It's no secret that Microsoft is a company in trouble. At one time they had a significant portion of the smartphone market, now they're an also-ran with single-digit market share. Their attempt to buy consumer marketshare in the gaming console market has generated some marketshare, but also significant losses. Their Zune Phone experiment lasted only two months before ignoble abandonment. The only things they have that make money right now are their core Windows and Office franchises -- the entire rest of the company is one big black hole of suck, either technologically, financially, or both. And while their market share in desktop operating systems is secure for the foreseeable future, with no viable competitor anywhere in sight (don't even mention Linux unless you want to cause gales of laughter, Linux on the desktop is a mess), Office faces a threat from OpenOffice. Plus, their very profitable Windows Server franchise, which accounts for a small percentage of their unit sales but a large percentage of their revenue, is steadily eroding as it becomes clear to almost everyone who isn't tied to Microsoft Exchange that Linux rules the world. Amazon EC3 runs on Linux, not Windows -- as does every other cloud play on the Internet. 'Nuff said.
Today something happened which epitomized this suck. I opened up an email in Microsoft Hotmail. At the top of the email, in red, was the following message: "This message looks very suspicious to our SmartScreen filters, so we've blocked attachments, pictures, and links for your safety."
The title of the email: "TechNet Subscriber News for November".
The sender of the email: technote@microsoft.com
Siiiiigh... even their own spam filter thinks they suck.
-ELG
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