Opinion

Windows Collapsing Under Its Own Weight - Gartner

This is exactly why Ballmer is so desperate to close the YHOO deal.

@coeus89 ... the problem with Vista is that it does not have compelling new features, it is slower, it is more complicated to use. MSFT spent years and a small fortune to develop it and it's a complete mess. MSFT has not produced anything really decent or outstanding for quite sometime and now even the bread and butter corporate customers are refusing to take the "scheduled Microsoft tax", simply, because there is no obvious value in the newer versions.

At the same time Linux is making more and more progress - facing the same hardware, user needs.

And finally MSFT on the Internet - well, they just never made it there, no matter how hard they tried or how much money they spent. The money MSFT accumulated in the past covers the more and more obvious: Microsoft has lost touch with customers, even with the new directions of the industry.

Ballmer clings on to YHOO as a castaway to a lifebelt.

Yahoo / MSFT Deal at $31 Now "Inevitable" - Piper Jaffray

Yang knows how priceless YHOO is for MSFT, which has failed all attempts to enter the online world on it's own.

MSFT is sitting on old world money, MSFT has not shown any proven ability to make a cent in the new world, which they have no understanding about.

Ballmer to Yahoo: Feudalism Is Dead

YHOO's worth is what it's worth for MSFT.
For MSFT YHOO is priceless, because without them MSFT does not have even a chance to enter the online world. MSFT has failed all attempts on it's own.

Welcome to this century, MSFT.

Where Microsoft and Yahoo! Can Beat Google

James, I don't think that you got this right.

Microsoft with unprecedented resources and several tries just could not become a player in the Internet search - even YHOO, which started from nothing beat them badly.

Social networks and blog sites proved that they are like music CDs or movies, just because you throw at them lots of money, you can't necessarily buy success. MSFT is just as lost as the old, dying recording industry. They are showing remarkable similarities.

MSFT's biggest problem is that they just can't ensure in this new world that their money will buy them what they want or need.

In fact, this entire new world is built on infrastructure that MSFT claimed to be worthless (Open Source), it is built on a view about a shared world which is quite the opposite of the MSFT credo of monopoly and total control. MSFT just does not belong here and this is a club where you have to earn and can't buy membership.

The public image of MSFT is bad beyond repair for this age.
Not only because Windows users are just sick and tired of the endless problems of their Windows computers and with the Vista failure MSFT now seems to be incompetent even in their own home turf.

What's worse than this ever increasing feeling about the incompetence of MSFT is that they are not cool at all.

What drives the success of all the new Internet success stories - from Facebook to YouTube - is that they radiate coolness.

In this century MSFT and cool just does not fit in a same sentence. Or paragraph.
Just compare a Steve Jobs or a Ballmer keynote speech to get the picture. Have you seen Ballmer jumping around the stage like an... okay, let's not insult any species just because they are lower on the food chain. Ballmer was jumping like Ballmer - the way he is.
If it wasn't Ballmer, MSFT should have sued the guy for causing billion dollar damage to the MSFT brand. Maybe it's not too late, if MSFT shareholders wake up and demand the board to take action.

MSFT is loosing the game slowly but certainly because the company looks like Ballmer jumping on the stage, smells ancient, sounds arrogant like a 90-year old rich bastard with a 16 year-old beauty at the wedding night of an arranged marriage.

It's just not cool... and people have the choice to do cool things...