Microsoft is dead, Paul Graham says

Paul Graham is the founder of YCombinator, a venture company that invests into startups at a very early phase. Some of the startups they launched are Reddit, Kiko, Snipshot, YouOS, and Thinkature.

Graham also writes quite lengthy essays over at his site, which are a must-read literature for anyone interested in web startups and IT in general. In his latest post, titled Microsoft is dead, Graham claims that Microsoft - while still a giant that earns a lot of money - is no longer the big boss of the IT world, the head honcho, the company that sinks their competition simply by introducing a similar feature in one of their own products. Why? Because the web has taken over.

Graham stumbles over a couple of points. In one paragraph, he claims:

“All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft’s anyway.”

This is simply not true. Maybe it is within a certain clique; maybe it’s even a trend, but it’s not (yet) true, especially outside of the US. I agree with his main point; that Windows aren’t really that important any more; thus, someone could switch over to a Mac simply because he/she likes the looks better. But I wouldn’t give as much credit to Apple. Rich Internet applications are what made many desktop OS’s and desktop applications an option and not a necessity.

Graham hits a home run with another point: Gmail. It has, indeed, been instrumental in this paradigm shift. I know many people who switched over to Gmail completely, simply because it works better than any other e-mail client, desktop or web-based. What has Microsoft done to counter Gmail? They can point at Outlook all they want, but Gmail plus Google Calendar does it better for me.

Graham’s post echoes one older post here at FranticIndustries, entitled “Why I’m not going to review Vista“, which marks the point at which this site started focusing entirely on web-related technologies. And it’s not because FranticIndustries is a site exclusively about the web. It’s a site about latest tech trends. And, currently, the web is where it’s at.

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39 Responses to “Microsoft is dead, Paul Graham says”

  1. key4adream Says:

    I agree with your point. Maybe Microsoft will die but nowadays it still lives. Computers are sold with a pre-installed version of Windows. And few ppl want to learn (or maybe they don’t have enough time) to use a new operating system.
    But having more and more online application means serious hurts for Ms.

    thanks you

  2. Yihong Ding Says:

    Microsoft is dying, but not dead yet. Only if it has not dead, it has chances to resurrect. Although many web evangelists do not like Microsoft, they may not underestimate the potential of Microsoft. A gaint would not die in one day.

  3. Stan Schroeder Says:

    A giant will not die in one day, that’s true, but giants sometimes have trouble moving through crowded spaces.

  4. sadcox Says:

    Although I have personally spent my last dime on MS software, many, MANY businesses are so tied to them that there is no end in sight to their use. For instance, I work for a large international auto parts manufacturer that has built everything on Microsoft products. Hard enough to change in one location, even harder to do it on an international and multilingual scale.

    I think MS may be injured, and the death blow may have even been struck already, but it will be a long time before they are dead…a very long time.

  5. PinDaxDotCom Says:

    It’s not about whether Microsoft is “dead” or not. The question is: are they still relevant? To answer that, you have to ask: are operating systems a commodity? are office suites a commodity? I think they are. Software has been a commodity for some time now.

    What is relevant at the moment is: bandwidth. There’s alot more of it for consumers than there ever has been. Bandwidth is really the only piece of the internet puzzle that is really changing the game.

  6. Stan Schroeder Says:

    So many bloggers wrongly interpreted Paul Graham’s article that it’s not even funny anymore. He did use strong language - Microsoft is dead - to nail a point, but he explains very clearly in the article that he doesn’t mean dead in the sense of going bankrupt or disappearing from the market in the next couple of years or anything similar. It’s not even about whether Microsoft is relevant - of course they are relevant, they’re running a multi-billion dollar business.

    Paul was talking about the zeitgeist surrounding Microsoft. It has transformed from a behemoth destroying everything in their path (remember the Netscape - IE days) and the company everyone talks about almost all the time, to a company that gets destroyed on many fields by open source projects (Firefox), Apple (iPod - Zune), companies started by two guys in a garage several years ago (Google Search). Vista is a multi-billion dollar effort which has taken 6 years to complete, and yet it has been described by many esteemed IT professionals and journalist as lackluster, bland, boring and largely irrelevant - at least for the end user. Microsoft is still strong on many fields, but it has lost its aura of invincibility.

  7. Microsoft is dead, Paul Graham says « Thoughtsblog Says:

    […] Microsoft is dead, Paul Graham says Microsoft is no longer the head honcho it has been .It merely introduces the same features that competition has ,hoping to beat them.According to Paul Graham Microsoft is dead ,while it is still making money. Windows are only for grandmas as Macs were in the 90’s.Is this really true ? As an operating system it still accounts for the maximum use in the world.It is ,however true that Microsoft has not been able to achieve a paradigm shift  in e-mail as G-mail has been able to . Links: franticindustries.com […]

  8. The Donut Says:

    You guys don’t have a clue. Microsoft is huge in the backend of corporate IT. Most of the healthcare data centers I’ve been in have racks of Dell and HP gear running Windows Server OS, Sql Server and .Net apps. In fact is rare to spot a Linux box in one of those places.

    There is a lot more to computing than web hosting.

  9. Eats Wombats Says:

    Just stumbled on this. Fastmail’s web interface is better than Gmail’s in my opinion — I use both.

    Agree about Microsoft

    http://wombatdiet.net/2007/10/24/for-microsoft-the-ow-starts-now/

    I filled in a questionnaire for them recently in which they asked what ONE THING they could do that would improve my opinion of Microsoft. My answer: become an ethical company.

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