successful as its rival's, and Redmond's -> successful as its rivals', and Redmond's
Microsoft's canceled 'Project Brazil' took aim at Amazon, eBay
Microsoft recently considered building its own online marketplace to compete with the likes of Amazon and eBay, but has since abandoned the plans, sources claim. The effort, known within Redmond as "Project Brazil", would have seen the company create an e-commerce hub that would have played host to a variety of retailers and …
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Friday 21st June 2013 06:22 GMT Fred Flintstone
It strikes me that Windows has turned from Microsoft's major selling point into a potential boat anchor on anything they touch. They have bought in some seriously good products over time (Visio, for example), and instead of enhancing the product and learning lessons from them they butchered looks, functionality and eventually relevance to any business.
For Microsoft's sake I hope they will eventually learn that the best customer is one that WANTS to buy a product, not one that buys the product because they are not left with a choice. I know that is a different mindset, but seeing just how much gets ruined in the pursuit of client lock-in and how much value gets lost in the process I think it's a lesson that MS needs to learn urgently.
That is, if the man at the top lets it happen. As long as Ballmer is afraid of his own shadow instead of knowing that it's pretty much irrelevant what anyone can do in his management team given his boatload of shares I fear the only way is down. That wouldn't make me sorry for the company as such, but there are a lot of people whose livelihood is associated with the company - and that *does* matter.
Building ecommerce is IMHO a classic example of a need to play nice with others - interoperability (remember that magic word from when the Internet started?) is critical if you want others to join..
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