Summary: More Microsoft products cancelled, services made worse

OVER the past few months we have seen many Microsoft products getting cancelled and taken off the market, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4]. Microsoft is now borrowing money (nobody seems to know why), it has laid off a lot of staff and another key product, Microsoft Money, has just been officially killed.

At the time of writing, only two sources seem to have coverage of this (based on Google News). Both are close to Microsoft. They are probably intended to cushion the blow as it becomes public knowledge, i.e. preemptive damage control. Well, here it is from the less obnoxious among the two sources:

Microsoft announced in August 2008 that it would no longer sell Money through retail stores. The company said at that time that plans to release a Money Plus 2009 release were cancelled.

This makes about 15 dead Microsoft products, all getting axed in a matter of months.

Since Microsoft is already taking debt, expenses must be controlled and faulty XBox360s, whose severe faults only Microsoft is to blame for, will not be properly repaired anymore. One of our readers had half a dozen broken XBox360s. He gave up in great anger because these could not last for more than a few months without breaking spontaneously. He confronted a Microsoft manager over this. Lastly, for the record, Microsoft has lost well over $5 billion in the XBox business and it's far from the only area where Microsoft loses money. Now there's no Money. ⬆

Update: More short coverage gets titled "No money in MS Money?"

Update #2: Here is a list of Microsoft products that recently bit the dust. Thanks, David Gerard.