Someone sent this link as a “great article about Live Mesh” ... and it was so bad, that I just have to rant about it. Your 9th grade English teacher would have flunked you for this … it’s just a horrible example of the Anguish Languish.
Steve Gillmor has an analogy or a metaphor for everything (and I mean literally every paragraph). Most of them are bad, but some of them are truly awful, so I’m just going to pick on a couple to vent steam.
So it went with Microsoft, as the seeming invulnerability of Gates’ machine accelerated to the boundaries of global saturation. Though we tend to think of Google as the conqueror, the reality is that Microsoft has struggled most with itself, the victim not of decline but of lack of fuel — the very customers who created the megalith in the first place.
The who, did what?
megalith — [noun] ( ‘meh gE “lIth ) 1. a huge stone, esp. one used in prehistoric times as a monument.
First of all, megaliths are erected, not created. Secondly, they don’t use (or lack) fuel. Thirdly, they’re a bad counterpoint to “conquerors.” If you wanted to use that many metaphors in one sentence, you should have said something like this: though we tend to think of Google as the conqueror, the reality is that Microsoft has struggled most with itself, the victim of a decline like that of the Roman empire, and yet Google has still not dared challenge the megalith of Windows, propped up as it is by millions of customers around the world …
The microbigs can seem transcendent like Facebook or possessing the lifetime of a gnat like a thousand forgotten startups or neverwases (sic), but nowhere are the range of possible outcomes more encapsulated than Twitter.
First of all, “can seem transcendent” works, but “can seem possessing the lifetime of a gnat” doesn’t. But more importantly, if Facebook is your example of transcendent, then the “lifetime of a gnat” takes on a whole new meaning — maybe you meant to invoke the branding of Hotmail, or Yahoo!, or SlashDot. Finally, “Neverwases” might be okay in poetry, but isn’t this still a technology magazine?
Yes? Yes. So what you’re saying is that Google is a microbig. Yes, did I say that? No, but I didn’t ask that either and the answer is still yes. Bottom line: Microsoft can’t gain and retain traction with Mesh unless the answers are yes.
What?! Exactly who is he having this conversation with in his head, and why did he write it down on paper?
I hate to ask, but, what is a “Coke Classic question” ... and how did “When’s the Mac version?” get on any list of classic questions? Why are you asking questions without question marks? What is a “Net-grappling” product line? Incidentally, the mental image conjured by combining “flailing” with “grappling” is rather frightening. It’s a no wonder that there are so many comments on this post that say things like “what is he talking about?”
Steve claims that “orthogonal and complementary” is “MicroBig language” (by the way, can we get a little capitalization consistency on your made up words please?) but I’m pretty sure that these are terms usually used by the (it hurts to write this) BigBigs to assuage fears of internal competition, as in: Microsoft’s advertising assets and aQuantive’s complementary expertise… or Yahoo! is complementary to Microsoft and so on. The so-called MicroBigs are usually more concerned with disruptive and revolutionary.
Bah. Anyway.
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