Scoble Bites The Hand That Fed Him

An anonymous reader writes "The Times Online points out a post that Robert Scoble, former Microsoft blogger, put up on his site recently. In essence, Scoble has moved 180 degrees from his former blogging tone, saying that 'Microsoft Sucks'. More specifically, he is highly critical of Microsoft's online policy. In Scoble's words: 'Microsoft's Internet execution sucks (on whole). Its search sucks. Its advertising sucks (look at that last post again). If that's in it to win then I don't get it. ... Microsoft isn't going away. Don't get me wrong. They have record profits, record sales, all that. But on the Internet? Come on. This isn't winning. Microsoft: stop the talk. Ship a better search, a better advertising system than Google, a better hosting service than Amazon, a better cross-platform Web development ecosystem than Adobe, and get some services out there that are innovative (where's the video RSS reader? Blog search? Something like Yahoo's Pipes? A real blog service? A way to look up people?) That's how you win.'"

Re:Aw poor Scoble

[Timesprout]

Even for the dominant player, it does not make sense to try and compete with everyone. And many large corporations in other areas don't (do you see Daimler-Chrysler making extremely cheap cars? or Boeing making little sports planes?). I think this is a case of Microsoft hubris rather than necessity.

You picked a bad example there, Daimler are the luxury arm of Chrysler who are a major brand who feel compelled to compete in several car markets as with Ford, owners of Jaguar and Aston Martin (which they have just sold). While they both produce sports cars to compete in NASCAR and rallying etc, they are not racing companies but their presence on the start line boosts the brand image as a whole. And as for Boeing, they do a lot of subcontracting for the military and NASA. Again not their primary business but a good selling point for the multi billion dollar deals.

Train Wreck

[jrentona]

The truth is that M$ has pretty muched sucked since 2000. It took them a whopping 5 years for them to get XP working properly.

And Vista/Visual Studio 2005 is pretty much a train wreck for C developers. We used to be able to rely on the development environment. In fact, that area was always a significant innovation for these guys. No more. Fire Steve Embalmer before it is too late.

And the evidence just keeps rolling in:
http://www.microsoftweblog.com/2005/11/05/problems -with-visual-studio-2005/ [microsoftweblog.com]