Is the party over for Microsoft?

As usual, a few decent points wrapped in lunacy and failed logic coming from Dvorak.

"Note the dizzy remarks by Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, who recently insisted that online advertising would soon account for the majority of Microsoft's income. This is a software company making these comments."

Yep, and a pretty smart one. Software is moving online, and so far the only proven way to monetize online software is via advertising. Not getting into that game would be stupid on Microsoft's part. Failing to understand why this is true shows how horrid Dvorak is at analyzing anything, and why the rest of his rant is suspect.

Let's talk about his "failed" ventures:

* MSN. Don't know how you can call that a failure.

* IE. Hmm... the market leader is a failure? Oh, because it's given away for free, so it must be losing money for the company, right? Brilliant understanding and analysis there.

* Online magazines. Magazines, whether online or not, come and go. If they made profits while in publication, it's hard to call them failures, and Dvorak doesn't look into whether or not they were profitable. Brilliant analysis.

* MS Press. Still one of the better computer book publishers. That's a market that's drying up, however, so it's no wonder the "division is languishing" in Dvorak's words. Still no indication of failure.

* Toys. These are fads. They make ridiculous money for a year or two and then disappear into obscurity. Like most of these "failures" in Dvorak's list, he doesn't analyze whether or not the product made money... the fact that it's not around anymore means it was a failure. Brilliant analysis.

* Microsoft-TV. Really? Funny how AT&T Uverse is powered by MS tech in this space, and the Media Center enjoys quite a bit of popularity. This is a new market, even now, and Microsoft is still in the game here. Failure my arse.

* Photo editing. OK, I'll give him half a point. No one's going to easily dethrone PhotoShop. However, there's no indication that Microsoft failed to profit here, and they've not left the game entirely yet, so I don't think you can really classify this as a failure.

* Bing. First, Microsoft didn't "copy the idea" from Google and Yahoo!, as they've had a search engine for basically the same amount of time. And calling Bing a failure at this point in time really shows Dvorak's inability to accurately analyze anything.

* Clould applications. Funny how he mentions this but can't tie this in with the advertising rant. Whether or not cloud computing is going to be successful for anyone, you can't say Microsoft has failed here. They are stumbling a little, but pretty much everybody is. Despite that, it does appear to be where the future of software is likely to be, and Microsoft would be stupid not to be in this space.

* Zune. Is it as big as the IPod? No. Is it a failure? No.

Everything he mentions in passing fails in the same sort of ways. He never looks at profitability, only at some nebulous "popularity" or "longevity". By that logic, MS Basic was a failure, even though Dvorak counts it as a success. WTF?!

Apple showed declines in some areas, and good profits in areas where they've had important new releases. Meanwhile, Microsoft hasn't realesed anything new recently, so they showed a decline. I don't think you can draw any conclusions from either event, beyond "Apple had a good quarter and Microsoft didn't".

Yes, well done Apple. But equating any of that to the supposed demise or decline of Microsoft is ludicrous. It's link baiting, as usual, and nothing more. I highly doubt Dvorak is saying what he thinks the problem is, it's much more likely, given his track record, that he's stating the "problem" as he thinks will get him the most hits.

It's unclear what you're agreeing with him on. The vast majority of his article is rubish, and if you agree with the non-analysis there, well, not much we can discuss. If you just think Microsoft should focus on it's core more, as your posts here seem to indicate, well that's worthy of discussing, but I'm not sure we'll reach agreement.  I don't think Microsoft has stopped focusing on their core, and think it's very appropriate that they don't focus exclusively on the core.

I'm not sure why you're responding to me about "copying the IPod or IPhone". I never made that claim, didn't comment on Dvorak making the claim, and honestly don't believe it's relevant to Dvorak's point or the point of this thread. I agree that it's tiresome to hear about Microsoft "ripping off" some idea someone else "had first", when such claims are often not true, and not really relevant anyway. Google wasn't first, they were just better. Apple wasn't first with the IPod, they were just better (personal bias, I don't think they really are better, but perception is what counts, and I can't argue that). This is all true of many things Microsoft has done as well... they weren't first, they were just better.