Johann   tag: marketing

This just breaks my heart.. it's a good looking, solid website, and they probably do great work, but I cannot get over these sentences, probably because they are likely well meant. That is the part that makes me whimper in fear, that they might mean well.

With simple, powerful apps we change how people consume their day to day life

People consuming their life? You know what, if you're gonna keep writing copy like that, consume mine, too. And do it quickly.

We build amazing solutions that enable amazing companies to change the world around them

Okay, so this is more familiar territory. Still awful, but in context, I got a relieved chuckle out of this.

In the post PC era we work with destinations to reimagine how people experience location

And then something inside me just broke quietly. I cannot look at this sentence for too long, for fear it might start looking back at me.

I don't care in what twisted way this sentence technically describes the kind of apps they are making, nothing can justify this, or anything like it. If aliens ever force you to chose between writing sentences like this, or Earth being obliterated, do not write those sentences. All will come to an end eventually either way, and some deeds are not worth buying merely a little time.



Why put a turd on top of all that?

Nobody user said "This website is nice, I just wish it would scroll more smoothly.. but I don't really care how other websites scroll.". No, either they want their browser/OS to scroll smoothly always, or don't care, and would never notice either way. It's the marketing mindset that makes people think they should improve the facade of their offering a little by whatever means necessary as quickly as possible, to get ahead or even to dazzle people - instead of improving the baseline for all in a way that is as functional as necessary, and as beautiful as possible while not sacrificing said functionality.

And thus we end up with a jungle of Javascript gimmicks, and browser tabs that eat memory like candy. The notion that HTML mostly describes content, while the configuration of the user agent has the final say on the actual presentation? "Nice idea, but the marketing department doesn't like it."

Evangelism Is War

Our mission is to establish Microsoft's platforms as the de-facto standards throughout the computer industry. Our enemies are the vendors of platforms that compete with ours; Netscape, Sun, IBM, Oracle, Lotus, etc. The field of battle is the software industry. Success is measured in shipping applications. Every line of code that is written to our standards is a small victory; every line of code that is written to any other standard, is a small defeat. Total victory, for DRG, is the universal adoption of our standards by developers, as this is an important step towards total victory for Microsoft itself: "A computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software".

Our weapons are psychological, economic, and political - not military. No one is forced to adopt our standards at the barrel of a gun. We can only convince, not compel. Those who adopt our standards to so as a rational decision to serve their own ends, whetever those may be. It is our job to ensure that those choosing an operating system are presented with an overwhelming abundance of evidence and reasoned argument in favor of our standards - so overwhelming that the choice of our standards seems obvious, or (ideally) that the developer is not even aware that a decision was faced, and a choice made.

We do this by understanding the barriers that might otherwise prevent a developer from adopting our standards, and removing them; by understanding the inducements that might facilitate the developer's adoption of our standards, and providing them; by understanding the arguments of our competiton, and countering them.

Comes v. Microsoft litigation, Exhibit 3096 (PDF)

How one would make a "rational decision" without being aware of that is anyone's guess.