I'd like to know if there are in fact any noble hackers of microsoft out there who have a genuine concern for the market and for opening up more opportunities for other businesses. It just might change my image of hackers.
Yeah, they're definitely in a decline. They need to step up their game and stop releasing rubbish like Vista. :/
I don't think they are in any decline. They have all the money to become even bigger, the next OS, Windows 7 (codename) looks really amazing and I think that will really bring them back into the spotlight.
They are a mature business, with a few cash cows (Windows, Office) and dabbling in other side ventures (MSN, Xbox, etc). They are not in decline, but there will be no more growth. They are the modern-day IBM (of the 1970s and 1980s).
You right! And nowadays every single new computers already come with vista, and people are to lazy to change to xp!
Microsoft's decline is inevitable and it certainly has peaked .... Google is doing to MS what MS did to IBM 20 years ago. In 20 years, Google will be the evil empire and someone will do something to them... etc. From about 1982 until sometime around 1999 MS actaully made the world more productive and I believe was instrumental in bringing us out of the ecomomic woes of the 1970s. From 1999 until about 2007 it was neutral, not making us more productive, but keeping us as productive as we were ... Office 2007 is generally not as good of a productivity tool as 2003, and Vista is generally considered "less good" than XP etc. You've mentioned XBox etc. So, yes, MS is on the way down. But it will be a slow decline. They will be a force to be reconed with for a long time to come, and just because they aren't "on top" doesn't mean they arent powerful.