January 6, 2006
@ 05:53 PM

Every couple of weeks while I'm at Microsoft I hear co-workers or executives say stuff that makes me wonder whether we are stuck in a time warp. My current pet peeve  is when I hear someone use the term Software as a Service or even worse the abbreviation "SaaS" to describe Web-based. There are people here who are so disconnected from the real world that to them Web-based software is some hot, new thing that deserves it's own magical new buzzword. Seriously, if you go around saying stuff like "Software as a Service" in 2006 then you are fricking dinosaur.

Another example of the kind of dinosaur mentality I'm ranting against is linked from a post on Robert Scoble's blog entitled Flickr’ing an unusual Mix06 meeting. In that post he links to the following image

At some meeting about a new Web conference coming out of Microsoft, one of the insightful ideas on the white board is "The Web is inevitable and her to stay". Is this 1996? That would have been insightful a decade ago, now it just makes us seem over the hill. Competitors like Google and Yahoo! are already thinking about the next level (e.g. making deals with network service providers to increase the quality of the user experience when visiting their sites, making heavy bets on the mobile Web, and bridging the gap between the Web and television in concrete ways) yet here we are finally admitting that maybe wishing that the Web will go away isn't a winning strategy.

Sometimes it feels like I work in dinosaur country.


 

Friday, 06 January 2006 20:52:28 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I agree, we seem to roll the same concepts out under the guise of new jargon sometimes and pretend it's "new." For example, Web 2.0, which is just the latest name for what I believe was originally called ASPs (application service providers) back in the 1900's ...

http://chilco.textdrive.com/~dmahugh/2005/12/15/web-20-a-radical-new-approach/

We also have people doing truly creative things, though, so from my own perspective I agree "sometimes it feels like I work in dinosaur country" but would stress the word "sometimes."

- Doug
Sunday, 08 January 2006 03:02:40 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Dare- you don't work at a web company like Google or Yahoo (although Yahoo is looking more like a content player). Microsoft's customers are part of a broad market and may not be as astute when it comes to the web as you'd expect or like. Yes, the web was flourishing in 1996. But broadband wasn't widely available and Internet access in homes was more of an exception rather than rule. For many of our customers (and the customers of the developers we support on our platform), the Web is just now becoming a mainstream part of their lives.
Sunday, 08 January 2006 03:26:34 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
>Microsoft's customers are part of a broad market and may not be as astute when it comes to the web as you'd expect or like.

That's ridiculous. Even in Nigeria using the Web is now a way of life among the computer savvy let alone in the major markets Microsoft participates in.

Many people at Microsoft have been burying their heads in the sand when it comes to the Web. I find it sad that people like you try to justify this position by blaming our customers.
Monday, 09 January 2006 05:12:04 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Dare: you didn't have the context behind that graphic. I asked whether Microsoft was trying to kill the Web. The answer was "no, we're not." It wasn't about whether we got the Web or not. It's a subtly different question.

As to whether we're dinosaurs or not, is that payback for a barb I sent toward your team last week?
Tuesday, 10 January 2006 00:20:42 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
This had me laughing outloud when I read it. And still does a few days later.
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