Rooting For Microsoft

Like anyone who has spent time building web pages in the early days of IE, I have a special place in my heart for Microsoft. A deep dark cold place filled with all the hair I pulled out in those days floating on top of a nasty pool of sweat and tears I shed during that same time. Related, did you know that after they released IE6, they disbanded the web browser team. Read that last sentence again. Don’t be too shocked, these are the people that brought you Zune and Vista. Normally, I just roll my eyes and leave the fumbling giant be.

Anyways, I find myself in an odd situation these days where I’m rooting for them. I feel queasy about it, but in sticking with my principles and rooting for the underdog to rise up and challenge the leader which hopefully brings about more innovation overall, I find myself rooting for Windows Mobile (or Windows Phone they’re calling now-a-days). And there is sad news on this front; Project Pink is in trouble and probably will be canceled soon.  The absolutely last thing I want to see is Microsoft monopolizing the market (after which I assume they would disband their Windows Phone team – hehe), but at the same time I don’t think any sane person thinks Microsoft will dominate this market anytime soon or ever for that matter. So I don’t worry about that and am currently rooting for a situation where they pour resources into the situation and at the least scare Apple, Google, RIM, and Palm into innovating their ass off. I know, I know, we still have a lot of players right now keeping each other going and no one is disbanding any R&D groups just yet. But still it is still sad to hear that Windows Mobile is dead and the Android is the only real competitor to the iPhone.

In closing, Microsoft, I will never stop making fun of you about disbanding the IE6 team back in the day. And if you simply disband your various mobile OS platform teams (yes they have several) I will officially move from a fear/hate relationship with you to just simply pitying you. Come on Microsoft, I’m rooting for you, do something impressive with your boatloads of cash I keep hearing about.