Why Microsoft is a Dysfunctional Narcissist acting like IBM from the ’70s, and Yahoo is an enabler, but Google knows what is going on and so Microsoft is smearing it

Boy was that Scientific American article on good v. evil companies timely. So, after being branded as the “evil empire” for years, why am I again repeating this? Because Microsoft is positioning itself as a victim. It is not. Microsoft is an evil narcissist. IMO.

Narcissus

Over the years, Microsoft has forced me to pay attention to it — my computer world revolves around the technology. But my attention is not returned, the technology only wants more. What a narcissist.

And narcissists and monopolists have a lot in common.

Even Apple (when I’ve used Macs) isn’t much better, it’s just Microsoft with styling. I still have to lug a machine around. Why can’t I just pick up an appliance and do everything on the web? Why do I have to revolve my life around the technology? Can’t I have some unknown computer technician take care of everything remotely?

Enter Google. It knows what I want. It makes document applications on the web, for free. It makes things simple, maybe not better, but easy for me to use, free, and best of all, I don’t have to be a computer technician. It satisfies my needs, it feels comfortable. Google, marry me.

From, Arrested Development

(Maebe and George Michael have a fake real wedding)

I followed Microsoft’s business practices in the ’90′s — everything was geared toward using its operating system (Windows, the thing that lets you talk to your computer), to everything else.

First, Microsoft wanted to control the doorway to the internet. But there was competition — Netscape. So it tied Internet Explorer to Windows. If you wanted another browser (no Firefox at that time), good luck, you couldn’t even find the button to switch. (This was a demonstration at the antitrust trial, I think — and even the expert couldn’t do it).

Next, Microsoft took a language which make websites — the programming language Java, from Sun Microsystems, and polluted it so that Java would only work with Microsoft programming language. So it took open-source, here, everyone, take some, and made it into “my, mine, it’s for me, you have to pay me”.

That was the ’90′s. Microsoft did very well, even if it did get spanked and have to untie the ties.

Now, back in the Pleistocene, when IBM did this in the ’70′s, this was called “predatory innovation” — basically research not for advancing innovation but for protecting market. Sort of like the way Ford or GM uses special bolts so you have to buy a special wrench, when an open-source bolt would do just as well. (Antitrust experts argue over this — is innovation bad just because it blocks competition and leads to more profits?). Microsoft basically follows IBM’s monopoly playbook from the ’70s.

So, that brings me to today.

Microsoft is shifting its ’90′s strategy to the internet. Google knows this because its CEO, Mr Schmidt, used to work at Sun. If you were in the executive suite at Sun Micro in the late ’90′s, you know Microsoft is a narcissist.

So. As a narcissist, what is Microsoft’s biggest fear? Cloud computing and free applications. Why? Take a guess.

Who would Microsoft like to shut down most? Google docs and its cousins. As I understand it, Microsoft is trying to sue Linux or whatever. The ship has sailed, though. (Talk to someone born after 1990). My guess is that Microsoft will go after IBM who is working with Google on the “cloud” expansion. Just a hunch. Microsoft is seeking its own proprietary standard of OOXML (instead of plain vanilla XML) for government standard documents. (Which makes me think this is the trouble with the SEC docs). So it is attempting to tie the operating system (here, the “cloud”) to its apps, the same way it tied Windows to its apps in the ’90′s (and was spanked by the DOJ). That much is clear.

But why Yahoo!? Google docs aren’t that great — so Yahoo could make better open source ones. (I’m guessing). Free, no charge, or else minimal enterprise user fee. Plus this makes the IT staff more like the Maytag repairman, waiting for a call. So of course, who will want to put themselves out of a job? The IT crowd will have to re-tool and learn Postini (Google’s way to secure cloud e mail, which I’ve used but I just don’t get). But I digress.

So the next thing is to take out the potential threat — Yahoo open source “Office”. So they buy Yahoo, force all yahoo mail users into Microsoft apps (like, you have to buy a microsoft mobile hand set), and basically shift from desktop to cloud that way. Yahoo! will probably come to terms with Microsoft, my guess.

Is Google a monopolist? Maybe, but the bad thing is to be an illegal monopolist. So point to something that is illegal. (There may be, I have no idea). So all the people saying this is a pot->kettle imo have it wrong.

Microsoft is doing what’s in the narcissist play book: the charm offensive and the smear campaign. It is charming the pundits, and smearing the ones who know what it’s up to.

This is entirely my opinion, and I may have some of the facts wrong. But on the whole, Microsoft is acting like it did in the ’90s, which is the way IBM acted in the ’70s.

Update 02.09.08:  It’s reported( here for example), not surprisingly, Yahoo! rejects Microsoft’s bid.

Other commentators, like Vindu Goel, and Henry Blodgett  have similarly noted that Yahoo! really doesn’t solve Microsoft’s problems.

My guess is that this is the first of a series of M&A activity as the investment bankers figure out how much they can bankroll after the subprime debt problems.  The trouble is that this isn’t the ’90s, and  where there’s real paradigm shifts, you can’t just buy your way out of it (which worries me about some of the Google exec comments to the effect, “if something better comes along we’ll just buy them. . . ” to me, that is the beginning of the end. . . ) My guess is that biopharma is up next, and we’ll see the Microsoft + Yahoo of the biopharma biz soon.

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