Matt Rosoff Quotations

There are some folks who have been there for a long time and who will resent the way things are being run as a bureaucracy. And maybe they were there for the big stock run-up and they're seeing the stock not move now.

What's left under MSN -- MSNBC? Microsoft just divested itself of that, too.

The product would exist in a kind of in-between market that hasn't yet been shown to exist. But sometimes those are the biggest hits.

Most of the spokes are supplied by partners, Microsoft earns royalties, and the whole thing helps perpetuate the idea of Windows PCs as the central home entertainment device.

MSN may want to sell search to AOL.

Given the business model for the consoles the more Microsoft can backload those hardware sales, the better it is for them financially.

Getting to profitability will require a big-name software launch while withstanding a concentrated marketing blitz from Sony. Anything less could mean years of red ink ahead.

If it gets worse and Microsoft doesn't deal well with it, they have a problem.

He wants to put people in charge who have a lot of customer contact and really know what customers want. He understands the importance of having smart technical people, but I think he views executive leadership as more of a business role. We'll see how that works.

I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft could double (its online advertising revenue) in three to five years.

I think it's exclusively a move to boost the brand.

I think they thought of putting in a more sales-oriented person (Johnson) who talks to customers all the time and really knows what they're asking for.

Microsoft believes it can deliver services that businesses are really demanding, integrating them better with one another and with Microsoft software,

Microsoft's biggest concern is the precedent whereby a government agency can dictate what it can and cannot put into its core product.

The question is: Will people really store content on the PC, set up a home network and then access content over the network? That's still a pretty geeky thing to do.

But maybe those are the kinds of decisions that need to be pushed down and made at a lower level, anyway. The danger is that people get too wrapped up in the technology and cool features and lose sight of what customers are asking for. Sometimes business customers want the boring stuff.

Even if they don't violate the letter of the law, if competitors think that it's doing something similar to what's been decided earlier, it could lead to another lawsuit.

Content owners may not take advantage of what Microsoft is doing? They could bypass the PC altogether, or come up with some other type of system.

Europe says you can't use one monopoly to compete in other markets unfairly. Microsoft argues that Windows is a unified product and no government should have the right to say what it can or can't include in the operating system.

There's room for improvement in areas such as clear product roadmaps and delivering timely updates,

These wheels have been rolling for some time.

Some versions of the product are priced higher than they need to be.

Realizing it will take a while to get these documents where the EC wants them, Microsoft decided to buy a little bit of time by releasing the source code while it continues to work on the documentation. I think they are going to have to continue improving that documentation.

That number three job at Microsoft is a tough position to be in.

This is definitely being driven by Microsoft's desire to position Windows as a home entertainment hub, and to do that they have to make some concessions. They're walking a line, trying to please both sides (content companies and consumers) at the same time.

This could be a chance to inflect that growth rate upward. But it's a challenge for Microsoft to overcome the perception that older versions of these products are good enough.

This initiative is above and beyond what Microsoft was called to do, but it's also just a way for the company to show it is doing its best. This is the trouble when you have regulatory agencies make demands. They sometimes don't understand what's inherent in the demand. Microsoft can't create these documents overnight.

A lot of the Windows Live services are things that had already been in development by MSN,

They don't want a huge spike in December and then a slump in January and February, ... They're trying to avoid that.

There might be an executive departure that we haven't heard of yet.

This makes them a solid number three player,

They're pretty up front about what's going on there and they don't expect any change in their total full-year shipments, so I think they'll be able to accelerate in the second half of this fiscal year.

It looks like it's another effort to popularize the tablet PC, this time in a smaller form factor.

The obvious competitor who they're gunning for here looks like Skype,

That is crazy expensive. But once you've got users in your world, you can track them. There is sort of an Orwellian possibility to it.

It's sort of a response to the whole way computing is evolving.

The big disparity between predicted and actual revenue was, in fact, Xbox shortages.

That has been the big threat from Google all along -- that Google would turn the Web into this platform for all sorts of functionality. Microsoft has to respond.

That is one area that Microsoft thinks is potentially very lucrative and fast growing.

It's certainly disappointing for the PC manufacturers that had hoped Vista would help holiday sales, and this is a flagship product that already had been plagued by a number of delays.

They are licensing a specific subset related to the protocols the EU demanded more documentation on.

They want to have more of a constant supply.

They have really just moved a few things around. There will likely be further reorganizations down the line.

They have to prove this year that Xbox 360 is going to be a money maker, because they have put a lot into it. Overall, I don't think there were any big surprises. Windows and Tools are going like gangbusters.

They have to find a way to increase search traffic. You'll have to look a year from now to see if they made any progress.

The Microsoft Research division might get between $150 and $200 million, which is still pretty significant for a pure research group that isn't judged, for example, on how many products they produce. They are judged very much like an academic research organization.

I'm fairly sure this will be a reference design for third parties.

I really think that they're getting into the minutia here.

If you think things are not being run well, then yesterday will lend credence to your arguments.

I don't really see anything new from a strategic standpoint.

Honestly, I'm having a hard time envisioning where this product will fit into consumers' lives. It occupies an awkward position between single-function handheld devices and laptops. I'm not sure a market exists here.

The idea being that, over the life of the business, they make their money off software and peripherals.

The main thing for Microsoft as a company is to get as much use as possible for the PC as a home entertainment device, and one way to do that is ensure that there is a lot of readily available content. Their concern is that none of the partner services will take off or will be effective, keeping Apple as a dominant platform.