Microsoft is not doing well :-)

[pyesetz]

Globe & Mail:

Microsoft Corp. said Thursday its quarterly revenue fell from the previous year for the first time in its 23-year history as a public company… In January, Microsoft said it needed to resort to its first mass layoffs, cutting 5,000 jobs… Microsoft makes most of its profit selling the Windows operating system and business software such as Office. Those divisions were hurt when PC shipments fell for the second straight quarter as consumers and businesses sharply cut back on technology spending… Shares of Microsoft added 14 cents on the Nasdaq Stock Market to close at $18.92 on Thursday. In extended trading after the earnings report, the shares gained 5 per cent.

From the comments on the G&M article:

    Well, with so many companies and institutions locked into Microsoft licenses, they'll have a steady stream of revenue no matter how bizarre their bloatware is. These outfits will just have to buy new MS releases and install them no matter what, per the terms of their licenses. …
    Microsoft has had an easy go of it over the last fifteen years. They have been successful in foisting their insecure bloatware onto the market by crushing adversaries through questionable monopolistic practices. If they had a history of product excellence and innovation I would have some sympathy for them. …
    New Ubuntu release today.  Coincidence?  I THINK NOT!  Really though after playing with this week's new Ubuntu release it has never been more clear that MS is living on borrowed time.  In every metric it is simply a better OS and innovates and improves with every release.

See also The Future of Computing will be "Good Enough".

Comments

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

It is their own fault with Vista running like a cement turd uphill wearing chains. They could have had dual driver models and been backwards compatible. No. They could have left out the dozen layers of DRM internal to the program. No. They could have let the computer do what the user tells it to do. No.

Win7 should save MS with a 64 bit OS that can access huge amounts of ram. 4 years from now, I expect computers will have 32Gig of ram as a normal thing. What I have heard from the Beta users is that it runs faster than XP even. So I'm waiting eagerly.

The word Windows is now ingrained in the buying public's mind. They know that all their software runs on windows, so they have to have windows on their computer. You will never get ma and pa kettle to use an ubuntu computer and run WINE in order to use Office. All the clocks in their home are still flashing 12:00...