When did Jeff Raikes run over Steve Gillmor's dog?
Jeff Raikes must have surely ran over Steve Gillmor's dog last week.
First in Do No Simple Steve just plain wants to fire JeffR for not having an Office 12 RSS story (though I don't think any of the features in O12 have really been officially covered yet - only with some analysts [esp. those without the initials S.G., it seems]).
Steve then follows up shortly thereafter with 60 Days, noting how both Google and Apple will have RSS improvements in about 60 days. Nothing related to RSS from JeffR in 60 days? Fire him, Steve figures.
First, firing JeffR would just result in two JeffR clones springing up in his temporary void. These people have succeeded following JeffR's vision and will keep that IT supplicating finger-lickin'-good vision going. Complete with befuddled end-users donning dino-heads (hmm, I'd love to see a subservient dinosaur anti-campaign...).
No, you need to fire a whole bunch of people and do a disruptive re-org and say to them: your job is to make end-users clamor for Office. Or Windows. Or MSN. Or mobile OS. Or XBo-, er, or business solutions. Have customers passionately emailing us and blogging, constantly asking us for new features and being delighted when we deliver (plus, you know, security and stability). And maybe, if you follow Joe Wilcox' line of thinking today, you put Kevin Kelly in charge.
When it comes to RSS and quick innovation that makes a difference to end-users, I think you really need to look towards MSN. Information Worker is lost. I'm sure some sort of RSS story will come out of building 36, but you know, that was the target last year. By 2006, RSS will be old news. Important infrastructure, sure, but the consequences of RSS everywhere will be more important in 2006 than RSS itself.
8 comments:
Steve Gillmor has been on his every-microsoft-product-must-support-RSS-right-now kick for a while. His target used to be Allchin but since the announcement that RSS will be the shizzle in Longhorn he's switched his target to Office.
He definitely goes overboard but his rants are somewhat amusing.
-- Dare
Criticizing Raikes for missing the boat on RSS and other stuff is really unfair. After all, how's he meant to stay on top of every development in the IW space and still manage all those outside investments he's making with all that MSFT stock he's been liquidating? Sheesh.
"your job is to make end-users clamor for Office. Or Windows. Or MSN. Or mobile OS. Or XBo-, er, or business solutions. Have customers passionately emailing us and blogging, constantly asking us for new features and being delighted when we deliver"
Hmmm...sort of like give MSFT an Apple makeover? Couldn't agree with you more. Unfortunately, it's never going to happen under the current leadership. Suggestion: forget the reorg and simply fire Gates/Ballmer, put Jobs in as CEO and see how much more he can do with near-infinite resources. On the other hand, if MSFT keeps imploding while AAPL keeps ascending, maybe that's going to happen at some point anyway...
The last comment must be a gag. Jobs has a terrible track record of top-down thinking and egomania. I don't think Microsoft needs *more* of that.
"The last comment must be a gag. Jobs has a terrible track record of top-down thinking and egomania. I don't think Microsoft needs *more* of that."
Yes, I guess employees and shareholders must be quite concerned about that "terrible track record". Or maybe not:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=MSFT&t=1y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=aapl
http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/invsub/analyst/earnest.asp?Page=EarningsGrowthRates&Symbol=aapl
This sums things up nicely:
"Here we are five years later, and the technology landscape is drastically transformed. Google, a company that was founded just as the trial was getting under way, is now widely (and correctly) viewed as the most serious threat to Microsoft's desktop hegemony since Netscape. Linux, the open-source operating system, has made real inroads in the server market - a market Microsoft had counted on for growth.
AMONG competitors, Microsoft is still respected, but it is not feared the way it used to be. It has become a sluggish, bureaucratic company that, for instance, is going to be at least a year late with a new operating system, called Longhorn, that the world needs now because it is supposed to make computing more secure. Its stock hasn't moved in years."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/21/technology/21nocera.html?ex=1274328000&en=873e03abc641e6ef&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
>> "When did Jeff Raikes run over Steve Gillmor's dog?" <<
I don't know when it happened. But I am so hungry right now, I would surely fight Jeff for that dead dog.
More features? No we just want it to work right! Office97 was fine, just make it stable.
Wally
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