A New Conversation with Microsoft

Scoble wants us to tell Microsoft what we want from them... heheh. You asked and I'll tell you:


Microsoft is only a good when they are reacting to a threat. Absent a real threat, Microsoft focuses only on consolidating their tight grip around the consumer's throat.

I want Microsoft that leads! I want Microsoft to blow us away with a rewrite of Office that makes all those before it look pathetic. I want Microsoft to care about the home consumer without forcing me to use business tools. You brought up the Office suite - does the average home user need this much power?

Take a look at Apple, seriously! They created a wordprocessor for the consumer. Pages is a great application. It comes with fantastic templates. It doesn't pretend to compete with Word. It's a different class of application. It's aimed a set of users that Microsoft willfully ignores.

Microsoft has been the top dog in the computing industry since 1995. In that time, has Microsoft done anything with it's lead?

Spreadsheet? Lotus. Word processing? WordPerfect. Web? Netscape. E-mail? Eudora. IM? AOL. Portals? Yahoo. Search? Google. Music? P2Ps and Apple. Gaming? Nintendo and Sony. Blogs? Blogger & Google. Portable Documents? Adobe.

Has Microsoft ever been at the vanguard of anything? ever? even once?

Sadly, it will never happen. Why? Because Microsoft is too big. The best thing for Microsoft would be to break it up! Let the smaller parts outmaneuver the competition ... not waste time worrying about propping up another division's 2nd rate product.

I want Microsoft to lead... Be bold! Take risks! Stop reacting!