For many years over the course of the late 2000s, it felt like Microsoft was really doing nothing to advance their technology. Procrastination? No, it really felt like brinksmanship. This kept going for a few years until they were pounded by the “iron fist” of the rest of the tech industry, a.k.a. “invisible hand.”
Bill Gates pulled out, when he still could have kept going with keeping Microsoft as a business doing well. Some folks might tout, Microsoft was never really necessary in the end, now were they? Well, we can tell them that they wouldn’t have their fancy nancy computers that they have today without such leadership. But is that really true?
At the end of the day, I have to conclude that it’s not. Microsoft’s main accomplishment was in providing a short-term solution that could bridge between the old and the new business worlds. 100% of the thought leadership of today’s modern Internet came from the fringe community, and they’ve literally eaten away anything of value that was left over by the proprietary software culture.
Literally, Adobe helped by simply getting out of the way. Microsoft helped by becoming irrelevant. That is, once they’ve provided the bridge between the old and the new worlds. In that sense, they were pivotal in bringing the old world to the new world.