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From Microsoft Bob to Windows 7: Microsoft's Biggest Failures and Successes
by Nicholas Kolakowski
Name:
Microsoft Bob
Judgment: Failure
Released in 1995, Bob’s cartoonish, user-friendly environment was supposed to help the not-so-technically-inclined do things like keep their address book updated and write documents (through eight different programs). But damning reviews, elevated hardware requirements and low sales all contributed to its demise by 1996.
Name:
"Clippit"
Judgment: Failure
Popping up all-too-often in older versions of Office, "Clippit" (known formally as Office Assistant and informally as "Clippy") annoyed users by incessantly offering its assistance with simple actions such as typing letters. By the time Office 2007 rolled around, Microsoft administered a merciful coup de grace.
Name:
Windows Vista
Judgment: Failure
After two Service Packs, Vista had become much more stable and secure—but couldn’t shake the stigma of being excessively buggy and unstable. Criticism of the OS hardware requirements and User Account Control (UAC) also wrecked its reputation.
Name:
Windows Mobile 6.5
Judgment: Failure
Windows Mobile 6.5 was released in October 2009 as a stopgap, meant to slow Microsoft’s slide in smartphone OS market share until Windows Phone 7 Series could be released. Mobile 6.5 failed to slow the slide.
Name:
Windows Marketplace for Mobile
Judgment: Failure
Windows Marketplace for Mobile currently contains more than 718 mobile apps for U.S.-based Mobile 6.x smartphones, lagging far behind competitors such as Google’s Android Market and Apple’s App Store.
Name:
Zune
Judgment: Failure
Although Zune, Microsoft’s portable-media player, has earned high marks from critics for its design and features like FM radio, its market share remains tiny in comparison to its primary competitor, Apple’s iPod franchise.
Name:
Windows Me
Judgment: Failure
Windows Millennium Edition, released in the gap between Windows 98 and Windows XP, drew criticism from users for its instability and nasty habit of crashing at inopportune moments. It would soon be eclipsed by Windows XP.
Name:
Windows XP
Judgment: Success
Released in 2001, Windows XP proved to be Microsoft’s most enduring operating system, and the one with the most worldwide market penetration as of 2009. A number of Service Packs made the OS particularly stable, but nonetheless Microsoft intends to end XP support in 2014.
Name:
Windows 7
Judgment: Success
Microsoft had a lot riding on the success of its newest operating system, Windows 7. With 90 million copies sold since its October 2009 release, and generally positive reviews for its user interface and features, Microsoft can judge Windows 7 a victory, at least in the short term.
Name:
Xbox Franchise
Judgment: Success
Propelled by hit games such as the "Halo" franchise, Microsoft’s Xbox and Xbox 360 have sold millions of units and proved a success among both casual players and hardcore gamers.
Name:
Microsoft Office
Judgment: Success
Like it or not, applications such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel are ubiquitous among businesses. The rise of cloud-based productivity applications such as Google Apps and their effect on this market remain to be seen.
Name:
SharePoint
Judgment: Success
This Web-collaboration tool has proved to be a success for the enterprise; a mobile version is currently being integrated into the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series interface.
Name:
Bing
Judgment: Short-Term Success
When Bing, Microsoft’s newest search engine, rolled out in summer 2009, some critics were quick to predict its imminent demise. However, Bing has slowly managed to gain market share quarter after quarter, although it still lags behind Google.
Name:
Internet Explorer
Judgment: Mixed
While Internet Explorer has managed to earn the lion’s share of the Web browser market since its inception in 1995, security concerns (and larger antitrust issues) prevent it from being seen as an outright "success" by many.
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Microsoft Bob, released 15 years ago this month, was supposed to layer Windows with an easy-to-use, cartoonish interface for those not so technologically inclined. While perhaps a good idea, Bob turned out to be a notable failure for Microsoft, which shuttered the project by 1996 after nearly a year of terrible reviews and concerns that its hardware requirements exceeded most of its target users’ machines. That’s not the only time a Microsoft product crashed and burned in a very public way. As the following slides demonstrate, some of the company’s other products (Vista, "Clippit," Mobile 6.5) met similar ends—even as others, including Windows 7 and Office, proved to be spectacular successes.