If this deal goes through do you think they’d change their name? What will Google try to buy once the deal closes? Themselves?

According to S. Ballmer “A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved,” so it looks like they’ll keep doing what they do best. Buy the competition until they have none. As a product of Redmond, Microsoft’s home town, I have seen the company go from it’s original buildings in the middle of a forest to what it is now, a mini city. Wait, no, I take that back. Microsoft has become physically what it is operationally. A huge mess of piecemealed buildings and departments without easy access from one to the other. As the physical size of the headquarters has grown and diversified so too has the company, but in a bad way. The limited parking, the incredible traffic jam that it creates at 5:00pm when the entire crew heads home, and don’t forget about Bill’s notoriously bad driving, it all adds up to a lack of vision in the company. It has moved from innovative to reactive.

With the success of Google they have spent billions trying to catch up. Instead of working hard and truly revolutionizing the industry the way they once did Microsoft has become too big for it’s own good and can no longer produce anything of real value on their own. The best thing to come out of MSFT in the last few years would probably be the Xbox gaming system, but I only like that because it has Halo on it and that was developed by Bungie (which they bought and have thankfully let loose again). Everything from the Zune to the acquisition of aQuantive has been a defensive move.

Maybe if this deal fails they’ll have to go back to the drawing board and I can only hope the wipe it clean this time and start from scratch instead of just smearing around the colors.

You can see below the mess that it has become and what it will become. The company has more property North of this map and has broken ground in nearby Bellevue on their first high-rise. Also check out this ‘Incredibles’ inspired monorail system that has been proposed here.

<a href=Microsoft campus" height="698" style="width: 556px; height: 698px" />


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