In his famous first book, Bill Gates wrote about companies going through two kinds of spirals. The first one, an upward spiral and the other a downward spiral. The point to note however, is that they are both spiral columns (or ladders, or escalators) - like the DNA maps - and it takes a long time before you realize which direction you are actually going in, especially if you go at great speeds.

Now, I am not saying Microsoft is going in a downward spiral. That's probably too strong a statement. But the speed of the upward climb is surely abating and the braking is becoming clear and visible.

In my opinion, the blog culture that has so caught up with the Internet, is one of the major factors contributing to this. Yes! The harmless looking blog monster. Let me try to put my thoughts across.

Most blogs written by many and many of those developer folks within Microsoft are read ardently, by fans, competitors, developers, just about the whole Internet world. While this has created a whole new world of information and enables people to be on the forefront of technology roadmaps, it also has some reverse bearing. Most people do not realize that when an enthusiased developer or architect from Microsoft is talking about dragging-and-dropping the stars of the sky to decorate your desktop, (s)he is talking about things that the common man will only see years (or a decade) later. And I don't blame him(er). What they are talking about is the wonderful work they are doing.

Now, there definetely are strong NDAs within Microsoft that allow employees to say this and not say that.  Also, Microsoft (of late) strongly believes in being extremely transparent with their future product ideas. But, the reverse effect of these blogs is also that people tend to get extremely misinformed.

I have seen customers asking why we were putting some pieces of an architecture with .NET Remoting, when Indigo is what Microsoft is moving to. Well, Indigo isn't here yet! And try asking the customer to wait, or even suggesting that you will build using a BETA version.

You have no doubt been reading the rants and raves of people when WinFS was pulled out of Longhorn 2006. My point is that there need not have been so much hue and cry about it not being available in a product version that is 2-3 years away!  What is the point?  There might be several changes, innovations and things that might be added by then. Of course, 2-3 years is small when you consider product lifecycles such as those of Longhorn. But why fret when it is not here yet?

To this, I see Microsoft contributing in large ways. Especially the people from MS who blog in and out on things that we can only read, maybe see - but never work on for at least another year. Why not release such information to limited crowds such as the MVP folk (who evangelize these technologies), or the BETA testers, or enterprise partners?  Why have a longhorn.msdn.microsoft.com when all I can do is probably read off it and expect too much and get disappointed when I don't find it eventually. Obviously, Microsoft doesn't expect us to tell our customers to be focusing on these technologies. It is just information sharing and transparency.

I also note that many senior Microsoft folk (I got to interact with a few of them at the recent Microsoft Software Architect Forum in Bangalore), do not really hype these technologies too much. They want us to look at the next year when exciting new things are surfacing in Whidbey and Yukon. It is the blog-community that has a sort of *I want to be the first to announce* attitude while posting unnecessary entries on features that may still be far from production.

This has also led to things like Xamlon, a company which claims to get your UIs ready for XAML. Give me a break! When Microsoft itself hasn't finished on XAML, what makes you think I will go for Xamlon today?  I do accept they are doing great work, but no sir, I don't think that's saleable. And if they do become saleable, it is owing to the hype created by Microsoft bloggers around XAML.

That was one. I see another mistake Microsoft is making. I know consultants posting job requirements at various job websites for 50-60 positions available at Microsoft. I even know some of the quality that has got hired through such mass operations. None of the fancy ten-round interviews, none of the great puzzles we hear of (and enjoy so much), none of the drilling sessions, they just get hired with one or two rounds of interview, because the requirement was urgent and was *only for internal development*.

As far as I have read, heard, known - MS has never compromised on hiring.  Competitors like Google certainly aren't. So why do this and reduce your workforce quality?

A third and last remark is on the reducing edge in the market. Yes, I did see (and was heartened to see) the slides in the recent SAF meet, shown by Eric Rudder, talking about how MS was bashing Red Hat Linux and a lot other competitors in the enterprise segments. I am also heartened to see the amazing work put up by the MSR folk from time to time. I am also thrilled by the whole suite of products that MS has announced, is building and will be shipping. But then innovation like it was 10 years ago, is taking a back seat. Or is it not? Or is it?  Nobody knows. Surely, Google seems to be the name synonymous to innovation these days, a thing that Microsoft has kept in its safe custody for three decades now. I do not want to see MS giving away its edge to Google (or to anybody else). And I sure hope they want it more badly than I want to.

Like I said at the beginning, I don't think this is the downward spiral yet. But I wouldn't have wanted to type 'yet' in that last sentence either.