Summary: Microsoft is not competitive enough for today's generation of devices, so dirty tricks and lawsuits increasingly seem like the business plan

BY shutting down divisions and axing many products Microsoft sets itself for becoming a patent troll in many areas of operation. When it demands payments for other companies' products (and strictly products that Microsoft does not have), then in this area it is considered a non-practising litigator and thus a troll. Prepare for Novell/Microsoft (almost the same thing now) to use patents as their business model, if many of the pundits are to be believed (we'll give a sample later in the week).

Sharon Pian Chan, a Microsoft booster (from "Microsoft Pri0"), says that "Steve Ballmer sells $84 million of Microsoft stock" and she adds that Microsoft's stock is "in rut, Microsoft investors not happy" (despite buyouts and increasing Microsoft debt).

What used to be a love fest for Microsoft has turned into the nitpicking of a long-married couple.

That's coming from one of Microsoft's pet publications, which even (mis)uses copyright law to tear down criticism of Steve Ballmer and constantly parrots/seeds Bill Gates' many lies. Looking at some other papers we find that "[Steve Ballmer] said that mobile remains a dynamic market where winners and losers are still being decided."

Well, then Microsoft is determined to become a "loser". Its mobile presence or growth is nowhere to be seen. It only blows money through excessive marketing of prematurely-released products that are well behind the times. Microsoft's real strategy in the mobile space is patent aggression and extortion of competitors, which is what some of the patents it got from Novell ought to help with.

"Maybe the explanation is it wants to dominate the mobile space," adds Pamela Jones from Groklaw, "as it used to dominate the desktop, and it can't get there without lawsuits, because their phones aren't competitive enough to win on merit alone."

The Microsoft booster Peter Bright got his reward from the company's PR department in the form of an interview (that's how they work) and in this interview Ballmer is quoted as saying: "At the end of the day, businesses, when a consu... when a user—let me not use the word "consumer"—when a user comes into work and asks for something over and over, IT's going to have to give it to them. Now, do I expect the user to come in and say they really want their company to use SQL Server versus Oracle? No. But anything the consumer can use at home, they will develop a point of view on and ask for it at work. And eventually, IT will give it to them."

“[Microsoft] used to dominate the desktop, and it can't get there without lawsuits, because their phones aren't competitive enough to win on merit alone.”
      --Pamela Jones, GroklawBill Gates put it similarly by saying: “They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.” That's why he hijacks the schools system (using his profitable foundation) and then uses it to indoctrinate children at the expense of their parents rather than Microsoft's own expense (although schools should forbid such indoctrination at all costs). Microsoft is still using him as a PR person. It's the same guy who said "f*ck" many times and called for a "Jihad" against Linux. It's appalling what PR can do to such appalling charlatans. Gates has a lot to do (even personally) with the world's biggest patent troll as well, but how many people actually know that?

The bottom line though is that Microsoft cannot compete in today's growth areas and cannot evolve for the Web, either. Even bribed Microsoft boosters admit that AZune Fog [sic] is something people will not want to use. No wonder Ozzie called it quits [1, 2]. He was supposed to be Gates' successor and a visionary. His vision is that leaving Microsoft and blogging under GNU/Linux is the way forward.

Microsoft is the next SCO. As its power erodes and its inner animal bursts out, it will be Ballmerism all the way (unless of course he quits, in which case the devil whom we don't know will take over). ⬆

"Pamela Jones [...] has told Infoworld that Microsoft will be the next SCO Group"

--Heise