[seiji]

You can picture west coast internet tech as a heat map. SF has a big solid color blob. About 20 miles south, Palo Alto is smaller and half as dark. About 10 miles south, Mountain View is a little larger and darker than Palo Alto.

There are little blobs of heat map down by San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo. There's a little dollop of color up at Portland. There's a half-SF color sized blob in Seattle for Amazon. There's a small, but solid color around Bellevue and a faint twinkle over at Redmond for the fading empire.

[Aloha]

Discounting the sleeping giant works great, until they eat your lunch.

Microsoft has an enormous capacity to innovate, mostly thru brute force of the billions of dollars they have sitting around, but still, innovation is innovation.

[seiji]

Not to tear you to shreds, but Microsoft sure did great at popularizing tablet computing, next generation phone supercomputers, hardware industrial design, stores with the highest grossing margins per square foot in existence, and raising their market cap 50x to 100x since 2001.

[Aloha]

Microsoft is in nearly every enterprise anywhere, partially due to inertia, but also do to the fact that no one else offers a complete solution - Office is ubiquitous because it was better than all of its competitors, and largely still is. Outlook/Exchange from a objective point of view is horrible - but there is no other complete solution that matches its features.

In every one of their traditional markets they have blasted every incumbent away and largely kept any new competitors from entering in any meaningful way, That said, from about 2001 - when entering new markets they've been like a rudderless ship sailing around in circles. However, there is a changing of the guard coming shortly, one that I think could change the direction of the company in ways that could cause sea change in any new market is chooses to enter. Once Microsoft can figure out how to work with itself again - god help any part of the technology sector they choose to target.

[seiji]

Office is ubiquitous because it was better than all of its competitors, and largely still is.

...which was entirely a result of their abusing monopoly power.

god help any part of the technology sector they choose to target.

With the march onward past Windows 95, they set in motion a plan that kept progress in personal computing from advancing for about 15 years.

Now, I don't believe they sat down and actually said "We are going to halt progress for 15 years." They just sat and grinded on their install base without any reason or motivation to innovate.

Let's not let that happen again.

Microsoft is in no way a good thing for the world. The only saving grace at this point is they are full of silly old people who can't think in a world where everybody has an iPhone in their pocket and an iPad at home.

[fidotron]

This does depend how you define the tech scene. SF only really figures if you're thinking web. Once you're into traditional software businesses or hardware the Valley proper is far more significant.

[jbarrec]

This was very helpful. I plan on visiting SF sometime very soon. I want to be sure to hit Palo Alto, and Mountain View while I'm there!

[jvalencia]

Unless you are visiting companies or Stanford, it may not be terribly exciting ;-)

[seiji]

It's exciting to walk around Stanford slack jawed, staring at the giant stone architecture, landscaping, never-ending expanse of learning, research, and sleaze-trepreneur while constantly exclaiming internally, "How much money do these fuckers have?! Haven't they heard of normal sized buildings? Every lecture hall here is a goddamn castle!"

[jacques_chester]

I visited a few weeks ago. It reminded me of Perth (where I currently live). The actual urban area is quite small and all the rest is spread out and connected by freeways. Palo Alto, Mountain View etc -- all 45 minutes to an hour's drive from SF in non-rush-hour conditions.

Edit: when you can, take the 280. It's a little less direct but it's a lot prettier.