail message, you had to write it in a special pop-up box, which then transferred the information to Office. Annoying, clumsy and slow."
Brass, who worked on the ClearType font technology, also claims poor management meant it took 10 years for it to break through into Windows. "Engineers in the Windows group falsely claimed it made the display go haywire when certain colors were used," Brass claims. "The head of Office products said it was fuzzy and gave him headaches.
"As a result, even though it received much public praise, internal promotion and patents, a decade passed before a fully operational version of ClearType finally made it into Windows."
Microsoft bites back
Brass's comments have provoked a measured response from Frank Shaw, Microsoft's corporate vice president of communications. "At the highest level, we think about innovation in relation to its ability to have a positive impact in the world. For Microsoft, it is not sufficient to simply have a good idea, or a great idea, or even a cool idea. We measure our work by its broad impact," he writes on The Official Microsoft blog.
"To make his point, Dick generally focused on ClearType, noting that this technology was 'stifled' by existing business groups. For the record, ClearType now ships with every copy of Windows we make, and is installed on around a billion PCs around the world. This is a great example of innovation with impact: innovation at scale."
Shaw admits "you could argue that this should have happened faster," but claims the success of products such as OneNote prove tablets are still a key part of the Office line-up.
From around the web
Nothing new here then..
I think the rest of us have known this for years, it's only the top brass at MS that are in denial about it.
By SwissMac on 5 Feb 2010 
LOL SwissMac - totally agree :)
By nicomo on 5 Feb 2010
@SwissMac
I think the rest of us knew you would write something that before you did!
But I think Microsoft's main problem isn't thay're uncompetitive per se, they're certainly very competitive when it comes to Windows 7, Office 2010, Visual Studio, Server products etc, but they are trying to compete on so many fronts that they inevitably can't be the best across the board. Competitors have seen where they are weak and stolen a march with innovative products. But that's no bad thing for the consumer. If MS take a battering and then up their game, the consumer wins. Witness Windows 7 for example.
By rjp2000 on 5 Feb 2010
I turned years ago.....
To me the only reasons to use Microsoft still is a) you have to because lots of software is specific for that platform or b) you're not IT literate enough to learn a proper OS or c) you have a copy of 2000 or XP and no ambition.
By Waderider on 5 Feb 2010
@rjp2000
I agree with you in part. MS used to be an aggressive predator, gobbling up companies and their software licences. Now it seems to me to resemble Mickey Rourke in 'The Wrestler'. Repeated litigation has not tamed the beast, but taken away its spirit. The dawn of the age of open source is upon us. All Microsoft needs now is to prepare for itself an epitaph. People will blame Ballmer, but, bless him, he doesn't even know that his place in computer history is of no consequence.
By Alperian on 5 Feb 2010
@Waverider
(d) because everyone else is using it. That is the killer. Not sure what you mean by a proper OS either. I don't think Windows would be as widely deployed in industry if it weren't a proper OS.
By c6ten on 6 Feb 2010
@rjp2000
I think it's pointless to talk about Microsoft being competitive as it has no direct competitors in any space except the internet, where Linux / Apache /MySQL outplay it.
You can't run Apple software on non-Apple hardware, so what the competitor for Microsoft Win 7 Pro at £220 or Office 2007 Pro at £450?
Linux support for plug and play sound, USB, camera's scanner's etc make it a suitable base for a competitive offering but there are no stores with staff who understand Linux, and no support in mainstream PC magazines. Even Regedit is less intimidating than the Linux command prompt and apt-get.
By milliganp on 6 Feb 2010
C6: Windows is the QWERTY keyboard of operating systems, and for the same reason.
By Steve_Cassidy on 6 Feb 2010
May I remind you that Windows NT was a ground-up rewrite of Windows by the creator of VMS, Dave Cutler. If it is the QWERTY keyboard of operating systems what does that make Linux, which is positively vintage by comparison?
By c6ten on 6 Feb 2010
@c6ten
Windows NT was released in 1993 and Linux 1.0 in 1994, how does that make Linux vintage?
By milliganp on 7 Feb 2010
@Alperian
"The dawn of the age of open source is upon us"
Oh please! Tell that to Apple and Steve Jobs!!
But seriously "Open Source" is just becoming a trite term trotted out by people who think (or rather don't think!) it's a panacea. Its like 'the software is crap but that's okay cos its Open Source!!' Don't get me wrong OS has its place but its just one approach, the closed source approach still has validity. For example, do you think Google will be making their search algorithm code open source? Er...thought not!
By rjp2000 on 7 Feb 2010
@Waverider
"..you're not IT literate enough to learn a proper OS.."
Surely in that case, you get yourself a Mac and an iPhone? :-))
By rjp2000 on 7 Feb 2010
@rjp2000
Why is it that people who don't understand open source always quote the Google search algorithm?
The essence of open source is that the platforms and tools are open source, but the manner in which each business uses them is proprietary. We don't expect the banks to release the code of their banking systems.
Only a complete idiot would knock the major contributions made to open source by IBM, HP, Sun and other major IT vendors.
For almost every major IT company other than Apple and Microsoft, the future rests in service revenue -hence Oracle purchasing Sun so it can offer an end to end solution inclusive of all support services.
By milliganp on 7 Feb 2010
@milligamp
I agree and if you read my post carefully you would have noted that my critiscm was directed at those who think open source is the way to go for ALL software projects. It clearly has its place but it isn't necessarily the best option in all situations. As for your bold claim that the "future rests in service revenue", you may be correct but it isn't a given! The IT industry can change tack very quickly, so next year some other business model might be in vogue!
By rjp2000 on 7 Feb 2010
@rjp2000
I didn't intend to sound so combative! The only certainty of the future is that things will be different! However a lot of Microsoft fans think that Windows is the only solution forever.
By milliganp on 7 Feb 2010
@milligamp
"However a lot of Microsoft fans think that Windows is the only solution forever."
Yeah but the same can be said for apple and linux fans.
By koshthetrekkie on 10 Feb 2010
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