Comment by pjmlp
21 days ago
It is remarkable how during the last 25 years (approximately), Microsoft has been improving their ability to deliver first (or be among the first), followed by messing up the whole process so that late comers end up taking the crown jewels.
PDAs, mobile phones, tablets, tablets with detachable keyboards, managed OS userspace, HoloLens, the XBox mess, and now AI.
There certainly other examples that I failed to address.
This is what happens when divisions fight among themselves for OKRs and whatever other goals.
And their philosophy of mediocre = good enough. (Not everything ofc, MS is a continent. .net core, language design etc is top-notch.)
Which certainly has to do with it being initially developed at Microsoft Research Cambridge, and not plain Microsoft.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190111203733/https://blogs.msd...
I would argue that the success has more to do with DevDiv being the strongest technical organization at MS than its provenance.
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Ah, thanks. That must be the link with Simon Peyton Jones as well. Seems to be another case of a marketing machine running away with foundational research coming from Europe.*
* no hard feelings
But still, Microsoft is the most diversified of the big players - they have Windows, Office, Enterprise, Xbox, Azure, Surface - they can survive a mess like their current copilot mess and still generally thrive
It has more to do with Microsoft's size and long history. If you are big and have been doing the same thing for many years, naturally you'll want to expand, some of which do succeed.
Google and Facebook have failed to do this, so why is that?
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Only because they have enough money in the bank.
Thrive, or just muddle through?