Hear that whacking? It's the sound of Microsoft snipping back its marketing budget. With press clips like Redmond's been getting, why spend the money?
Microsoft's stock is up 60 percent this year, and the software giant plans to roll out a string of new products, making Bill Gates a popular cover boy for Fortune and Business Week. The only thing missing from their reviews of his company's elaborate plans is scrutiny.
"Just about any software application on your PC and even on your cell phone or PDA will tap directly into interactive services to make work and life easier to manage," Fortune enthused, pointing out without the slightest hint of irony that since there's no business model for the subscription software services that Microsoft is drooling over, Redmond will simply have to invent one.
Fortune missed a golden opportunity to question Microsoft's chances for convincing customers to begin paying for their software in perpetuity – a radical idea on which the company is betting heavily. Fortune explains this away by arguing that Microsoft is in creative mode. Substitute the Microsoft cheerleading with a few prognostications about online sales, or maybe the wonders of DSL, and you've got the kind of unquestioning journalism that business scribes said they had sworn off during the post-bubble mop up.
At least Business Week was more circumspect, warning that Microsoft's "heavy lifting has just begun." The magazine also described the move to subscription software as "monumental," but beyond that, BW, too, offered little context for an unproven idea. Yes, it's possible that consumers can be coaxed into seeing software as a monthly service, but isn't it also possible the strategy will be a dud, as wrongheaded as the idea that "the Web will change everything"? Neither Fortune nor Business Week examined the subscription service's chances for success, or the ramifications for Microsoft should the strategy fail. "A newly creative Microsoft is ready to roar," Fortune gushed. Too bad the same can't be said of the media.
Microsoft: How It Became Stronger Than Ever
Business Week
The Beast Is Back
Fortune [June 11, 2001 issue]
