It’s hip2b2

A Slashdot reader has this entry about Paul Graham commenting on Microsoft being dead. Not the throw in the towel dead but that has lost is big bad “borg” image. Maybe Slashdot should change its category logo for Microsoft? Wacha say Mr. Taco?

He doesn’t mean dead as in six feet under, but rather that the software giant no longer instills the kind of fear — particularly among entrepreneurs — that it did back in the day when it was making road kill out of companies like Netscape. Microsoft obits have been around for almost as long as the company, but Graham’s stature, style and devoted following are likely to make this one a classic

Here is the original article from Paul Graham co-inventor of Viaweb together with Robert Morris which was eventually sold to Yahoo.

Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years starting in the late 80s. I can remember when it was IBM before them. I mostly ignored this shadow. I never used Microsoft software, so it only affected me indirectly—for example, in the spam I got from botnets. And because I wasn’t paying attention, I didn’t notice when the shadow disappeared.

But it’s gone now. I can sense that. No one is even afraid of Microsoft anymore. They still make a lot of money—so does IBM, for that matter. But they’re not dangerous.

But I don’t think this means Microsoft is dead. I think they have won. In Michael Scoble’s book - Naked Conversations, he describes how blogging has helped Microsoft “soften” its image. He clearly notes a conscious effort by Microsoft to rid itself of the “evil borg” image. If Paul Graham is saying Microsoft is not longer feared then I guess they aren’t dead. They have started a new life.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 8th, 2007 at 12:06 am and is filed under Musings and Speculations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.