Microsoft and Empires: The Hubristic Tendency of Success

A recent article basically chronicled the symptoms that made the Microsoft of today a mere shadow of the Microsoft of the past. This was amidst the backdrop of Steve Ballmer's departure as the head honcho of the software titan.

Without doubt, Microsoft still rules the PC market, cornering more than 80% of worldwide personal computer share. But like empires of the past, it has slowly lost its mojo over the years. Indeed, some people are questioning Microsoft's future with the advent of tablet computers and super smart smartphones. Unlike the empires of the past, Microsoft has impacted lives in unimaginable ways, transformed the personal computing landscape into something more user-directed, giving flexibility and dynamism to many tasks, personal or otherwise.

However, I agree with the author of the aforesaid article that success, and I fairly say too much deserved success, has somehow made Microsoft complacent. This has resulted in spectacularly redundant software releases like Vista or engaged in buying sprees that has not helped the Microsoft brand be seen as the brand of the future, like when it acquired Hotmail in 1997.

So the age old saying does indeed ring true, success sometimes could get into someones head enough to make one myopic, complacent and simply arrogant. Without doubt, success brings power, and more power, it seems, leads to more complacency and arrogance. This is certainly true among individuals, and no less true among companies - Microsoft included.

I do not however, share the author's predilection to believe that Microsoft could go, although it could indeed go to the dustbins of tech history as wonders of the past - think Lotus or Palm among others, as long as the PC market remains viable. Indeed, Microsoft has become so successful in the PC sector that it has become the PC sector. It has defined the market in so profound and comprehensive ways that the two have almost become synonymous, at least to the average computer user.

Microsoft may give the world a surprise in the years to come, in as much as past history reveals the rapid obsolescence of once jeweled tech companies, Microsoft may not go that easily. Let us see what it will bring to the software market, especially the PC market in the years to come...surprise might await us. Let's see.