Microsoft Corp. issued a surprise press release this morning announcing that the company had “performed an illegal operation and would be shut down.” Company executives refused to provide further information regarding the cause of the unexpected shutdown, only issuing a cryptic error number of $00038FF577 and advising all interested parties to “contact their system administrator.”
Microsoft stock fell 100% on the news (NASDAQ: MSFT), while shares in everything else were up dramatically. The news came as a surprise to industry analysts, most of whom had expected Microsoft to complete its hostile takeover of USA Government, Inc., a move widely regarded as a strategic necessity for the company.
Over the last half decade, Microsoft has struggled in its efforts to sell products directly to consumers. Acquiring USA was widely expected allow the software giant to pass legislation that would simply require citizens to purchase Microsoft products or face deportation.
Once liberated from a competitive marketplace, the company was expected to save around $10 billion every year in unnecessary advertising, research and development, engineering, support costs, and legal expenses.
Analyst Retention Uncertain, Doubts Feared.
Company historian Paul Thurrott said the news came as “a big surprise,” adding, “you know, sales shouldn't make a difference, and I really don't know what the problem is. I mean, things were going great. It's just not like Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates to walk away from failure. I don't get it. Seriously, they might not make the best products, but people have no other choice, really. Look at the market share of Apple. It's like less than 2%, and most of that comes from the iPod.”
Rob Enderle, principle analyst of the Rob Enderle Total Analysis Research Division, was unavailable for comment. Also unavailable were TechNewsWorld and MacNewsWorld, two web news sites that frequently cite the RETARD's analysis on Microsoft. Enderle formerly wrote columns on the sites, which now return 404 errors in Spanish.
A message left on the RETARD's answering machine simply stated that “RETARD no longer comments on Microsoft because the company no longer pays me for my analysis services.”
Vendors Make Other Plans.
The sudden departure of Microsoft from the tech industry was widely expected to have disastrous results for vendors and end users dependent upon the company's products. However, those initial fears turned out to be more of a non-event than the anti-climatic crisis of Y2K.
At CompUSA in downtown San Francisco, a store manager reports, “nobody noticed that [Windows] Vista was on sale anyway, so there wasn't a problem taking it off the shelves. We now have more room for software that sells. The biggest problem will be figuring out what to do with all of these Xbox 360s that have sat on the floor since October. If we ever get any PS3 or Wii units, we’re going to need that space.”
Retail sales of Windows made up for less than 20% of Microsoft's operating system software revenues; the vast majority was sold bundled on new PCs by OEMs such as Dell and HP.
Sources close to Dell said the company was “relieved to find it could now stop recommending Microsoft Windows,” and would begin distributing Linux instead. The company expects investment in Linux to accelerate dramatically, now that users are allowed to obtain it on new PCs.
The Industry’s Reaction.
Scott McNealy, chairman of Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: SUNW) and long time critic of Microsoft, organized a worldwide network of parties celebrating the news. “There's a pendulum thing where stuff is on the client side and then goes back into the network where it belongs. Sun is the network,” he explained, adding “now Windows is off the network, so it's just Sun, and Sun is the network, all networked together, like the sun.”
McNealy wasn't alone in celebrating the withdrawal of Microsoft from the tech industry. Apple (NASDAQ: APPL) CEO Steve Jobs issued a statement saying, “With the stunning global success of Apple’s iPod music player and iTunes online music store, Apple's share of the music player market will jump another 2% following the withdrawal of Microsoft and the Zune player. We think that's great, and it says a lot about the power of delivering good products with beauty and culture.”
“You know,” Jobs continued, “ten years ago, we said ‘for Apple to win, Apple has to do a good job,’ and before that, we said, ‘we have to let go of the idea that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose.’ In the last several years, we proved that. We worked hard, delivered good products, added culture to our products. You know, like fonts and typography and ligatures, which come from beautiful books. Well, we proved that Apple could win. So when we see Microsoft going away, it doesn't mean all that much in the long run, because there will always be competition in the industry. In fact, we think there will be more competition. It won't be as beautiful as Apple or have as much culture, but it will be competition. We could say it will be second rate products out there instead of third rate stuff, because Microsoft, well they just delivered third rate products.”
Customers Ponder an Open Future.
The news had little impact among IT professionals at major corporations. “We're still using Windows 2000,” reported the IT Director of First Major Bank. “Microsoft wasn't supporting it anyway. It's like owning a Hudson. You don't need the manufacture to stay in business if you have a garage and a lot of time to devote to maintaining your classic car. It's not like we were going to migrate to Vista. 'Ohh, look our bank has Flip 3D so tellers can shuffle through the terminal sessions like they're a 3D deck of cards,' I mean, who cares? We'll probably migrate to Linux at some point.”
Others were relieved. “We were facing huge upgrade costs involved with rolling out Office 2007, just to be compatible with LA down south. Now we don't have to,” reports the technical lead for the city and county of San Francisco. “Screw LA. Everybody knew there wasn’t any substance in Office 2007, just hella pretentious decoration and fast fashion. Just like LA, dog.”
PC World advised Windows users to just carry on with what they were doing, and “pretend that Microsoft had just delayed Vista another couple years. There really isn't anything wrong with the XP you already have installed on your PC.”
The greatest disappointment came from the nearly six million users of Xbox 360 video consoles. Nearly a quarter had mailed their units in for repairs, and there's no word if those units will ever be replaced or refunded.
“This is unbelievable,” one gamer said. “I got by 360 in the middle of 2006, and have mailed it back four times. Now they're out of business? I'm going to have to cut back on my Wii playing and put in extra hours just so I can afford a PlayStation 3. This totally sucks. I’m glad I didn’t buy a Zune.”
Others weren’t so lucky. Tens of thousands of consumers bought the device, only to find that its true potential would never be unlocked by future firmware updates, just like an equally large population who had purchased devices running Windows Mobile 4.0, only to find that Windows Mobile 5.0 waved backward compatibility goodbye.
What does Microsoft’s shutdown mean for Redmond, Washington? “Oh, we’ll get by,” one resident reported. We’re all millionaires, it’s not like we need the work. And Nintendo, we still have that.”
With 30,000 new employees, Nintendo of America (other OTC: NTDOY) hopes to now be able to assemble enough Wii game consoles to meet demand. Production has already doubled.
Daniel Eran Dilger reports for RoughlyDrafted Magazine in San Francisco.
The writer owns shares of Microsoft.
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