How Microsoft will die

Perhaps it’s an odd coincidence, but twice in the last week I've been asked how I think Microsoft will die. The askers assumed that I believed it will—and I do.

Companies greatly emulate living organisms and thus have beginnings and ends. Once young and agile they struggle to survive trauma and challenges. If they succeed, they eventually become incumbents where their aggression slows and they harvest laurels until some new lifeform disrupts them. Look at Sun Microsystems and Siebel Systems, who changed their respective worlds as teenagers only to enter prolonged, almost embarrassing death cycles in latter years.

Microsoft, it seems to me, will be the Jack Lalanne of the PC Era staying fitter and tougher longer than anyone else ever has. While Jack did it with juices and fingertip push ups, Microsoft has stayed on top by executing like a start up even as a multi-billion dollar global giant and by never resting on its own laurels.

In the end, Microsoft will not succumb to any single infestation. No single threat will overtake it on the playing field. Rather a myriad of little annoyances are rising like a swarm of red ants. In this emerging age where computing is an edgeless commodity, Microsoft will eventually be staked down like Gulliver among the Lilliputians. An army of tiny attackers that include Linux, and Open Source Software, application commoditization, cell phone data communications and messaging, the Web, entrenched AOL and Google franchises, legal challenges, government limitations, decentralized communications, online data storage is hitting on all sides and at all times. The company is formidable, but it faces a thousand fronts and slowly, over time, it seems to me that erosion cannot be avoided.

It has always seemed to me that the personal computing era needed the order, structure and standards of a monopolist at the helm. For better or worse, Microsoft defeated other contenders like IBM, DRI, Apple Computer and a thousand wannabees to get to the top and defend its ground with consistent success and fierce power for a prolonged period of time.

But this is no longer that PC Era and monopolies are no longer necessary. Computing has moved well past the desktop box and is heading to places we don’t yet imagine. Software is pretty much a commodity and people don’t need annuity upgrades. Fortune 500 companies are playing with Linux servers. Cell phones are the dominant intelligent device, and Microsoft’s role there is diminished at best. Microsoft will indeed die.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for it to happen in the next fiscal quarter.

Comments

[Mac User]

Defeated Apple ??????? Huh . When ??????????

Well okay i do believe he stole from Apple , but i wouldn't call that defeating

[Shannon Clark]

Lots to comment on, but first a small chink, HP ships a laptop with Linux preinstalled/configured.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=562&e=3&u=/ap/hp_linux_notebook

[John the artist]

He's referring to it's dominance, you can't turn around without hearing how "Everybody uses Windows, right?" Check on your DVD's included PC extras... See what I mean?

I'm a Mac user myself. Love it. But you've got the sheep who buy M$ just because that's what they have at work, or that's what their friend has, that's all they've ever known to use, etc... These are the people who keep hitting there thumbs with a hammer, and they keep doing it because it's all they know. I have Windows at work and Mac at home. When it's my choice I pick what I want.... and it doesn't get viruses, ever.

[TDavid]

Fascinating hypothesis but it will never happen unless one thing you didn't mention happens.

As much as I embrace and like the open source community, there is no way they are going to overtake Microsoft. Even if a hundred or thousand little things add up it won't have the impact of one internal corporate thing (like Enron for example).

I think the end of Microsoft would have to be the result of something much more internal (ever seen the movie Antitrust?) -- as in it comes out that they are doing something wrong and/or highly illegal. That would destroy consumer confidence like no other amount of viruses and hackers could.

As long as they have the money they have they can make a lot of mistakes, as time has shown and continue to grow their business.

Look what they are doing to Palm with Pocket PC for example. Palm.net just shut down their wireless division (end of Aug).

Mac and Open Source haven't put a dent in Microsoft's fortress since 1992 except on the server level (Apache vs. IIS). They went from 2 billion to over 50+ billion in cash. Yeah, they have been hurt real bad in the last 12 years. Not.