| >I’ve been hearing people say this since this incorrect essay was written almost 20 years ago Microsoft had [...list of significant statistics...] Whenever someone writes a provocative article about something being "dead", they are almost always talking about influence and mindshare -- rather than business statistics. Yes, Microsoft is still a huge behemoth being a $3+ trillion cap company with a overwhelming marketshare of Windows & Office installations but the apex of their "industry influence" was the 1990s during the "Wintel" days before the internet came along. That 1980s/1990s was the time period when Bill Gates was CEO and "everybody was scared of Microsoft". Since, then they ... lost the browser wars (both old IE and new IE with Trident engine failed), lost the mobile shift (Windows phones failed), is a distant #2 in search engine market. Microsoft is somewhat back in the influence game with AI but that's because they partnered with OpenAI rather than build something internally. Arguably, it's Meta that gets more noise with LLAMA, and China's High-Flyer getting everybody's attention with DeepSeek-R1. That's the type of "alive vs dead" PG is writing about. The "dead" being a writer's rhetorical flourish rather than a business status is the same when applied to "IBM is dead". In pure business metrics, IBM is still a giant company with $65 billion in revenue and $7 in profits. The airlines, major banks, and credit-card companies still run millions of transactions through IBM Z mainframes. Companies are still buying and upgrading expensive new Z mainframes. But the rhetorical "dead" means IBM's apex of influence was 1960s & 1970s. The later IBM trying to relevant with the newer tech like Watson and blockchain service doesn't matter to people. Maybe writers should stop using "dead" as rhetorical technique because it just confuses readers. E.g. saying something like "DirecTV is dead" makes people scratch their head when they just watched a game on the satellite service last night. How would that be possible if it was truly dead?!? |
There is a reason it's market cap is bigger than Google's and Amazon's, and its downfall has been long overturned.
>with a overwhelming marketshare of Windows & Office installations
It's interesting that you mention it, as none of these are very important on their own to today's Microsoft if you check their latest quarterly reports.