Malkiel

Microsoft Should Listen to Its Heart (and ignore the bean counters)

You talk in vague generalities here, but some commitment to the issues is required--do you believe OS software will be replace by online services or not? And if so, how soon? And do you believe Apple's expansion from its meager base of 4% of the market to 4.8% of the market is a meaningful trend yet? Do you consider Apple and Linux penetration into the market a significant or growing trend, or not? And with every company on US exchanges failing guidance because of general economic conditions, is there something unusual about Microsoft's particular failure?
And why would first-rate companies choose any office suite software other than the world's best at the current moment, even if many of their users don't need the advanced features? MS Office is the de facto official office suite of the MAC as well as the PC.

I don't share any of the convictions about where online services or software are heading that some, including Microsoft's own executives, seem to pull out of the air so easily. Microsoft is currently the world's best software company and they should maintain and sustain that part of their business as long as possible, especially refocusing on retail customer satisfaction. The bid to buy Yahoo has to do with Ballmer's obsessive but wrong belief that Microsoft is about to be steamrollered by companies that are about to monetize online services (while Mac's partner AT&T, aka "the internet" since its wires ARE the internet, is warning us expansion of online services will collapse the current infrastructure) and I don't give a fig one way or another how this bid turns out because I consider it irrelevant. Microsoft can afford it at whatever price, either buy it and be happy or don't buy it and give your shareholders a dividend. In either case, stop obsessing about long-term plans that are so long-term they go beyond the age of the whole industry that nobody predicted would come into existence just 15 years ago...