Liminal states

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Comments

1. jon | 29-Dec-07 at 7:12 pm | Permalink

   Interestingly, this got picked up quickly in Seattle Times’ Tech Tracks, where Benjamin Romano comments

   I was surprised that Mini — whose blog has been a rare unfiltered window into the company — gave thumbs up to the info lockdown that has emerged in the Windows division.

2. jon | 30-Dec-07 at 2:44 pm | Permalink

   Here’s the comment I put in the thread:

   Welcome back, Mini. Good luck with the duct tape. And great topic!

   I agree with most of your points, with the exception of “translucency”. Your own blog’s an example of how futile it is for Microsoft to try to control information; and the security team and Devdiv have shown that in the right climate, transparency doesn’t result in leaks. Conversely there are huge costs when you tell your employees that the default is “you shouldn’t talk about it”. There was an excellent article a few months ago discussing how Microsoft’s increasing manipulation of its messages to the blogosphere both reinforces the “evil empire” perception. Just as importantly, a control-based approach sends a continuous message to employees that “we don’t trust your judgment” — and creates a chilling effect for discussions in general, because in a low-trust climate, a desire to control external messages invariably leads to internal secrecy.

   In terms of MS as the evil empire, I agree with the commenters that this is something that looks very differently inside and outside Microsoft — most people I talk to see the OOXML fiasco as a lot worse than anything IBM did with ODF. On the whole, though, I think Microsoft has made some good strides in getting to a less-evil image, especially among what they so charmingly refer to as “the elites”. This is a place where Google has really helped — since most people perceive them as both more competent and less subject to government scrutiny (for example, in the privacy space it’s Microsoft that’s under a consent decree with the FTC, not Google), they’re increasingly viewed as more of a threat.

   Which leads me to one of the most important things I think is going well: unlike a lot of its competitors Microsoft avoided any high-profile privacy or security fiascos this year. The security differences are most glaring in the OS space, where Apple now appears to be roughly where MIcrosoft was in early 2002 — before the “security push” (where they shut down development for two months to focus on security) and XPSP2. In terms of privacy, Microsoft’s far from perfect, the attention they’ve given to this starting in the aftermath of the WMP “phone home” fiasco several years ago means that they’ve got a substantial advantage. Conversely, Facebook’s Beacon and Google’s Reader show that these other companies still don’t get it. With MoveOn.org’s involvement with Beacon, candidates like Ron Paul putting civil liberties on the table as a campaign issue, and the do-not-track registry proposal, privacy’s likely to get a lot of attention this year, so hopefully Microsoft can leverage its advantage more strategically than in the past.

   Thinking about this more, and looking at some of the other wrap-up posts, I think I’ll kick off a thread on a topic nobody seems to be paying a lot of attention to: opportunities for Microsoft in 2008.