Speaking of Paul Graham, his latest essay is as entertaining as any...
Microsoft saw the danger of Javascript and tried to keep it broken for as long as they could. But eventually the open source world won, by producing Javascript libraries that grew over the brokenness of Explorer the way a tree grows over barbed wire...The surprising fact is, brilliant hackers—dangerously brilliant hackers—can be had very cheaply, by the standards of a company as rich as Microsoft. So if they wanted to be a contender again, this is how they could do it:
I feel safe suggesting this, because they'd never do it. Microsoft's biggest weakness is that they still don't realize how much they suck. They still think they can write software in house. Maybe they can, by the standards of the desktop world. But that world ended a few years ago.
- Buy all the good "Web 2.0" startups. They could get substantially all of them for less than they'd have to pay for Facebook.
- Put them all in a building in Silicon Valley, surrounded by lead shielding to protect them from any contact with Redmond.
I already know what the reaction to this essay will be...