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