5 ms·

DVDs are on their way out and streaming is now in and he's putting all his efforts into the streaming business. What if Microsoft did something similar? What

DVDs are on their way out and streaming is now in and he's putting all his efforts into the streaming business. What if Microsoft did something similar? What if the CEO in 1998 put all his efforts and attention into the Web? Results for Microsoft might have been much better.

Triumvark 15y ago
> DVDs are on their way out... Streaming has a unique disadvantage: you have to haggle with each individual content owner. Yes, it's cheaper to move bits than stuff. Much. But licensing is a pricey hassle. It's a huge part of the comparison, and as content owners get savvy, it will only get more expensive over time. This should be a signal of how much more right we got the law with physical media. We all want DVDs to be dead, sure. But DVDs would die tomorrow if we just set up an obligatory licensing scheme for this sort of content. If you distribute a movie, Netflix should be allowed to stream it, and pay you a fair statutory fee. (This isn't some a radical new idea or some Communist scheme, it's basically how radio stations work.) Until the law is fixed, DVDs will stick around, lingering on.
- nirvdrum 15y ago
  Maybe the HN crew wants DVDs to die. But none of my non-technical family has any problem with DVDs. They work in just about everything. They're easy to lend out. They're easy to find (both in stores and when sitting on a shelf in your house). For my part, I still prefer DVDs because I actually like owning the disc. But more than that, I have a 25 Mbps FiOS connection and somehow at least once a week when I'm streaming something, Netflix dynamically changes the quality. It's more annoying than skipping due to scratch discs and the quality comes out terribly. I have no idea if Verizon's playing games, but as long as ISPs lose out with streaming media, I wouldn't want to bank on that business. I'm not looking forward to a world without physical media where content providers and ISPs can dick us around with arbitrary pricing for content.
  - melvinram 15y ago
    That's why I like iTunes, particularly now that they allow TV shows to be redownloaded so now I don't have to worry about using up a ton of space.
    - LordLandon 15y ago
      And what happens when Apple decides to (or is forced to) stop offering those shows for re-download? It's still a "licence" for you to be able to download them, not the same as physically owning a copy. (though slightly better, since you can just not delete the videos, and store them yourself)
cookiecaper 15y ago
Microsoft is perhaps the most business-savvy major tech company around. I for one am glad that we didn't have this kind of disaster back then -- Microsoft has always recognized and capitalized on its bread and butter: Windows and Office. These two are the workhorses, the crown jewels in the Microsoft empire, and almost everything else that Microsoft does is centered on strengthening the positions of these two cash cows. Splitting these into a separate entity would have been utterly ridiculous. Again, Windows and Office are and always have been the lifeblood of Microsoft. You really think they should have decided to let someone else make all of that money in 1998 and retooled their whole business to keep only Hotmail? I think that would have been disastrous for MS.
- va_coder 15y ago
  Fact is, investors think differently. All you need to do is look at the stock price. Not to mention the diminished role MS has with developer mindshare. Obviously, Windows is a great cash cow and I'm not saying they should have spun it off. I'm saying a VP should have taken responsibility for it and the CEO should have focused most of his/her energy on the Web.

Triumvark 15y ago

> DVDs are on their way out... Streaming has a unique disadvantage: you have to haggle with each individual content owner. Yes, it's cheaper to move bits than stuff. Much. But licensing is a pricey hassle. It's a huge part of the comparison, and as content owners get savvy, it will only get more expensive over time. This should be a signal of how much more right we got the law with physical media. We all want DVDs to be dead, sure. But DVDs would die tomorrow if we just set up an obligatory licensing scheme for this sort of content. If you distribute a movie, Netflix should be allowed to stream it, and pay you a fair statutory fee. (This isn't some a radical new idea or some Communist scheme, it's basically how radio stations work.) Until the law is fixed, DVDs will stick around, lingering on.

nirvdrum 15y ago
Maybe the HN crew wants DVDs to die. But none of my non-technical family has any problem with DVDs. They work in just about everything. They're easy to lend out. They're easy to find (both in stores and when sitting on a shelf in your house). For my part, I still prefer DVDs because I actually like owning the disc. But more than that, I have a 25 Mbps FiOS connection and somehow at least once a week when I'm streaming something, Netflix dynamically changes the quality. It's more annoying than skipping due to scratch discs and the quality comes out terribly. I have no idea if Verizon's playing games, but as long as ISPs lose out with streaming media, I wouldn't want to bank on that business. I'm not looking forward to a world without physical media where content providers and ISPs can dick us around with arbitrary pricing for content.
- melvinram 15y ago
  That's why I like iTunes, particularly now that they allow TV shows to be redownloaded so now I don't have to worry about using up a ton of space.
  - LordLandon 15y ago
    And what happens when Apple decides to (or is forced to) stop offering those shows for re-download? It's still a "licence" for you to be able to download them, not the same as physically owning a copy. (though slightly better, since you can just not delete the videos, and store them yourself)

cookiecaper 15y ago

Microsoft is perhaps the most business-savvy major tech company around. I for one am glad that we didn't have this kind of disaster back then -- Microsoft has always recognized and capitalized on its bread and butter: Windows and Office. These two are the workhorses, the crown jewels in the Microsoft empire, and almost everything else that Microsoft does is centered on strengthening the positions of these two cash cows. Splitting these into a separate entity would have been utterly ridiculous. Again, Windows and Office are and always have been the lifeblood of Microsoft. You really think they should have decided to let someone else make all of that money in 1998 and retooled their whole business to keep only Hotmail? I think that would have been disastrous for MS.

va_coder 15y ago
Fact is, investors think differently. All you need to do is look at the stock price. Not to mention the diminished role MS has with developer mindshare. Obviously, Windows is a great cash cow and I'm not saying they should have spun it off. I'm saying a VP should have taken responsibility for it and the CEO should have focused most of his/her energy on the Web.