It’s in the DNA. Every company inherits DNA from the people who start or manage the business for long periods of time. We’ll take Bill Gates out of the equation for this article, because although his fingerprints are all over Microsoft, I would like to discuss Steve Ballmer, the man who currently runs Microsoft and has been with the company practically since its inception. He comes from a similar formative background as Scott Cook, the founder of Intuit, maker of the very successful QuickBooks. They both graduated from Harvard and worked at Proctor and Gamble, which is greatly respected as an institution that understands the consumer market.  This is where their paths diverge.  Scott Cook went on to conceive of Quicken, based on the idea of helping people simply and easily manage their personal finances.

Steve Ballmer helped create a monopoly that brings out many third rate software applications. Each man’s philosophy has influenced the development of their respective company. Whereas Scott Cook emphasized the principle of integrity to his employees, Ballmer’s quest was to control and intimidate as much of the software market as was legally possible. Although a judge’s ruling declared that they were a monopoly and unfairly controlled the market, Microsoft continued to do so with reckless abandon. The Bush administration’s justice department capitulated to their legal maneuvers.

Meanwhile Scott Cook was trying to listen to customers, and engaged in ongoing and costly usability studies to make Intuit’s software as user friendly as possible. His question was “How can we make our software so good that people will refer it to friends, family and associates?”  The consequence was that QuickBooks became the dominant software application in its market, propelled by its history of customer satisfaction.

Microsoft came out with monsters like Outlook, Internet Explorer and Front Page (now known as Expression Web). My wife always knows when I am working with Expression Web because I frequently blurt out “Oh, I’m being punished again.” It has an illogical mind of its own, and regularly does one thing when the intention is to do another.  For example, I will try to change the font and a border will appear around the cell. I have worked with the program for over 10 years and I still am not able to change the default font on my web site from Times New Roman to Arial. When Microsoft came out with the most recent version of Front Page, they gave it the new name “Expressions Web” to embellish its image. It is the only software program I know that actually deteriorated when upgraded.

What amazes me is how people passively accept this as the way computers work. This is not how computers should function. When I use Outlook, I feel my rights have been violated by being forced to use a crappy program without an alternative. There used to be a good email program called Eudora, but they shut down their development and support because they could not make money competing with the 500 pound gorilla.  Let me give you an example of why Outlook is such a third rate application. I engage in frequent dialog with my customers, vendors and associates by email. I create folders in Outlook for saving recurring communication, so I can easily find old messages. Inbound messages go into the correct folders when I receive them, but when I send a message, it goes to the “Sent Items” folder. I then have to go through all my sent messages and manually drag them to the correct folder.  There are no rules to filter sent messages. Where’s the intelligence?

It’s actually an insult. Years of productive time have been wasted by a generation of computer users that stare blankly into the monitor like monkeys while Windows boots up. I guarantee that if there was a competing product on a similar platform, the makers would challenge each other to see who could develop an operating system that would boot up faster.

This brings us to Steve Jobs. He is lauded as a genius for the innovative and high quality products that Apple produces. I have great respect for the man, but I don’t know if he is a genius. He is just smart enough to know that if only he can keep Microsoft’s hands off his products, he can bring out hardware and software that is intelligent and works well.

I have a confession. I worked for Microsoft as a tester for their Money personal finance program in the late 1990s. I recall going up to my manager’s manager (a serious violation at Microsoft) and suggesting that if they made a minor change to their program, customers would benefit by being able to better understand how it works. The manager looked at me as if I was a lunatic and responded, “Customers don’t tell us how to make software. We tell them how to use it.”  Outside the campus cafeteria there was a huge banner arrogantly proclaiming “Microsoft Money. Intuit’s Biggest Nightmare.” This was after Microsoft unsuccessfully tried to buy Intuit. A couple of weeks later I was fired because my “thinking was not original”. It is scant consolation that recently Microsoft discontinued the desktop version of Money. If they spend as much time and put as much resources into satisfying customers, as they put into keeping competitors out, they would develop better products.

Every few years Microsoft comes out with a product to compete with QuickBooks. They rattle their chains and promise to revolutionize the accounting software market. If I remember correctly, the last time they did this they couldn’t even give their program away for free. It’s like QuickBooks is a football and Microsoft plays the parts of both Lucy and Charlie Brown. They never learn that they cannot create a program like QuickBooks. It’s not in their DNA.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 4:29 am and is filed under QuickLabs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.