A time machine, not a deal with Yahoo, would be what Microsoft needs if it really wants to beat Google.
What if Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson hadn’t completely screwed up his end of US v Microsoft eight years ago, and Microsoft ended up being broken into separate companies developing its Windows operating system and its Office productivity suite? Could it be Microsoft, in its hubris, missed an opportunity to be more of a nimble innovator by virtue of keeping its massive corporate body in one piece?
Tech pundit Robert X Cringely thinks the Microsoft that could have emerged after a breakup would have been much more capable of responding to the threat of the Internet. Without the twin monoliths of Office and Windows holding back people working on web solutions, maybe Microsoft swung through a golden opportunity without making contact:
Really, Microsoft should be 4 or 5 companies — separate entities for the OS, applications, Web, mobile, and enterprise. I think we’d start to see actual innovation coming out of Redmond again, instead of the stuff you get out of a can. Wake me when that happens.
Imagine if the MSN/Live team had been able to build up and out without the demands of Windows and Internet Explorer clinging to its every move. Perhaps what they list as accomplishments today, especially on the search side, could have been achieved years earlier.
Maybe Microsoft, not Yahoo, could have been the ones tasked with coming up with a billion or three to buy Google, back when Terry Semel chose not to pursue it years ago. Or would a Microsoft deal for Google have served to hinder things like the arrival of Gmail with its fat 1GB of storage?
We’ll never really know.
