Microsoft Microsoft: 'We're the underdogs now' [Admits Users Are Disappointed with Windows 8]

[vissha]

Exclusive: Frank Shaw tells us how Microsoft plans to claw back the market in 2013

Talking to Frank Shaw, it seems that Microsoft is starting 2013 in combative mode. "If I'm going to have a party with my Facebook friends, it looks like a lot of fun. I have a lot of Facebook friends. And then a

party with my Google+ friends, I could probably have in a rowboat…" says Microsoft's comms chief (full job title: corporate vice president, corporate communications).

Microsoft could reasonably take a breather this year after the effort of shipping Windows 8 and Windows Phone and refreshing almost its entire product line in 2012. That, however, is not the plan. Shaw gives us a few hints about the coming year – and some clues to understanding Microsoft's wider strategy. "2013 is going to be a big year," he promises. "Yes, we shipped a bunch of stuff in 2012 but there's more coming."

"We've got some new stuff coming from Bing that is interesting and provocative and continues to move the needle in terms of how people think about search. And you have the work that we are doing with Skype. The move of Office to the cloud, Office as a subscription service for consumers and all the things that come with that; it's a big deal. And with Xbox we have more we're going to do. We're certainly not done with thinking about the living room and we'll have more to say about that as the year goes through."

Into the Blue?

One criticism of Microsoft is that it's failed to produce an integrated product line like Google's, and has consequently fallen behind. That is an issue that 2013 will address, says Shaw. "Across Windows and Windows Phone there is this entire ecosystem that really has received a jolt of adrenaline. We always think about the launch of Windows as the starting line.

"There's more new hardware, there's more new applications, you see momentum in the app store, people are starting to look at it and say, 'Wow, that's pretty cool. I can do things with it I couldn't do before and now I'm going to experiment and bring new things in.' I think you'll see a ton of that over the next year."

Unsurprisingly, he wouldn't give us any specifics about Windows Blue (the possible codename for Windows 9) or even if we'll see new versions of Windows more frequently. "I don't know that I have anything new to say there. You have certainly seen across a variety of our products a cadence that

looks like that; Windows Phone is a good for example of that. When we're ready to talk about how that looks more broadly we will, but right now you just have to look at what we've done in those areas."

Improving by jumps

But more frequent updates (something Microsoft is also doing with services like Bing and SkyDrive) wouldn't mean only getting incremental improvements and sacrificing big innovations, he maintains. "It's like this concept of punctuated equilibrium. You get a series of improvements and then you have to find a way of punctuating them and having a jump, and then you start that improvement cycle again. You have to plan for both.

"Sometimes those jumps are enabled by new hardware capability or by new demand that we see in the marketplace or something that we want to create. You have to think really carefully about how you

consistently improve the product that you have, and how do you make that big jump forward and when you make that big jump forward, how do you do it in a way that is not discontinuous with your users."

In those terms, Windows 8 is one of the big jumps forward (and opinion is obviously divided on the discontinuity part). "It is a significant shift. Windows over time has improved in really significant ways;

Windows 8 is a jump in terms of the touch-first focus and some of the new platform elements. So you make that jump and you start that drive again to make it better, make it better, make it better… More apps, more hardware, more functionality built in.

"But there's always this moment when you make the jump and everybody looks at that and says 'that

makes me nervous' or 'that change is hard'. We certainly see some of that as well. But we're committed to building not just for the next month but for the next 18 months, 36 months - whatever the time is on

this new platform."

With the Windows interface still highly disputed, we wondered whether a future version of Windows might change the controversial elements. "I think when you are asking people to learn new things, whether it's Start or the ribbon in Office, you have to be committed to your course. But being committed to your course also means you continue to take input and feedback and react to it the appropriate ways.

"When you have as many users as we do, you get phenomenal feedback. [sometimes] they say how much they love you! And then some of it is feedback like, 'Jeez, have you thought about this?' Sometimes we have thought about it and sometimes we should take a look at what we can do in that specific case. We don't ever want to say we're not taking feedback any more."

The amount of feedback Microsoft has been getting about Windows 8 is a question of scale, he points out. "The thing that people miss sometimes: we sold 60 million licenses to Windows users and if 1 per cent of those users are disgruntled in some way, that's a big overall number. The beauty of the world today is that everybody has a voice. In the past some of those conversations took place for any product but they weren't visible. And now we live in this transparent world where everything is visible and people with a concern can express it very loudly. And that's good! It's good to have input - but you always have to calibrate. Is this universal input, is this an edge case? How do we think about this? All our products have many, many users and so we get lots and lots of feedback that we have to judge."

Taking on Google

One thing we'll definitely see more of this year is Microsoft giving Google a hard time. It's no accident that Shaw calls new developments in Bing "provocative". Remember the

video? "There are places where we are underdogs," he says. "And we're either real underdogs, as we are in Bing, or we're perceptual underdogs. There are people out there who think we are not doing as well as we

are."

Being the underdog forces Microsoft to innovate: "If you have an entrenched market leader like Google is in search and you have a different point of view, you have to break through on that.

"And you can't just break through against people who already use you; you have to break through against people who use the other guy. And to do that have to say why you are different and why you are better. And that also means that you have to be willing to be more comparative in how you do that. You've seen that with the Bing it on Google challenge. We know that when people do this in a blind test that they like what we've done and we have to break the habit that people have built up and show them

there is a different way."

And that's where the Google+ rowboat comes in: "There's the work we've done with Facebook and real social search." Facebook chose Bing over Google when choosing a search partner for its new Graph Search, and Facebook is where you probably have your real friends, Shaw suggests - and rather more of them than on Google+. (Although he notes, "Google is working very hard to pull people into that Google+ ecosystem. They are committed to getting people to sign up to that thing…")

Will we get more of the self-deprecating Internet Explorer ads? "The best thing about the Internet Explorer ads is reading the comments and the stories. It was like, 'Are we paying these people to make these comments? Because they are making our point way better than we did.' We were not. People liked it and they responded to it."

A refreshed MS

It's not just that the ads are funny. It's that they show how Microsoft has changed. "The thing is - we have learned some lessons. Every company makes mistakes, every single company in the world. We aspire to be a learning company. We look at decisions we made and they might have been good decisions at the time but they weren't over time the right decisions and we say we're going to do it differently. IE is a great example of that."

Not everyone takes those changes at face value, leading to some interesting gymnastics as supporters of the open web find themselves on the same side as Microsoft. "I think it's interesting that we are advocates of the open web and people are like 'huh?' People are having some trouble with that but it's true. People should be willing to accept we're doing this because we've learned and we've grown and it's good for everybody."

Is it frustrating for Microsoft to do the right thing and still have people be suspicious? "It's understandable. Perceptions change over time. We've been pretty consistent and hopefully people will look at us in what we're doing and not necessarily why they think we might doing that."

Source: TechRadar

[xpmule]

Windows 8 was the tipping point for me.. i don't like the direction Microsoft is moving in.

In the future i will be jumping ship / I've spent long periods of time using linux and eventually that will be home i think.

Unifying a OS platform for multiple hardware like they are doing is not smart. it's like being a jack of all trades, master of none.

People can't tell me they are not cutting corners for broad compatibility across devices.

This is a trend among many that MS has jumped on the band wagon.. esentially pandering to the loweset common denominator.

Just like the all the Cloud crap.. another dumb trend pushed hard everywhere.

I'm an advanced computer user and i don't feel any Microsoft product or services are designed with me in mind.

I'm not sure they ever were but it sure as hell seems like they are focusing on the dumb family members i have that "Facbook" etc

When windows 8 came out the first thing i wondered was are they gonna support officialy turning off Metro ?

Nope instead they got sued for a name they failed to google search.. Advanced users want options.

The next thing i wanted to know was how many services are there.. how many new ones ?

ONE guy said it would me no fifference to performance and i said do you want me to disable some and run a benchmark ?

Funny how i have never seen one person bring up that issue. I can't possibly be the only one who noticed that every windows release

increases the total and the work we have to do to figure out what they all do..

I'm not going to convince people to dislike windows 8 but if i'm asked i will have a massive list of problems to bring up in detail about win 8.

Anyway it's too late.. as far as I'm concerned the damage is done and i have no reason to think MS will change course.

the things that bother me about them on every major release just increase to higher levels and its not gonna get any better.

And i think i have a right to be mad about it because i was a supporter and i'm typing this on windows.

They left me behind and gave me the finger simple as that.. so why should I support them anymore ?

[NomNom]

I honestly don't understand why they don't just listen to their customers, if the customers want the start back then put it back, it's that simple and get rid of all that tile shit, if I wanted that I would get a tablet.

[MidnightDistortions]

Window 8 was a slap in the face. A big one. I didn't have any major issues with any other OS before but with 8 it's just a bad omen for things to come. It's not to say that a few ideas about 8 isn't bad. I would like to have an easy button for facebook, google or some of my favorite internet sites. But with any other OS i want options. The more the better. Window 8 makes me feel claustrophobic. And i'm not the claustrophobic type. Not to mention i don't want my PC to function like a tablet or a cellphone. Secondly i feel that the interface for cellphones and tablets could use a huge improvement. Again it's the feeling of being claustrophobic. I deal with it any time i browse the internet on my phone, was nice at first but it's not the same as being on a PC. I'm a PC power user, i don't use it to just search online or browse the internet i do many different things on it, i like to tweak things and have the ability to make whatever application the way i want to look, feel and function. It's the same with the OS.

[Alwiz]

Touch operated pc's have become more important for PC vendors than the desktop pc's.

So MS introduced metro ui.

If this was the right thing to do time will tell.

I like apples solution IOS=tablets MacOS=PC/Laptop.

MS should have done the same in my opinion

:)

[vissha]

Touch operated pc's have become more important for PC vendors than the desktop pc's.

So MS introduced metro ui.

If this was the right thing to do time will tell.

I like apples solution IOS=tablets MacOS=PC/Laptop.

MS should have done the same in my opinion

:)

No. MS thought, many people who use tablets/smartphones/multimedia phones using touch. So they thought to spread it to PC & Notebook too. But they[MS] implemented it wrongly at wrong time.