Why didnt Microsoft die?
Microsofts ability to thrive despite doing almost everything wrong might be a heartening saga about corporate reinvention. Or it may be a distressing demonstration of how monopolies are extremely hard to kill. Or maybe its a little of both. Ultimately, the angst about Big Tech in 2021  the antitrust lawsuits, the proposed new laws and the shouting  boils down to a debate about whether the hallmark of our digital lives is a dynamism that drives progress, or whether we actually have dynasties. Let me go back to Microsofts dark days, which arguably stretched from the mid-2000s to 2014. They were weirdly not that bad. Yes, Microsoft was so uncool that the company was roasted in Apple television ads and many people in the tech industry wanted nothing to do with it. The company failed to make a popular search engine, tried in vain to compete with Google in digital advertising and had little success selling its own smartphone operating systems or devices. And yet, even in the saddest years at Microsoft, the company made oodles of money. In 2013, the year that Steve Ballmer was semi-pushed to retire as CEO, the company generated far more profit before taxes and some other costs  more than $27 billion  than Amazon did in 2020. No matter how much Microsofts software might have stunk  and a lot of it did  many businesses still needed to buy Windows computers, Microsofts email and document software and its technology to run powerful back-end computers called servers. Microsoft used those much-needed products as leverage to branch into new and profitable business lines, including software that replaced conventional corporate telephone systems, databases and file-storage systems. Microsoft wasnt always good in those years, but it did pretty well. And more recently, Microsoft shifted from treading water to being both financially successful and relevant in cutting-edge technologies. On the healthy side of the ledger, Microsoft did at least one big thing right: cloud computing, which is one of the most important technologies of the past 15 years. That and a culture change were the foundations that morphed Microsoft from winning despite its strategy and products to winning because of them. This is the kind of corporate turnaround that we should want. Ill also say that Microsoft is different from its Big Tech peers in a way that might have made it more resilient. Businesses, not individuals, are Microsofts customers and technology sold to organisations doesnt necessarily need to be good to win. I dont have definitive answers, and size and power dont guarantee that a company can weather many mistakes and stay relevant. But a lot of the drama and fighting about technology in 2021 hinge on those questions. Maybe Google search, Amazon shopping and Facebooks ads are incredibly great. Or maybe we simply cant imagine better alternatives because powerful companies dont need to be great to keep winning.  2021 The New York Times Company