Former VP Says Microsoft is "Failing" Despite Windows 7 Profits

From DailyTech: Windows 7 may be immensely popular, but not everyone is impressed with Microsoft's performance. Just days after Microsoft took 10 percent of the market with Windows 7 in only 4 months -- a feat that took Windows Vista 16 months to accomplish -- a former Microsoft vice president, Dick Brass, delivered a scathing review on the company's lack of "creative spark" which he published in The New York Times.

He writes:

"The company’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, has continued to deliver huge profits. They totaled well over $100 billion in the past 10 years alone and help sustain the economies of Seattle, Washington State and the nation as a whole.... And yet it is failing, even as it reports record earnings. As the fellow who tried (and largely failed) to make tablet PCs and e-books happen at Microsoft a decade ago, I could say this is because the company placed too much faith in people like me. But the decline is so broad and so striking that it would be presumptuous of me to take responsibility for it.

Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator. Its products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason. Its image has never recovered from the antitrust prosecution of the 1990s. Its marketing has been inept for years; remember the 2008 ad in which Bill Gates was somehow persuaded to literally wiggle his behind at the camera?"

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