GamePass was a pretty big gamechanger. Looks like 2017. VSCode made a pretty big splash in its market too, from 2015. So not Google Search or Maps level, but solid, disruptive offerings that they've maintained in the last decade.

I'm struggling to even come up with any Google products in the post-Android timeframe that I use as much as those two...

And regardless, MS doesn't need to switch gears to compete with this even if you discount those. They're running out in the lead already. Question is if Google can still run.

If you're going back 8 years to VSCode as the example, then how about, say, the Google Pixel, which came out in 2016 IIUC? I imagine more people use Pixels than VSCode too.

I think it's fair to go back to anything since that list of "Search, Mail, Maps, Android" but I think you're comparing the Pixel to VSCode in the wrong way. Being less succesful but in a bigger pool of total users shouldn't win marks here.

What percentage of the smartphone market do you think uses the Pixel vs what percentage of the developer market uses VSCode, and what is the trend in that number?

A sibling comment to your seems dead but mentioned Google Photos, which is much more recent than I remembered (2015 apparently) and I think a pretty fair competitor in that market with iCloud Photos, Lightroom, and such.

The Pixel line was rebranded from the Nexus phones, which started in 2010.

That is a very fair point. A lot of tech companies have not really been able to capture that lightning in a bottle again.

While this is a much more constrained example - I remember on the podcast Windows weekly, maybe about 6-7 years ago, Paul Thurrot saying that the last real big software release on the desktop was Chrome. He was right, a web browser was the last big thing on Desktop.

Xbox (2001), Kinect (2010), Surface (2015), PowerBI (2015), HoloLens (2016)

I'll ignore the Window Phone era. ;)

So, 9 years ago at best? And that's being quite generous since I wouldn't exactly say HoloLens transformed anyone's life. In fact I don't believe I've even heard the word HoloLens even uttered by anyone in real life...

I don't think the target consumer for HoloLens is anyone most people would meet in real life, unless they work in very specialized subfields.

And I didn't include anything in the Azure area/time period.

Microsoft doesn't do consumer apps. On the business side, being the source of most professional software engineering through a variety of project launches over the past decade certainly counts.

And agree, launching code was a nice contribution and had filled much-needed space (previously somewhat covered by eclipse).

And LinkedIn / GitHub acquisitions were done well and now going to be fueling the automation of professional work with the AI technology.

Azure is a functioning newish business.

The difference is Microsoft already has a very diversified revenue stream. Google only has search.

In what sense is Azure "newish"? It started around 2008 IIUC, just like Android.

It is newish in the sense of business size. It might have been created in 2008 but it has grown only recently to a point where it can be seen as a separate independent business.

It "started" in 2008 as just an app platform for .NET apps in the cloud called Windows Azure.

The move to become a cloud provider happened, I want to say, in 2015-ish.

You couldn't even get VMs on Azure for the longest time, and their VM service reached parity with AWS very recently.

I went to look this up, and [1] says "virtual machines for Windows and Linux were introduced in 2012".

[1] https://studysection.com/blog/history-of-microsoft-azure/

VS Code? Teams?

Xbox Cloud Gaming ?

Is this really "truly lasting impact on the level of Search, Maps, Gmail, Android"? I feel like random people you ask on the street probably wouldn't have even heard of it, let alone know what it is, let alone being impacted by it, let alone in a truly lasting manner.

Teams?

Office 365?