But still, Microsoft is the most diversified of the big players - they have Windows, Office, Enterprise, Xbox, Azure, Surface - they can survive a mess like their current copilot mess and still generally thrive
But still, Microsoft is the most diversified of the big players - they have Windows, Office, Enterprise, Xbox, Azure, Surface - they can survive a mess like their current copilot mess and still generally thrive
It has more to do with Microsoft's size and long history. If you are big and have been doing the same thing for many years, naturally you'll want to expand, some of which do succeed.
Google and Facebook have failed to do this, so why is that?
Failed to do what?
I'm sure you can find good analysis of why specific products failed.
And both Google/Alphabet and Facebook/Meta have a bunch of side projects that are reasonably successful.
They have failed to diversify, is what I meant, despite being around for approx 2 decades
Lets look at diversification of revenue:
meta $164b revenue in 2024: 98% advertising
google $350b revenue in 2024: 76% advertising, 12% google cloud, 12% other
apple $391b revenue in 2024: 66% hardware (iphone, ipad, mac), 25% services (app store etc), 9% other
amazon $638b revenue in 2024: 64% amazon store+associated services, 17% AWS, 9% ads, 11% other
microsoft $245b revenue in 2024: 40% azure/server products, 22% office, 10% windows, 9% gaming, 7% linkedin, 5% search+ads, 8% other
I'm not particularly a microsoft fan, just making this point because I think MS is poorly understood by the HN crowd
Only because they have enough money in the bank.
Thrive, or just muddle through?