I am extremely impressed by Microsoft. I think Microsoft has proven the world that nothing is impossible. Once a hip tech company at the beginning of the computer era, then transitioned into an old, boring and outdated corp has now turned into one of the healthiest, most innovative, brave and genuinely nicest tech giants of our time again. What Microsoft has done and achieved in recent years is astonishing.
They played many years catch up and I think at the point when they realise they cannot do everything themselves and started to embrace the open source world they quickly moved from catching up to being the innovator who pushes new limits again (Azure, Surface devices, Window 10, .NET Core, etc.)
It's already a bit old, but I wrote a blog post not too long ago where I tried to sum up some of the amazing things that happened at Microsoft over the course of the last few years:
Literally none of these characterizations of Microsoft, past or present, resonate with me at all. Maybe the company has truly turned a new page, but I still mostly see them copying others’ ideas and playing second string as a result. I’m glad they finally have some real OSS offerings but I don’t yet see any as truly collaborative efforts which keeps them on the sidelines.
They played many years catch up and I think at the point when they realise they cannot do everything themselves and started to embrace the open source world they quickly moved from catching up to being the innovator who pushes new limits again (Azure, Surface devices, Window 10, .NET Core, etc.)
It's already a bit old, but I wrote a blog post not too long ago where I tried to sum up some of the amazing things that happened at Microsoft over the course of the last few years:
https://dusted.codes/thank-you-microsoft-for-being-awesome