Ask HN: What should Microsoft do to get its mojo back?

[yankeeracer73]

The recent NYTimes article has generated plenty of discussion about Microsoft, most of it negative. But instead of focusing on what they've done wrong, I'm curious what people think they should do to gain back some of the relevance they've lost. And please, no "Fire all the management" comments. Here are a few ideas to start the conversation for better or worse:

1) Streamline the product line. Get out of the markets where you've just gotten in from being panicked. This largely means the content businesses and probably music. Stop being so fucking insecure about businesses where arch rivals are doing well and identify markets to get in to where you already have a natural advantage. This probably means other business markets vs. consumer. Bing seems to be doing pretty well but it should just be a hobby. Just going through your main nav on Microsoft.com shows you're spread WAY too thin. There's over 100 products on there.

2) Redo your website and come up with a consistent look and feel for everything. Your branding totally needs to change to give people a new vibe about the company. For the amount of money you spend on marketing, your website sucks. Fire whoever is in charge of it and start over using some boutique firms in New York or S.V.

3) If you can't outright cut projects/products, spin them off and give them their own identity. McDonalds owns Chipotle but you wouldn't know it from Chipotle stores, their focus on organic meat, etc. Given the polarization of your brand, this could work well in other areas.

4) Invest in some yCombinator/TechStars type incubators and create a more well known pipeline to the startup community.

5) You generated a ton of bad karma by keeping IE6 around for 8 or 9 years. Seems silly, but you lose a lot of cool points and generate a ton of frustration among the developer community you're trying to woo. Make sure future versions of IE rock, maybe even go to a webkit rendering engine instead of what you've got now.

6) Flatten the organization, introduce some perks not even Google has and publicize the hell out of them. Encourage more employees to blog and be open about the culture there and the good aspects of working there. Make Microsoft a cool place to work again.

7) Put up a pirate flag a la Apple in the eighties or some other rebel move for show. You need to look like you have an edge to put your competitors on notice that you're still the 800 lb gorilla in the room and you intend on kicking some ass once again.

[mbrubeck]

Don't be so obsessed with what Google and Apple are doing. Stop entering markets that they have defined. Instead of focusing on crushing the competition and stealing market share, focus on creating a new market according to your own vision, where there are no other players.

[andyjdavis]

2 possibilities 1) less command and control 2) more command and control

1) less command and control

Fund a whole bunch of branch new products to be built by people not currently employed by MS. Start ups essentially although they may or may not be 100% owned by MS.

Make sure they are all separated from the rest of the company by an impermeable barrier featuring a moat, crocodiles and boiling oil.

Let them work on whatever they think is best without concern for where it fits into MS's broader strategy.

Some of them will be profitable. Some won't and will have to be shut down. Some will compete with the rest of MS. Some will compete with each other. So be it. That just increases the odds that one of MS's many arms will be successful.

Kind of like a VC firm but they don't necessarily need to be separate companies.

2) more command and control MS has so much going on that it must be impossible to keep track of everything. Shut down "me to" or otherwise failed products. Concentrate on a smaller set of things and do them better.

Whittle down the product offerings to a small set of strategically aligned products which can be carefully managed.

Be more like Apple I suppose.

[volomike]

- Push out a system patch (and a Silverlight update for those who don't download patches) that causes IE6 to post a warning bar at the top of every page it visits, with a link that they should upgrade because the IE6 browser is no longer patched. Also, pay a sum to Adobe to cause the latest Adobe Reader Plugin to issue this same warning.

- Get out of the browser business. It costs you too much money and gives you too little in return. Let everyone use all the other browsers like Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome, and others. But if you plan to stay in it, then switch to the Webkit engine and please by all means support CSS3 just as good as Chrome does.

- Push for open audio, video, and vector animation standards in HTML5, moving with the pack instead of against it, and don't even bother whether Adobe or Apple are on board with those plans.

- Remember the years when Apple was going through the transition from the old OS to the new OS based on BSD UNIX? They had an arrangement where you could run old apps as well as new apps. Microsoft should do something similar, but with Novell Suse Linux.

- Take MS Office back to the old interface before the funky menubars, and slim down the interface a good bit so that there aren't so many menu items by default.

- Simplify the registry or eliminate it altogether. It's a mess. Linux guys love .conf files.

- In the new Linux-based OS, once you lock in where settings are located, quit changing them dramatically because it angers people.

- Give Steve Ballmer a golden parachute.

- Merge the company with Novell. And if not that, then rename it so that it kind of helps with the new image.

- Push for the elimination of software patent laws that you introduced in the first place. But, since that takes a long time to achieve, do the IBM approach for now. That approach is to gobble up a bunch of software patents, but do not sue people who infringe. In fact, legally protect those who infringe, who are also challenged in court, because it generates more business for you, instead.

[TeHCrAzY]

The MS Office tool bar gets a lot of flack. But it's not aimed at you or I. My mum can use it. Nuff said. Many corporate customers (lots of money) have legacy applications that require IE6. Cluttering the browser more would not be helpful and would garner more ill will.

Backing out of the browser market and letting Apple/Google/Mozilla "win" would again be counter productive. IE8 is a good browser. Yes, its behind the others in many ways, but give them some more time. They had to build up from IE6, and I think they have begun to close the gaps quite quickly.

I agree with open video and audio being a good direction.

Merge with Linux? Why in the world would they do that?

I don't have experience with the registry, so I can't comment here, but again, a linux style replacement is not going to be in MS's best interests.

Ignoring the Linux part, yes, standardization is going to be key for them moving forward, and I think they have made some big steps with that in Vista => Windows 7.

Why?

I don't see how renaming possibly the biggest name in computing ("Microsoft") would help them in any way.

[dangrossman]

Slight problem with #1: Internet Explorer 6, due to being part of Windows XP, is supported through 2014. It IS still patched, and will continue to be for another 4 years.

[Pahalial]

A very specific suggestion:

Push the Zune. With WiFi, HD decoding & output and significantly increased storage size, they could turn it from a pure iPod competitor to a significantly better SlingBox/iPod combo. If I walk into a friend's house and have it recognise the network, it should instantly start serving files over wifi, which any pc (Windows Media Center or XBOX, if you're looking for the tie-in) could play. If I want to charge it as it plays, or play particularly high-bandwidth content over a weak network, or output pre-decoded stuff, plug it in directly and stream it that way.

As it stands, it can 'only' play 720p. Also, at 16/32 gb options and with current transfer speeds onto the device, the zune can't really achieve this. With 64/128 it starts to be possible, and Wireless N might help for streaming via wifi. Perhaps USB 3.0 will help load it with content faster?

They need to milk the early adopter crowd as well, to win back mindshare the Zune has completely failed to grab from the iPod due to being such a "me too" project. This means working with all file formats at the very least, and arrangements with Hulu, Netflix, Spotify - if they don't already have them - would be good moves too.

[chrisbolt]

McDonalds does not own Chipotle, they sold their entire stake in 2006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipotle_Mexican_Grill

[yankeeracer73]

ah, thanks for the clarification. was still a pretty good strategy on their part i thought...

[aresant]

Swap out the CEO. Ballmer has kept things even keeled and done a great job releasing Windows 7, why not go out on a high note and put in somebody that represents the future, not the past?

[brg]

Steven Sinofsky needs to be named the next CEO of MS soon. Not only because Sinofsky is a key reason for the success of Windows, but also because he is tech orientated.

Every tech company which has abandoned tech oriented management has stagnated. For instance Apple after Jobs, maybe McNealy and Joy leaving Sun.

When management becomes business oriented they look to maintain market position. They look to maintain current products at the cost of developing internal competitors. A tech orientation looks to innovate and create new markets.

A business orientation looks at Vista and says it is good enough to maintain X% of the market, a tech orientation is embarrassed by its quality and lack of polish. A tech orientation would have given time to fix those belimishes that drives it to grow to X+Y% of the market.

In real terms, a business orientation wants to move Windows onto the phone, a tech orientation wants to create a new OS/API for mobile devices. A business orientation sees introducing a low power tablet as a threat to desktop dominance, a tech orientation sees the possibility of a entirely new market.

Maybe the difference is that a business orientation asks, "Is this good enough to make money" and a tech orientation asks "Is this the best we can do?" Microsoft needs to continually ask the second question. After that, all else will follow.

[fjabre]

Not sure he'd be leaving on a high note. He does need to go though. He was never a visionary - he's always just been a good salesman like Larry Ellison. These guys win by shoving their products down the customer's throat. In the long run they always lose however. It takes vision to run a company. He obviously has none.

[steerpike]

Release that delicious, delicious looking courier tablet.

[presty]

my worthless suggestion:

i don't think the "old-schoolers" will ever respect the "kids" (actually they don't seem to be that young) in the r&d labs until they get their own credit in the "street" (market) - so things like integrating with windows/office/etc will always be hard if the managers think the direction goes against their interests, so..

.. put all the "edgy" projects into a special branch of the organization that depends only on the 'man' and:

- give them full freedom to pursue the markets they see fit (this means they can go against established products etc)

- let them adopt their own internal processes and tools (ye, that means macs and linux and ipods)

- give them their own name if you don't want them initially associated with the microsoft brand

- after proven success, start merging with the rest of the organization in a selective way (throwing away old processes that don't really work anymore, promoting the new guys into top positions, yada yada yada)

[jcapote]

This implies they had some mojo to begin with.

[yankeeracer73]

I'm no Microsoft apologist by any means but come on, they rule the business world; they had to do something right to get there. Any company in the world would kill to have their products have 90%+ market share.

[sqba]

They should have split into 3 separate companies as was suggested (and ordered?) a long time ago. Now's too late.

[og1]

I'd really be interested in seeing MS continue to develop out Microsoft Robotics, don't know if it makes the most business sense though.

[ChRoss]

hmmm Bill Gates return? jus like Jobs return to Apple. as for mobile product, i want Surface technology in WinMo.

[m0th87]

Surface uses giant infrared cameras and a projector for display (the medium has to be permeable to IR, so traditional screens don't work). You couldn't put that technology on a WinMo device. Their mobile division is basically dead in the water and I don't foresee any rescue.

[beagle3]

I don't remember any time when Microsoft was "cool" or had "mojo", and I've been doing work since '88 at least. People who joined the scene in the mid '90s or later often think Microsoft is great -- because they don't know any better.

Microsoft is the McDonalds of software. Does McDonalds have a mojo? Did they ever?

[genepope]

step zero: Fire Steve Ballmer

[korch]

Microsoft's sole, yet-painful solution: a hard-reboot across the board resulting in "Winux".

[dlsspy]

That's an interesting point. Their OSes, while fairly widely used, are weird relative to just about every other OS in existence.

The sole supplier of anything even close to it is a commercial entity. Getting software that wasn't written for it to run there is a pain. Moving software away from it is also a pain (but it's at least to their advantage).