Let’s start with a friendly confession: “great” is a slippery word. It’s the kind of word that turns a dinner table debate into a four-hour TED Talk. My take? “Great” products are the ones people choose even when they’re not the default. They’re the ones you brag about to your friends without sounding like you’re auditioning for a commercial.
By that definition, Microsoft rarely makes great products.
And that’s… kind of the point.
The Albuquerque DNA
Microsoft wasn’t born to make objects d’art. It was born to make the roads everyone drives on. Bill Gates and Paul Allen didn’t rush to build the prettiest computer; they rushed to write the software that would run on the suddenly possible Altair 8800. That’s plumbing. It’s essential. And if you do it right, no one notices the pipes only the water.
There’s a neat way to frame this that I first saw in a popular tech essay/video: think of Microsoft as an “Albuquerque company,” optimized for sturdy infrastructure, not a “San Francisco company,” optimized for taste and vibes. It’s a playful lens, but it explains a lot.
The Default Machine
Microsoft’s superpower was never taste. (Steve Jobs once said as much brutally.) It was distribution and defaults. Set the standard, become the default, win the market. MS-DOS and then Windows became the platform, and from there it was a short hop to bundling the browser, shipping Office everywhere, and building a moat you could see from space. U.S. regulators eventually noticed and dragged Internet Explorer’s tie-in practices through court; the gist: “Hey, that’s monopoly behavior.”
The “default” strategy even spilled into places you might not expect. Remember when Internet Explorer was the default browser on the Mac for years? That wasn’t magic. That was a 1997 deal between Apple and Microsoft. Defaults win. Then they shape taste. Then they look inevitable.
When Default Isn’t Enough
The trouble comes when default power fades and the product has to win hearts, not contracts. Exhibit A: Skype. Microsoft paid $8.5 billion for it, then watched it become a punchline while Zoom and friends ate its lunch. Finally, in May 2025, Microsoft retired Skype and pointed everyone to Teams. Ouch. Defaults can move mountains until the mountain moves.
Exhibit B: phones. There was literally a Windows Phone “iPhone funeral” parade back in 2010. History did its thing. Enough said.
Exhibit C: the operating system experience itself. Windows Search pulls web results from Bing because of course it does; it’s part user help, part funnel. You can turn pieces of it off, but the default is “Bing in the box.” Meanwhile, “suggested apps” (hi, Candy Crush) have popped up in Start over the years. It’s all very on-brand: monetize the default, then explain how to opt out.
The Nadella Detour: When Microsoft Did Make Things, People Love
Now for the plot twist. Under Satya Nadella, Microsoft did something radical: it stopped tripping over its own feet. The company killed stack ranking in 2013 (the performance system everyone hated), then leaned hard into a “learn-it-all” culture and brace yourself open source. Out of that soil grew VS Code, which developers adore and still use more than any other editor. Microsoft also bought GitHub and made private repos free. These are not the moves of a company allergic to “great.” These are the moves of a company listening.
Then came Azure. It’s the ultimate “boring” thing that turns into a rocket ship: data centers, networking, compliance, SLAs. In 2025, Microsoft finally said it out loud Azure surpassed $75 billion in annual revenue. That’s not a product you carry in your pocket. It’s one you stand on. And it’s arguably the most “Microsoft” thing Microsoft has ever built.
The AI Frenzy: Taste vs. Fear
When ChatGPT blew up, Microsoft had a choice. Go slow and make the experience great or go wide and make everything AI. The company chose “yes.” New Bing with GPT? Launch. Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, Windows even Paint? Launch, launch, launch. Nadella even said he wanted to “make Google dance.” That’s not infrastructure energy; that’s Vegas headliner energy. And the results were… mixed.
New modes and sidebars everywhere can feel like someone taped a Swiss Army knife to your remote and called it minimalist design. Some features truly help. Others mostly add friction. That’s the tension with Microsoft: when it’s calm and deliberate, it builds foundations the world trusts. When it’s scared of missing the next platform, it carpet-bombs features and hopes the defaults carry the day.
So… Why Microsoft Will Never Make “Great” Products
Because “great,” in the popular imagination, is taste + timing + restraint. Microsoft’s core muscle is scale + standards + staying power. Those muscles are different. Sometimes you can borrow a little taste (VS Code says hi). But at company scale, culture wins. Microsoft’s culture optimizes for platforms, partners, and pipelines. Not goosebumps.
And honestly? That’s fine. The internet needs highways more than it need hand-stitched steering wheels. When Microsoft focuses on the boring brilliance cloud, tooling, protocols, safety rails it lifts the whole industry. When it tries to be the cool kid, it usually ends up being the hall monitor with a skateboard.
The Playbook That Works (and the One That Doesn’t)
What works:
- Build invisible infrastructure and let everyone else shine on top of it (Azure, GitHub, the best version of Office).
- Earn trust slowly with developer-first tools (VS Code) instead of rent-seeking defaults.
What doesn’t:
- Forcing distribution to substitute for delight (bundling and Bing everywhere). Regulators noticed in the browser era; users notice now.
- Turning every product knob to “AI” at once. Great ideas need quiet to get good.
A Warm Goodbye (With a Nerdy Smile)
If you showed me a world where Microsoft never makes a capital-G Great product again but keeps building the rails we all rely on, I’d take that deal. Every day. It’s not romantic. It’s reliable. And reliable is how airplanes stay in the sky and your thesis doesn’t vanish at 2 a.m.
So, stay curious. Try the shiny things. Love open tech. And keep a soft spot for the companies that do the boring work beautifully. It’s not always headline material but it’s the reason the headlines load at all.
