The entire mentality of the company changed. IMO it affected every product group across the company.

Fun fact, MSFT and AAPL currently have the exact same market cap. The story of Microsoft dying a slow death having missed the boat on internet, cloud and mobile is like 10+ years out of date. If anything, I'd say the antitrust trial was actually beneficial in the long run. It is a much nimbler company now than it used to be.

Nadella brought life back into MSFT, but they were an also-ran from about 2000-2014.

You know you _say_ that, but during that timespan their annual net income rose from $5B to $22B, and global revenue for the same timespan from $28B to $86B. Eighty-six billion dollars. Can you really call them an also-ran, or Ballmer an unqualified failure?

Yes, they missed the mobile boat and were late to IaaS/PaaS, but to dismiss them for nearly two decades is perhaps unfair.

IMO their biggest failure was losing their developer base. DevDiv really seems to have fallen asleep at the wheel - or to have been neutralized by the OS group.

[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global...

Innovation is a different skillset from maximizing profits of an existing product portfolio. Ballmer was pretty good at the latter and sucked at the former. With the exception of Azure (which was a little late to the party), the business lines that Ballmer milked were all initially developed under Gates.

The biggest years of profitability for most tech companies come after their innovation heyday (when they've already established their market position and no longer reinvest large amounts of cash into new product development), but without continued innovation a tech business eventually fades away into irrelevance.

Credit to Ballmer as well - Nadella took over and pushed many products and changes that Ballmer had started, recognizing that they needed to change.

Not that I’m complaining - the surface line revitalized laptop and stylus tech for windows.

Yeah, Azure is huge. There are a lot of companies that see themselves as direct competitors to Amazon and refuse to allow any of their applications to use AWS. Walmart is a huge one with this -- if you want to sell IT services to Walmart, your product cannot run on AWS. They're not the only one either.

Azure also kind of just plays better with the whole Active Directory / Office 365 / Sharepoint ecosystem and many Azure products are substantially cheaper than AWS.

Also, Microsoft have incredibly good enterprise sales, which Google appear to lack, and Amazon have had to build up from scratch.

That's actually no great for M$ compared to how small Apple used to be compared to them...

To be fair, there was a time when MSFT was small compared to AAPL.

Are you talking about the early-to-mid '80s, when they were both microscopic compared to anything today? Not really a valid comparison.

Until 1992. Apple had a larger market cap than Microsoft.

> Are you talking about the early-to-mid '80s

No. Microsoft didn't IPO until 1986. So after the mid 80s to the early 90s.

> when they were both microscopic compared to anything today?

Well, both apple and microsoft were "microscopic" in the 90s compared to what they are now. But still apple was the star tech company of the 80s and microsoft was the star tech company of the 90s.

> Not really a valid comparison.

It actually is if we are being honest. But that wasn't my point. Was just pointing out that once Apple was the big success compared to microsoft because microsoft became the big success. But you can cherrypick dates to fit whatever narrative you wish.

And as deeply entrenched as ever in the enterprise work space.

In my impression of Google products (Gmail is a notable example), the company has been more on the "stagnation" side and less on the "innovation" side already.

If anyone from Google is reading: Please disregard this comment. We like our Gmail exactly how it is. If you want to substantially "innovate" on email, please consider a new, independent product -- one that you can safely shutter after 12 months. Thanks.

Yes! You can even use a brand name distinctly different from Gmail like "Inbox".

Too soon, man.

On the off chance anyone from Google is reading and cares, I'm a strong vote for some regression in Gmail. The new-ish version doesn't straight up break as often as it used to, but it's still a slow ugly mess compared to the previous one.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

Maybe I'm just old and grumpy, but every time I see praise for Gmail I just think there is some serious Stockholm syndrome going on. There is a reason "inbox zero" became a thing and people started complaining about mail piling up after Gmail. And I think it has everything to do with Gmail's tools of organization. Or shall I say, lack of organization. Gmail's interface is also slow and terrible compared to a quality desktop client.

Gmail is basically synonymous with email today, and no one wants to use email now. What does that really say about Gmail, then? Never mind the fact that they pretty much killed off non-Google mail servers.

i don't think the previous poster meant moving buttons around and changing icons as "innovation".

I wasn't referring to basic updates such as minor UI/UX, security, etc. I specifically said, "substantially innovate."

I wouldn't mind if they fixed the problem where my old profile picture keeps appearing in gmail and calendar. It's been changed for over a year now.

True eventual consistency.

Google Inbox has entered the chat.

This is a very reddit-culture comment. First time I've seen it here.

In my opinion, HN is better off. You have a good underlying point (that Inbox was exactly what GP wanted), but why write it that way?

It's certainly not still funny after the 1000th (or even 2nd) time reading it, and it's harder to understand for people who aren't in on the joke or speak English as a second language.

Apologies, I agree.

No apology requested or required. I was expressing a preference that I hoped you'd agree with.

Thank you for having an open mind.

I worked at Intel for a brief 3 month summer internship in finance (2010). One thing that struck me was that I was not allowed to put certain words in presentations because they didn't want those words used against them in court. Its been a long time so I don't remember what words, but that was a long time after the first set of anti-trust actions.

Maybe someone that has been there more recently can attest or counter my point, but it seemed to at least leave a surface wound on the culture.

Not intel, but I definitely have seen training videos about not saying "dominate the market" or "crush the competition".

There's similar guidance inside Google. These exact phrases are used as "no-no"s.

There has been official training at multiple, large tech companies other than Intel specifically geared towards preventing even accidental use of language that can be taken out-of-context. The practice is alive and well.

Uber had training that said you could never call a driver an employee or anything related to that, they were 'driver partners' or some such with words that imply a platform user

Thats slightly diferent - there is a lot of law about employees status - mainly because the IRS doesn't want to lose out any $ not for any liberal concern for employees

I work in healthcare, a highly regulated industry and we do the same thing. It’s to the point that we’ve developed euphemisms for all these words.

> Lawyers were embedded on many product teams

Perhaps because the natural organizational tendency was to conspire to create user lock-in and other nefarious practices? 95% of software companies (I am guessing here) don't need to consult their lawyers during software development.

> review cycles became slower

"Q: But why can't I force the users to also install Internet Explorer?

A: You just can't Johnny, you'll have to rewrite this component."

> and execs became complacent

... after being really sharp and on-it before.

Bottom line: Cry me a river.

100% of software companies not named "Microsoft" do not have to follow the special legal rules that Microsoft does.

Perhaps they should. It certainly hasn’t killed Microsoft, nor stopped them from innovating.

"Special legal rule" = Don't break anti-trust laws...

That’s not exactly an unbiased opinion if he was an executive at the company that was subject to anti-trust action.

I’m not suggesting that he’s lying, but it’s important to remember that the anti-trust action likely had a financial impact on him, particularly if he had a lot of comp tied up in company stock.

Here we are 20 something years later and Microsoft looks to be just doing just fine to me.

His complaint wasn't that Microsoft (or himself) didn't make money, it's that Microsoft became complacent and lost the will to innovate.

Microsoft made plenty of money between 1998 and 2014. They also basically ceased innovating. I was a child and teenager during Microsoft's glory days from 1985-2000. They were basically unstoppable: if you thought you had a good software-related idea, Microsoft was already doing it, doing it better, and bringing some nasty market-power tricks to bear (much like Google in their glory days from ~2000-2015). I started my career soon after the DoJ consent decree, and Microsoft became a joke. They were the 800 lb. gorilla that sat in the corner milking their Windows/IE/Office monopolies (and eventually losing them) while the web became a bigger platform than Windows ever was.

> milking their Windows/IE/Office monopolies (and eventually losing them)

Losing them? Nearly all the business workspace I know is Windows-only. Maybe not in Silicon Valley or top tech schools, but Windows is the norm for most businesses. It's not a competitive marketplace.

This may be true, but it doesn’t change the fact that a powerful executive clearly could have a bias when criticizing legal/regulatory action.

Quite often, I see wealthy, influential members of the tech community speak out against regulatory function citing things like lost innovation, when the reality is that they were pretty financially motivated to disparage government action in the first place. Again, that’s not to say that this executive was lying, but he clearly makes negative statements around the antitrust case and had a clear financial reason for doing so. He’s not a neutral party making an objective observation here.

Is your argument that the consent decree preventing Microsoft from innovating wrt to the web, or that they were afraid to because of the recent anti-trust action? The former I have a hard time believing (though I probably haven't read enough history on it to make an informed decision), but the latter seems very plausible.

More the latter. Same thing happened with IBM: they were willing to let Microsoft retain the rights to MS-DOS because they were under antitrust scrutiny throughout all of the 70s.

Wow! Can you see what you’re arguing for here? A tech company under tight scrutiny has to give an opportunity for a smaller competitor to unlock incredible wealth beyond what the big tech firm could have done on its own.

/r/selfawarewolves

I'm not arguing for anything here. I'm explaining that the original commenter has it right: the result of this will be less innovation within a company under intense antitrust scrutiny (whether it be IBM, Microsoft, Google, or any other). Whether innovation happens elsewhere is a separate question. Personally I think it's pretty likely - it worked out for Microsoft and Google, after all - and probably would be a good thing over the long term, but there was also an "innovation desert" for ~4-5 years while the big incumbents were too scared to innovate or compete and yet the new startups were not big or wealthy enough to field an effective challenge.

Steve Ballmer was President from 1998-2001 and CEO from 2000-2014. Maybe that was more relevant than the consent decree?

He (Ballmer rather than Gates) was in that position largely BECAUSE of the consent decree. I think Ballmer gets a bad rap- for all the complaints about relevance Microsoft grew its business from $23B in 2000 to $86B in 2014 and greatly increased its presence across a bunch of enterprise segments.

I think you and the executive may agree. It did have an impact, because the moribund culture at Microsoft hurt the stock for about a dozen years after the anti-trust. All the growth has been recent, and has required a massive strategic and organizational refocusing of Microsoft away from Windows to cloud, where Microsoft does not have to worry about anti-trust.

That is not to say it is not worth sending Google through a similar period of moribundity until they find new leadership and markets to pursue.

And yet the Microsoft of today is faster and stronger as a company than it was during the antitrust days. Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing for them.

Plus a lot more diversified. Not sure if it's all a good thing as the huge companies are making land grabs everywhere. Github, Skype, Linkedin Xbox, Nokia phones unit, VSCode, basically all my favorite medium-sized game companies (inxile, double fine, obsidian). Feels like their presence is a lot more oppressive than the Windows 95 and IE days we were all freaked out about.

isn't vscode a new product made by microsoft in house?

Yes I guess I switched from what they bought to what I use daily in the middle

The industry as a whole has grown enormously. Microsoft is as big as it was, but relatively speaking it's not even remotely as strong. Microsoft used to have the power of FAANG together, it was so ahead of everyone else in terms of (pricing) power. Nobody was a threat to them before the antitrust suit.

That only came about because a lot of the old guard, like Sinofsky, Myerson, Turner, etc., left the company or were pushed out in the early '10s. I don't foresee a similar revitalization of leadership happening at Google anytime soon.

Antitrusts haven't been good in 10-20 year timeline but on more longer term may be overall good for society. In short term it stifles and extinguishes the innovation contrary to belief. Classic case is Ma Bell which ended Bell Labs. Big giants like these make huge amount of money but they also fund things like Bell Labs (in Google's case DeepMind/Google Brain/Google X etc). Once this collapse, usually it takes decade or two before these massive innovation pipelines gets built up again.

Yea Gates said that "Windows Phone" would become Android if there wasn't antitrust lawsuit, and that Microsoft would be worth $500bn more.

Windows Phone was simply terrible. Without monopoly pressure, no one chooses Microsoft.

> Lawyers were embedded on many product teams

As they should be at a large corporation that was known for abusing its market power. It's not like engineers are experts in whether a feature breaks the law or not -- nor are they supposed to be.

> review cycles became slower

Oh come on, legal approval is just one more checkbox along with 20 others. And if it's slowing down reviews for a few important features or products, that's the point -- that legal considerations actually get considered rather than ignored or steamrolled over. The same way there are approvals for privacy, security, accessibility, and so on that are "slower" -- again, that's the point.

> execs became complacent

I don't believe this for a second. Execs at every company want to meet/beat metrics, get promoted, and make more salary. Nobody's complacent ever. The idea that execs become "complacent" because of a single highly targeted regulation is baloney. It's a total fiction invented for political lobbying purposes. Remember: removing monopoly abuse means a company has to work harder to to compete, instead of resting complacently on lazy market dominance. If anything, these execs were forced to be less complacent. But it's a nice lie they're trying to tell.

> It's not like engineers are experts in whether a feature breaks the law or not, nor should they be.

"Full stack engineer" gets ever more all-encompassing.

> If anything, these execs were forced to be less complacent.

An alternative explanation would be that the hypercompetitive win-at-all-costs types left for less regulated pastures, leaving the more complacent ones.

googles already like that... they just get away with it because of the money printing machine they have with ads

> I think the only way Amazon or Google ever start to stagnate is if a similar fate befalls them.

Google has been stagnating for more than one decade. What have they created since 2010 that is even remotely interesting, let alone in the interest of society?

And Amazon is Rube Goldberg machine of human suffering. Who cares?

Please don't post denunciatory rhetoric to HN. It's tedious. Worse, it acidifies the thread. Those two things are a double dose of poison for curiosity, which is the entire point of this site.

You can make your substantive points thoughtfully without damaging this place in the process. Please do it that way instead.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think one thing that makes them stagnate is the sheer magnitude of their advertising business. Google is not interested in expanding to other things unless it is either furthering the amount of data they are collecting for advertising, or it has some massive run rate. That is why they are infamous for canning projects that are actually working, they just are not working big enough for google to care past its many billions advertising.

> What have they created since 2010 that is even remotely interesting?

Translate has gotten a hell of a lot better and it's been helpful for humanity, for one thing.

I think it existed before 2010. But then, several Google services have improved since 2010. (Not search though...)

It's hard to remember exactly what result quality was like in 2010, but I'm very satisfied with the utility I get form Google search. I can throw a dozen different oddball questions at it and either get the answer directly (without even needing to click through to an often slow and cluttered page), or get what I was looking for as the top result. They do all this in an extremely adversarial environment where "SEO" people spend the majority of their effort trying to boost their pages for specific words.

Google is manipulating search results in bad faith: It has admitted engaging in political censorship of results to divert traffic away from undesirable sites.

Also, it seems to have a bias in favor of the larger websites generally, but this is an anecdotal observation of mine, there may or may not be evidence to support it.

There's a lot of truth in what you're saying but Google did create some interesting products in its second decade, here's the list I came up with:

- Google Assistant is advanced magic. Much better than Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa, IMO.

- Google Photos is great.

- TensorFlow is close to its industry's standard.

- Chromebooks and Chrome OS are a hit.

- The Pixel line of phones is great, especially their industry leading camera innovations.

A little off topic: I had the worst experience with Chromebooks, I used one a short time ago and couldn't install essentially anything outside of "approved" google apps. No package manager, 3d modelling software, my whole dev workflow just didn't work. I eventually bit the bullet and bought a 2019 macbook pro to get back to some semblance of sanity. My 2015 had passed :/. Does anyone do dev work on chromebooks?

No, because Chromebooks aren't meant to be good Dev machines. Just like feature phones aren't good at being camera replacements.

The difference between a camera phone and a professional camera is one of hardware. The difference between a Chromebook and a useful computer is one of software. Installing Debian on my Chromebook Pixel turned a pointless toy into a reasonable tool. It doesn't matter what software you install on your camera phone, the sensor and glass will still be shit.

Unless your entire dev workflow happens in Google chrome I'm a little confused why you bought a chromebook for development work

I didn't buy it, it's something somehow had extra that I tried to make work for a bit

You get a nice Linux VM built into Chrome OS now. Linux apps and files are integrated in the OS.

Kubernetes? BeyondCorp? I'm sure there is plenty. Perhaps they just stink at commercializing anything other than their ad platforms?

Your rejoinder makes OP's point better than they did.

Chromecast (2013) is pretty great.

Oh yes Photos Tensorflow Spanner ...not even remotely interesting. Waymo. I'll wait for you to cherry pick another time frame. 99% of people here would work at Google in a heart beat but love to write snarky comments here. Many admittedly jealous of the fact that they couldn't get in. Have fun peddling the hate.

Please don't respond in the flamewar style regardless of how wrong or provocative another comment was. It just makes the thread even worse, and it's against the site guidelines too: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

99% of people here are sitting around jealous of Google?

Sounds doubtful. I would guess there are more people here who have already been there done that at one of the big tech companies then there are people sitting around jealous.