After 25+ years at Microsoft, I can tell you why Windows was neglected
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Windows 11
I wrote in the article I spent 25+ years at Microsoft, and Windows is getting the care it deserves again about how Windows evolved over the years, and that Microsoft said it’s putting more effort into it again; CEO Satya Nadella said it’s getting a new focus. From the comments, it’s clear that at least some readers don’t believe them.
Microsoft would not exist today if it hadn’t been for Windows, but it’s no surprise that the relative importance of such a core product has dimmed as other parts of the company grew.
Nobody buys Windows these days, for the most part. The spectacle of computer stores opening at midnight to sell Windows 95 to queues of expectant buyers hasn’t happened since. If you buy a new PC, it will likely come with Windows 11 pre-installed and inevitably the OEM will be paying some amount back to Microsoft to license the OS.
If you’re building your own PC from scratch, maybe you’d decide to shell out £120 (in the UK) for the Home edition, or £220 if you need some of the extra Pro goodness (assuming you’re not just going to use Linux; while that might be increasingly viable for techies, it’s a small percentage of the overall market). Maybe there are good numbers of people paying to upgrade up to Pro from the Home edition shipped with a new PC, but I bet the number of people buying a full, discrete license of Windows 11 is vanishingly small.
Traditionally, Microsoft made most of its Windows revenue from those OEMs selling it pre-installed on new PCs, or from enterprises who will license the Windows Pro/Enterprise desktop as part of a larger package. Many companies will have Microsoft 365 which includes Office apps and services, security suites and Windows client licenses, all built in. They might even buy Windows 365, meaning the whole thing is running in Microsoft’s datacenters, and they remotely access the machines.
“Which of your children do you love the most?”
In a large company like Microsoft (or Apple, Alphabet/Google, Amazon etc), investment in product and attention from executives tends to go on where they see growth opportunities and where they fear competitive threats. Throughout the company’s growth, the darling products will change – from Apple being the Mac company to the iPhone, Google Cloud becoming almost a fifth of the company, and Microsoft moving on from its Windows & Office duopoly to other areas. Some products or services will receive out-of-proportion investment because of the feeling of strategic importance – see all the $billions being poured into AI datacenters in the hope that there will be a payback in coming years.
Money that’s classed as R&D will be spent on current products, but is really just to improve current products with new features. Most technology companies will also have investment into research that one day may pay off, such as quantum computing.
Microsoft Research has a variety of long-term projects, pursuits that don’t actively develop a current product, but they’re there for the future. Technologies like fonts (remember ClearType?), handwriting and speech recognition have been developed in labs for decades but weren’t really about building a specific product. Measuring RoI on any kind of “pure research” is hard, as is the nearer term stuff that will just make things better.
Putting (say) an extra $1Bn into Windows development isn’t going to double its user base or meaningfully prevent existing users from replacing their PC with something else....