Google: Microsoft ‘Like IBM in 1985′

Ed Sutherland ()

Microsoft has lost its edge to Apple and Google, becoming like IBM in the mid-1980s when the Seattle, WA. software giant unveiled its first version of the Windows operating system. “I think Microsoft today is a lot like IBM was in 1985,” ex-Microsoft employee Don Dodge told a Seattle newspaper.

Dodge, who worked with startups at Microsoft before laid off in November, was hired by Internet giant Google one week later.

The former Microsoft worker said his previous employer is now overshadowed by Apple, Google and Facebook when it comes to innovation. “Microsoft is still a powerful company – $60 billion in revenue and very profitable – but I think after 20 years they are losing the innovation edge,” Dodge told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer site.

He said “Windows Mobile is obviously behind the iPhone.” The iPhone recently passed Windows Mobile in most U.S. subscribers. Google’s Android cell phone operating system has become stiff competition for the iPhone.

Dodge also points to Microsoft’s leadership as a potential drawback in competing with Apple. “The transition was smooth, but not having Bill there every day has far-reaching implications.” After Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates left the job to pursue other activities, Steve Ballmer became CEO. Among other memorable comments,Ballmer, has called increased use of Apple Safari and Google’s Chrome a ’rounding error.’ Earlier this month, Ballmer instructed journalists not to even mention Apple when covering a Windows Mobile event. At a previous Microsoft event, a photo of journalists using Macs was released.

Still another PR blow to Microsoft occurred when a window on New York’s Saks Fifth Avenue meant to promote the company’s new Windows 7 was instead hijacked to display pro-Apple Twitter messages.

Earlier this month, Harvard Business Review named Apple founder and leader Steve Jobs as the top CEO, omitting Ballmer from the list of corporate heads. That accolade came on the heels of Jobs named “CEO of the Decade” by Fortune Magazine.

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Dodge believes Microsoft’s eclipse by Apple and others was innevitable. “It is just the natural competitive cycle,” he said.

[Via Seattle P-I]

16 comments »

About the author

Ed Sutherland

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

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  • Alex

    Irony here is that the paper reporting this stopped printing papers on March 17, 2009 laid of almost all its staff. And now limps along in online version that nobody reads. So if Microsoft is in1985 where is The Seattle PI ?

  • ged

    Apple’s rise has been amazing.
    Impossible to predict from when Microsoft took a stake in it to prevent Microsoft having a total OS monopoly.
    Manchester cotton, Standard Oil, Ford, Hollywood, Bell, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Google….
    ALL (will) fail=run their course.
    Apple is a hipcough….

  • Opeth

    MS will not suddenly go under, you have a huge generation of PC users who have never know anything but MS software, kids leaving school who can only equate desktop PC=MS Windows. My wife, a Mac user, speaking to one of her students at school about 2 months ago, student said, “Apple make great MP3 players and phones, they now make computers too!”, she set him straight that Apple started that way many, many moons ago!

    With the Vista fiasco, MS left the door ajar for people to start looking at alternatives, like Linux, hence Shuttleworth’s Ubuntu actually making a usuable desktop Linux and obviously the rise in interest of our own favourite platform. MS, like IBM, so cocksure, “No one ever go fired for buying IBM!”, same for MS. While it’s likely to stay the same for sometime, more companies, especially those with tight budgets are starting to look at getting value for money. Licenses cost money, why buy them if users don’t use all the features? Simply buy a product that has it all, but in a more compact usuable form, ie iLife or OpenOffice. Why pay huge amounts for a desktop O/S, when you get one copy of Linux and install it all over hundreds of machines without paying a penny up front. You have 25 Windows admins for the desktop alone, hire 10 Unix admins for your mix of 10,000 Linux/OSX desktops, they lock it down so it cannot be broken by some rubbish bit of office software, they install the correct central management software. The French government switch the entire police force desktop set up from Windows to Linux several years ago and saved millions.

    30 years of computing now ( since the age of 8!), very few things excite me anymore, when I moved from Windows to OSX 3 years ago, it was one of the few, rare moments of clarity. I want more people to have that feeling, to realise, “This is what it should be like! This is what is should have always been like!”

    One part of me wants Apple to drop the prices, get more people onto OSX, see that using a PC is not all about accepting limitations, crashes, viruses, spyware, computing is about getting stuff done and actually enjoying it. The other half of me wants to keep the prices high, keep OSX to the select few who can afford it, so we don’t get these spyware/virus writing cretins infecting the platform and dragging down to the level of a Windows clone. Software developers who care more about knocking out rubbish product that will pull the entire system over when it has a problem.

    MS managed to stem the tide a little with Windows 7, little more than a proper version of Vista, but MS need to seriously think about their next move. They need to stop being so complacent about their desktop domiance, else one day, like IBM, they will wake up, come down from the ivory tower and realise they have been left behind and the world moved on.

  • Francis Sepparton

    How did IBM, the mainframe king of the 1970s, lose the PC market to Microsoft?

    How did Microsoft, the PC king of the 1990s, lose the smartphone market to Apple iPhone and Google Android?

    Microsoft’s WIndows Mobile phone operating system is on the brink of being discontinued, while Android and iPhone just keep getting bigger.

  • http://ObamaPacman.com Obama Pacman

    Actually it’s more like:

    [Microsoft copier] losing the [appearance of] innovation edge

  • Daniel

    And this is news?

  • ArrowSmith

    Microsoft is not like IBM. There is a lot of innovation out of MSFT.

    * XBox Live/Netflix integration
    * Zune HD
    * Surface PC
    * Windows 95 was the best UI at the time
    * latest Windows servers are best in the market

    so keep pretending that MSFT is just a staggering, dying behemoth. MSFT simply can never win with you people. You say Windows Mobile 6x is horrible, then criticize MSFT for taking so long to get WM7 right. Ballmer has right-ed the ship and by 2011 it will become VERY difficult to lampoon MSFT when the innovation is coming so fast it will make you DIZZY.

  • Ictus75

    I wouldn’t say that Microsoft is a “dying behemoth,” but they have lost the cutting edge to competitors. Apple, like it or not, is the biggest driving force in computers and peripheral products (like ipods & iphones). While corporate giants, like the music industry, have been caught sleeping and resting on their laurels, Apple has single handedly redefined the music industry and the way we interact with music with itunes and the ipod. The same can be said for cell phones, where the one time industry leaders & innovators are now playing copy and catch up to Apple.

    While Amazon & Sony have worked hard to develop the ebook concept, Apple’s much rumored & anticipated tablet device threatens to blow them away by offering not just a better end user experience, but more versatility and, features we probably don’t even realize we need yet, just like when the iphone was introduced.

    As for “it will become VERY difficult to lampoon MSFT when the innovation is coming so fast it will make you DIZZY,” well, I’ve been waiting for years while they have miscalculated too often (Zune, Vista, etc.) Too much of what MS has offered lately is a copy of something else with little true innovation. Perhaps the TV ads should exclaim, “I’m a PC and I’m tired of waiting for something new and exciting!”

  • oomu

    it does not matter.

  • Daniel

    An advertisement goes: “To see the Microsoft products of the future, take a look at the Apple products of today.”

  • http://www.apple.com Anony

    ^ Ditto

  • TB

    Ex-Microsoft employee runs down former employer in the press. Hm.

    Lack of innovation? Possibly. Solid products that run businesses the world over? Definitely.

    Windows 7
    Windows Server
    SQL Server 2010
    Visual Studio
    Exchange
    XBOX

    Not what you’d call a shabby line-up, is it?

    Apple computers are great. But in order for a mac to be a viable computer for me to use day-to-day at work, it would have to be much cheaper for my company to even contemplate purchase, and even then they’d install Windows.

    The iPhone on the other hand is very innovative and quite brilliant. But, only one company can manufacture phones with the iPhone operating system. How many companies are licenced to make Android handsets? Now isn’t that reminiscent of the late ’70s early ’80s, when MS licenced MS DOS to multiple manufacturers and Apple kept its OS to itself? Look what happened there.

    If I have a point, I suppose it is that these big companies all wax and wane over time.

    I’ll get my coat…

  • Ictus75

    “I’ll get my coat…”

    Don’t forget your hat…

  • http://ObamaPacman.com Obama Pacman

    @ ArrowSmith

    LOL. Innovation!

    Shilling FAIL.

    XBox = devision lost billions of dollars to buy its market share. Even with all the money MS pump into xbox, Nintendo has the largest market share in consoles gaming.

    Zune HD is a horrible product. Here’s why:
    http://obamapacman.com/2009/09/microsoft-zune-hd-vs-apple-ipod-touch-3g-feature-comparison/

    Surface PC
    That’s just an overly expensive demo. It’s surely changing the world. NOT.

    Windows 95 UI? Windows are always behind Mac OS.

    Window server as best? Let’s see, memory leak issues, susceptible to viruses, and so much more.

  • Daniel

    If Microsoft is like the IBM of 1985….

    Then Google has become like the Microsoft of 2005: bloated mediocrity, everywhere, every time, anywhere you look.

  • http://www.driptray.org Harriet Russell

    online promotion is a great way to introduce new products on the market.—