[Tijdreiziger]

I commented on this before, but I’m surprised Microsoft screwed up mobile as thoroughly as they did.

They could have dominated, but instead they all but gave away the personal computing space to Apple and Google, and had to pivot the company to cloud computing instead.

[msla]

Microsoft was late to the Internet, too. Gates didn't decide to really jump in with both feet until 1995, which... OK, not hugely late, but not exactly leading the trend, either:

https://lettersofnote.com/2011/07/22/the-internet-tidal-wave...

Of course, it ultimately wouldn't matter that much, with IE6 destroying Netscape and what MSN eventually became turning into an important portal.

I'd love to have some tell-all book about what the heck was happening inside Microsoft which prevented them from doing a good phone OS.

Instead, I found this:

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsofts-terry-myerson-and-...

1. Bad base OS from Windows CE.

2. Industry moved too fast.

3. Damn Android treating carriers and hardware makers better than us.

It's a blatant Microsoft booster site, sure.

Another view is from here:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/10/16452162/windows-phone-h...

Which posits that Google did unto Microsoft what Microsoft did unto Digital Research: Locked it out of important apps, like a YouTube app. Plus, Android already had a more vibrant ecosystem in general. Again, Microsoft was a bit slow, but this time, it cost them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code