What I find interesting is that he still doesn’t realize that <i>because</i> Microsoft was dominant in specific plays (desktop OSes, productivity software, e-mail clients) it was precluded by internal culture from innovating on mobile.<p>Their success blinded them to the fact that mobile and tablets comprised a completely different functional and experiential environment, and so they kept pushing a “Windows everywhere, Outlook everywhere” strategy that failed to create a smartphone market they initially owned, failed to take advantage of the business mobile market Blackberry created, failed to take advantage of the premium consumer mobile market Apple created, and failed to take advantage of the mass consumer mobile market Android created (despite their last bite at the mobile OS apple — so to speak — being quite good).<p>Nothing breeds failure quite like success even, evidently, in hindsight.
Somehow nobody really seems to acknowledge the real reason Android won to my mind: that it was open source. Not for end users, but for OEMs. The whole reason they were willing to unify on Android as a platform was that it allowed <i>hardware</i> differentiation and innovation in a way that Windows Phone didn't, because they could actually create their own features and add them to the OS. So of course the best hardware and the most unique features and the biggest marketing budget and most aggressive carrier deals were always going to come on Android first. Because Windows Phone nullified part of the reason for OEMs to exist in the first place. Microsoft tried to control too much of the market, I assume out of Apple-envy - something they didn't even do with windows. I don't know why they expected it to work.
> <i>In fact, Gates is still kicking himself for taking his eyes off the ball and allowing Google to develop Android, the “standard non-Apple phone form platform,” as he describes it. “That was a natural thing for Microsoft to win.”</i><p>That seems very out of touch, bordering on historic revisionism. Microsoft developed an OS for mobile devices and embedded use since around the mid 1990's, with a <i>feverish</i> desperation.<p>Mobile-Internet-capable devices running Windows CE already existed at the time Google was just starting up. I worked on these damn things that time, doing mobile networking!<p>Phones running Windows Mobile existed years before smartphones.<p>Microsoft had more than a decade head start over Google and arguably had their eyes squarely fixated on some sort of ball the whole time. It was perhaps the wrong ball.<p>The problem with the idea that it was "a natural thing for Microsoft to win" is that it basically means this: "Microsoft won the PC desktop with a garbage operating system, and so it is natural that Microsoft can go on to win in any area by flogging another garbage operating system".<p>As if it were a matter of something resembling imperial succession? The platform dominance throne "naturally" belongs to none other than the future progeny of Microsoft by divine birthright?<p>In reality, it's just luck, timing and various economic factors. Now Google dominates with their garbage platform.
Yeah, I used to think that things will crash and burn if I disappear for a week when I was younger. Truth is, not only do things not crash and burn, they in fact barely change at all if I go on a 2-3 week vacation. You think the company will land on the moon by the time you return, and then you get back and it's the same shit, barely anything has changed.<p>Nowadays, though, my friends at MS say that it's one of the best large employers to work for in terms of work life balance. They don't pay the top dollar, but there are many people who would gladly trade that for the work environment in which they can also have a life.
Back in the 90's, I thought about small computers, maybe even handhelds. But I never connected that thought with a phone.<p>It just seems so thunderingly obvious today.<p>Makes me wonder what connection I'm not making today.<p>It's like when Henry Ford said if he'd asked what people wanted, they'd want "a faster horse". We're all constrained by what we're used to thinking about, and simply improving what we're already used to.
I don't really understand what Bill Gates is getting at here.<p>Back in 2010, Android was still very clunky and sluggish. Windows Phone was sleek and fast. Both OSes allowed you to install developer tools and write software for free.<p>However, there's 2 differences that no one calls out! First, Android used Java as a way to leverage 15 years of software. Windows Phone v1 was c# only and back in 2010 no one except Stack Overflow was writing anything other than enterprise software in C#. So you literally had to write 95% of your software from the ground up.<p>Second, instead of quickly catching up, feature for feature with Apple and Android, only 2 years behind at the start, they stopped, not once, but two times to re-write their Phone OS still using the original feature set from 2010.<p>They should have 1, BENT over BACKWARDS to get every API they could and ship C++ and Java compilers. Talk to developers about what they needed to get their software written. In 2010 and 2011 there were hundreds of developers at every company that would have loved a small 20% project to bring up their software on a Windows Phone. Yet with it only allowing C#, it would have required developers 80% of their time and that was just not a reality.<p>Second, they should have continually added features and more features, and innovated on features that no one else had. 2010 still had a lot of room for owning the narrative of what a mobile device could be.<p>I don't know about you, but it frustrates me that they don't own up to their actual mistakes. It's not about the lack of companies building the apps, it's that whoever managed that Phone project was incompetent and mismanaged the whole thing. They treated it like just another 9 to 5 job with little expressed passion for winning.
<i>It really is winner take all ... There’s room for exactly one non-Apple operating system, and what’s that worth? $400 billion that would be transferred from company G [Google] to company M [Microsoft]. -- Bill Gates</i><p>Who'd have known in 2011 that by 2019, The Four Greatest Companies in the world (by cap) would be All-America [1], Microsoft would be back on top, and then combined together, they spell MAGA -- in almost perfect order too [2]...<p><pre><code> Symbol Company Cap Rank
M MSFT Microsoft 1.05 T 1
A AMZN Amazon.com 940.99 B 2
G GOOG Alphabet 779.39 B 4
A AAPL Apple 914.60 B 3
</code></pre>
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-America" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-America</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_America_Great_Again#Social_media_usage" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_America_Great_Again#Socia...</a>
Bill always suffered from "NIH" (Not Invented Here) Syndrome.<p>Google took something that worked (Linux) and prettied up the User Interface. Apple had pretty much done the same sort of thing earlier with BSD UNIX and OSX. Bill was ideologically opposed to Linux right from the start because it was Open Source.<p>Consequently, Microsoft had to do 10 times the work to achieve success that Google needed to. Google was up and running while Microsoft was still struggling along to get things to work.<p>That's probably the main reason that Google dominates smartphones and Microsoft doesn't.
I'm a Linux fanboy that hates desktop Windows with a passion.<p>However, both I and everyone I know that has ever used a Windows phone (there were several of us at work) absolutely loved the platform when compared to Android and iPhone. I'm running a top end Google phone and still missing my Nokia Lumia Windows Phone. That phone had a great OS and was Rock solid.<p>The problem was nobody wanted to give it a try. The hardware looked bad, but it honestly didn't need to be as good as Android as it wasn't as bloated. This is somewhat anecdotal, but dual core Windows Phone7 ran smoother than quad core Android at the time.
All users of windows phone I know liked it, some outright loved it. It got a number of design decisions right.<p>Lumia hardware was good, and the camera was more than excellent. Software was lacking but it could be improved to maturity.<p>Too bad we now have two players and not three or four (blackberry). This is indeed not because of lack of engineering prowess or customer interest.
I thought in 2007 and I still think today the fundamental reason why there was space for the iPhone to be the phenomenon it was is that
1) The success of the iPod let them dictate terms to AT&T and get subsidies no one else could while keeping the customer experience clean in a way competitors couldn't (US phones had an unbelievable amount of crapware in the mid 00s, including great ideas like flashing the firmware to prevent camera phones from transferring photos over USB and forcing you to use a carrier service that covost $1/photo)
2) Microsoft's antitrust hangover prevented their mobile department from strong arming carriers earlier on<p>Microsoft's real mistake post iPhone release (and definitely post Android release) was not immediately making Windows phone free, OSS would have been nice, but I think most manufacturers moved to Android as their flagship because they got it free.
Sounds to me like the antitrust actions were effective.<p>The world would <i>not</i> be a better place if MS had overwhelming mobile market share or had won the browser wars.
> You know, in the software world, in particular for platforms, these are winner-take-all markets. So, you know, the greatest mistake ever is the whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is, [meaning] Android is the standard non-Apple phone form platform. That was a natural thing for Microsoft to win.<p>Perfectly in character for Gates to see the mistake as failure to enter the market with the copycat product rather than the product that creates an entirely new category.<p>I suppose the world needs people like this, but by golly there's no reason for them to get any more than acknowledgement for being one of many players.<p>If Microsoft had a history of doing things right consistently in the copycat position, that might be different. But as a generally mediocre player wielding a monopoly position to follow the technological lead of others Microsoft is really quite uninspiring.
I think one of his biggest mistakes was fighting so hard against the DoJ wanting to break up the company into separate App and Sys companies -- not that the lawsuit was justified (and being all but moot by the time it was settled), but that it would have been a good thing for the company, forcing more healthy and creative interactions and acting as a new model for 3rd-party interaction.<p>As noted, MS was early to research and market in several areas including tablets and mobile, but either lacked a creativity escape velocity or quit just before hardware was up to the task, then failing at a restart. As someone who has spent their early career creating voice recognition products, it's also frustrating that they were so far ahead with speech reco (hiring the CMU peeps, many versions of SAPI, etc.) and then totally failing to do anything interesting with it at the OS and app level. If not mobile, MS should have been first for in-home voice assistant devices. (My and others' protestations for multi-modal or voice-only devices landed on deaf ears.)<p>As for Windows Phone, not allowing Silverlight apps to load/run on it from the web was a horrible decision, as this would have allowed u/x experiences that were years away from happening in the mobile browser.<p>Personally, I miss the T-Mobile Sidekick and the Blackberry Curve devices -- really all you need is Select, ExecuteThis and ContextMenuThis to do everything -- I was disappointed when Android gave up on the context menu. However, Android is still leagues better than iOS where every app is an adventure game.<p>[disclaimer: my first stint at MS was during the aforementioned time from '90-95.)
I briefly had a Nokia Lumia 920 running Windows 8 Mobile, and I loved it... except for the apps. I otherwise really liked the device, the UI, the overall user experience. It was a nice alternative to the multiple iPhones I'd owned up to that point.<p>I've now been an Android user (Nexus 5, Moto X Pure, Nokia 6.1 Plus) for a few years. I've never been quite satisfied with the platform and the various quirks of the phones I've owned. Everytime the iPhone SE's make their way back to Apple's refurb site I almost purchase one for myself and my wife. I wish Windows Mobile had managed to generate enough interest and gravity to sustain as a viable alternative.
That’s a bit like saying “I wish I had had the idea for a search engine before Google, then I would have been the next Google.” It doesn’t work like that in business.<p>You could have given Microsoft everything they needed to dominate in mobile and they still would have screwed it up because of the Microsoft mentality back then. Even after iPhone came out, Ballmer famously said iPhones were stupid.
Everybody eventually will make a graveyard mistake as you really just can't win all the time. It's just part of the cycle isn't it? Steve Ballmer was on the path to destroy Microsoft, and they were very lucky to have found Satya Nadella before it became all too late. He's truly their savior.
> In fact, Gates is still kicking himself for taking his eyes off the ball and allowing Google to develop Android<p>And those in Google are probably also kicking themselves for taking their eyes off the ball and allowing Oracle to acquire Sun
> You know, in the software world, in particular for platforms, these are winner-take-all markets. ...There’s room for exactly one non-Apple operating system<p>Would there be a general rule here that he is not thinking of? The general rule being that there is only room for 1 closed-source platform?<p>I can imagine that the winner of the closed-source platform race will be the team that doesn't take vacations of weekends, but does the same hold for the open source alternative platform? It seems to me that speed is less essential in the open source world and that it's more of a long-term battle.
Microsoft owned the smartphone market with CE, once palm went under. But they let it languish. You can see this happening today with Google's decisions to pull out of tablets, and close a number of products.
Actually I expected this to be about his current activities. What would be his largest mistake with respect to effective altruism?<p>A mistake there is about the life or death of thousands of people. Maybe more.
Now that Android is what it's become my biggest disappointment with Microsoft is that Nadella killed Windows Phone. Having used Android for close to two years now it blows my mind how bad Android UX is, given it's age, and how insanely good Windows Phone was, given IT'S age.<p>Not even starting to talk about the privacy side of it.
MS is still making the mistake of not pushing the Laptop-Tablet combo device. The "Surface Pro" series are ideal for merging Laptop+Tablet+Phone devices. In this day and age, i do NOT want to carry three devices but NEED a multi-functional device.
Another huge mistake was they tried to incentivize app development instead of good app development. There were good apps on the windows phone, but it had so much rubbish the good apps were hard to find.
Feels like there is an opportunity cost to not have time off early on in your life. Even if you somehow end up a billionaire later, you can't get your twenties and early thirties back.
With android we can at
least replace few parts, and get a functional unix terminal even without root. If you can degoogle and / or root, android is great.<p>And BillG didn't deserve it...
This is disturbing. One of the wealthiest and most successful businessmen in the world is still beating himself up about missing out on one important market, mobile phones.<p>That is strange, but what is most disturbing is how he is utterly certain that Microsoft deserved to have that market, that it would be better if Microsoft dominated that market as well, and that Microsoft missed out on that market because of high-level managerial errors, not because people didn't like Windows phone.
Ugh. This is somehow going to get translated into “vacation = failure” and thats a tragedy. Im used to a culture of 2 weeks max a year because thats whats legally required, and that amount of time gives you no time to reflect, no time to relax, and little time to come up with unique ways to solve problems. I really hope this was taken out of context.
His greatest mistake was allowing UX and quality of the windows platform to descend into the plague that it was for the better part of 2 decades. I can't imagine a world where my phone were as unreliable and vulnerable as, say, windows Vista.