OSNews

t's not really all that baseless. Companies don't last forever. Just look at the decline of GM and IBM from where they were years ago. They used to be the only choice now they are one of many. It will happen to Microsoft too. It's just the nature of the beast.

I think that's a perfect choice of contrasting companies to look at because Microsoft displays elements of both. GM's auto division is certainly a dinosaur, rather than ever trying to adapt to changing markets or customer demand in anything but a superficial way, they've stuck to doing things the old school way.

IBM, on the other hand, has taken a couple of serious market beatdowns in their past, not the least of which was the anti-trust suit, and has painfully re-invented themselves over the last decade or more. They may no longer seem relevant from a desktop computing perspective, but they pretty much pulled out of that market. They are the largest IT services company in the world, if they spun off their software divisions into a single entity it would be second only to Microsoft in size and they're focusing their efforts on pushing computing back to the server room where they're comfortable with it. They may not be a sexy company, if they ever were, but they've got staying power from their ability to adapt. They may still have the market image of a bunch of staid suits trying to sell mainframes and unix, but their outlook is clearly forward looking (not to say it will automatically lead to success for them, just that they seem to trying to embrace and maybe instigate market change). Generally speaking, you still won't get fired for choosing IBM.

Question is, which way will Microsoft go? The GM way of stubbornly refusing to adapt to a changing market and relying instead upon legacy sales models and strong arming the government for preferential treatment? Or accept that change is inevitable and look ahead to where they need to be, not where they want to be, as IBM has done (albeit somewhat reluctantly and forcibly)?

MS is coming up to a pivotal moment in their existence and they're going to need to start making some tough choices; in that way I think Google's success is symptomatic of Microsoft's problems, not the cause of. Totally agree that it's just the nature of the beast.