>If HP or IBM or SAP or Oracle wanted to do what, say, Dropbox does, they would throw effectively unlimited funding at the >problem until it was solved.
And if there is one thing we've learned from Microsoft etc. is that throwing unlimited funding at a problem fixes it.
>And if there is one thing we've learned from Microsoft etc. is that throwing unlimited funding at a problem fixes it.
The main problem for Dropbox is simply scale. You, as a service provider, need to keep up with the storage and bandwidth requirements. The only way to deal with that is through buying more hardware/Cloud CPU time and bandwidth. If you're Dropbox, that means that you might need to get more funding. If you're IBM or HP, and they've made it a priority, it's much easier to get what you need.
Dropbox isn't really all that special from a technical perspective at this point. Any of the large tech firms can solve it easily, and Apple, Amazon and Google have all come out with services that do basically the same thing as Dropbox.
Your logic here seems to be that because throwing huge amounts of money at (say) search landed Microsoft in second place behind one of the most successful, lucrative, and well-capitalized technology companies of all time, money doesn't matter.
Second place after merging the service with the service in the second place (Yahoo search). Google wasn't the most successful, lucrative and well-capitalized technology when it started. Google was the case of one company completely dominating a market which they helped create. Dropbox is example of another such market (I am not comparing dropbox with google just giving an analogy).
Well, how much software have you paid for lately to help view your files and directories in a graphical tree, defragment your disks, compress the data on them, or scan that data for viruses? A few years ago, all of those things were available through a variety of commercial tools. Microsoft basically eliminated those entire industries when it provided a decent alternative built in to Windows.
In any case, your comment is a cheap shot. Microsoft have a relatively strong track record when it comes to establishing footholds in new markets, even if they've been slow to see the opportunity at first, by committing vast resources and running loss leaders for a while if necessary to establish their product. They also have some of the best R&D in the business, thanks in no small part to hiring some of the smartest people and putting them in top class facilities.
>Well, how much software have you paid for lately to help view your files and directories in a graphical tree, defragment your disks, compress the data on them, or scan that data for viruses?
As me how much Microsoft software I've used in last say an year. I know. Zero. Microsoft isn't a behemoth it used to be.
>In any case, your comment is a cheap shot. Microsoft have a relatively strong track record when it comes to establishing footholds in new markets, even if they've been slow to see the opportunity at first, by committing vast resources and running loss leaders for a while if necessary to establish their product
I wouldn't be so sure of a strong track. I think the only thing they have to show for themselves in last decade is Xbox. I can't think of any other new market where they have been as successful. I do understand where you are coming from, MS does have a reputation of going into new domains and becoming a NUMBER TWO player. But that's hardly what a company of the caliber of MS aspires to do. I do have respect for MS and its research facilities, but that doesn't mean I believe that it has what it takes to kill off start-ups with good momentum, like Dropbox. At best it can be the Bing to Google.
Internet Explorer market share: 40-50% (still by far the most popular browser)
> I think the only thing they have to show for themselves in last decade is Xbox. I can't think of any other new market where they have been as successful.
A few obvious examples:
Client division: Windows 7
Server and Tools division: Windows Server, Visual Studio, SQL Server, Exchange Server
Business division: Office
Entertainment and Devices division: XBox 360, various games, various mice/keyboards/etc.
R&D: Seems to employ/fund just about everyone doing industrial programming language research except for the 3 Google managed to hire, and a huge proportion of the industrial HCI research too.
MS obviously aren't dominant in all of these fields (compare Oracle for DB, the other major consoles for gaming, etc.). However, no start-up is going to compete with these sorts of products any time soon.
The most obvious targets for disruption by smaller players are the browser market, except that both Chrome and Firefox have basically written off business users as clients so MS will have a base there for as long as it wants one, and programming, except that with the resources and R&D Microsoft are throwing into that field lately it seems more likely that MS will pull away from the small time competition rather than losing ground for the foreseeable future.
That means at best, start-ups are going to be competing against Microsoft's secondary portfolio, things like BizTalk and Dynamics, and it's not as if there's a huge amount of innovation going on in the start-up sector in unsexy fields like that (unless you still think a business plan featuring the word "cloud" in big enough letters is worth VC funding, I suppose, but since the likes of Google Docs haven't even made a dent I don't suppose MS will be too worried about that sort of start-up for now).
>Microsoft Windows desktop market share: 90+%
A relic of last decade. A case of momentum.
>Internet Explorer market share: 40-50%
A side-effect of the above.
I hate to be sidetracked by my perceived opinion of Microsoft. I am not the one to spew hate on MS. I have a lot of respect for MS and its research philosophy.
However, the point I am trying to make is that Microsoft has never solved a problem by throwing money at it. When they have tried, they have ended up (inspite of having good products) in number 2 position.
Its worked well enough for them so far. MS Office killed Lotus 123 and Word Perfect. Internet Explorer killed Netscape. The XBox 360 is outselling the PS3. The only place where the "spend money until the problem goes away" strategy hasn't worked is in phones, and even there, the final chapter is hardly written.
And if there is one thing we've learned from Microsoft etc. is that throwing unlimited funding at a problem fixes it.