Silverlight
I grow weary of Microsoft’s “me too” attitude.
Shuffling through my RSS feeds, I saw a post on TechCrunch about the newest in Microsoft’s “Laptop Hunters” ad campaign, featuring Lauren and Sue. I was intrigued (curious to know what angle they’re taking this time), and proceeded to peruse the article, and eventually click through to watch the video.
When I got to the actual video page (which was just a single click-through), I waited a moment for all of the page to load, and then was prompted to install Silverlight in order to watch their commercial.
No. I understand they want to be competitive, but that’s just bullying.
I’m not a fan of Microsoft. Some of their software is just… poor (Media Player, Internet Explorer, Access, Front Page, etc). There could be an entire Fail Whale comic book devoted to the various Windows operating systems (it’s been downhill since 3.1). Their response to poor code is simply to shove the next version down everyone’s throat. Now… I’m not worth to be listened to, however, if I don’t give credit where it’s due – the Microsoft Office suite (read: Word, PowerPoint, and Excel) is an absolutely phenomenal toolset. Also, even as I cringe to admit it, I’m a big fan of Visual Studio 2008 (specifically with C#).
Now, we could argue that any software company that’s big enough to be considered “on the scene” can be accused of the above misdoings in varying measures and cases. Apple, Google, Adobe, you name them. So let’s just be fair off the bat. My real beef with Microsoft, is their historical, consistent, and predictable pattern of unfair play, strongarm tactics, and unsatiable “me too” attitude. They’re the big, bullying, pontificating, “one upper” of the playground, and it ruins everone’s fun – especially since most of the time, they don’t really “one up” anyone… they just spin their wheels in mediocrity.
What was Microsoft’s focus on the search market before Google got strong? Their attention to console games until PlayStation was a hit? Did they care about browsers until Firefox started to lean in on their “turf”? No. They sat back on their laurels, waiting for someone to make a move, and when it happened, they used their massive war chest and undeserved Windows market share to push their version of the product.
And their version, historically, usually just isn’t as good. By far. In any case, it certainly doesn’t offer me exceptional value over the competition.
Silverlight is the latest case of Microsoft’s “me too” compulsion. They’re running web ads, for goodness sake. In Silverlight. How much market share does Silverlight have? And Flash? I’m sorry – you want me to install additional software to do what I can already do? Just because you had something to prove? Why do you keep re-inventing the wheel? If I were a stockholder, I’d be pretty pissed that Microsoft has continued to pour so much money into battling existing products for market space they already have, rather than putting that energy into coming up with something novel, so that instead of sinking money fighting for share in existing markets, they could be creating entirely new markets and reaping the benefits.
Back to my initial statement. If you feel compelled to jump in the boat and join the party [late], at least do it right. Offer me something that the other guy doesn’t. What do Live Search, Live Search Maps, XBox, Silverlight, and the Zune have in common? The fact that they were all “me too!’s” (Google, MapQuest, PlayStation, Flash, and iPod, respectively) that Microsoft jumped into without thought to really delivering a great product that gives consumers exceptional value – they just did it to keep up with the Joneses.
Note: I include XBox in my list of mediocre “me too’s” even though I enjoy playing it regularly. However, it belongs there because the only reason I use the console is because of Halo. Which, is all credit to Bungie, not Microsoft. Redmond was insanely fortunate to have such a killer app bundled right with the system. I should liked to have been the fly on the wall in an alternate universe where Halo didn’t exist, to see what people made of the XBox then.