When we talk about Microsoft, the first thing that comes to mind are its greatest successes: Windows, Office, Azure, Xbox, etc. The Redmond giant has great products behind it, products that all or almost all of us use practically every day and that undoubtedly mark the future of the company. But to arrive at these successful products the company has had to assume certain failures and abandon many products that did not succeed. And surely more than one we miss.
Operating systems that never succeeded
Windows 10 is Microsoft’s latest operating system, a system that still has a long life ahead of it. We are not going to talk about the previous versions of the system, which have been dying from obsolescence and the rapid evolution of computing. But apart from Windows, there have been other systems that never succeeded.
Before Windows, Microsoft had a terminal operating system: the well-known MS-DOS. We cannot consider MS-DOS a failure since many of its tools are still inherited within CMD, but what did fail were other inherited versions of it for certain tasks. MS NET , for example, was a DOS-based system for networking for DOS servers. And another example was MSX-OS , a system capable of running even under the BIOS, with direct access to the hardware. In short, two systems that many have not even heard of.
Of course, we cannot forget about Windows Phone or Windows Mobile either . These two systems had everything to be able to stand up to Android and iOS. However, Microsoft did not know how to handle them correctly or win the trust of the people and, in the end, they fell into oblivion. Today, these systems can be considered two of the company’s biggest failures.
Programs and other products that are history
And beyond the operating systems, the company also has a series of products that, after receiving large investments, ended up in the box of failures. One of the most popular is Internet Explorer . Between Windows 98 and Windows XP, IE was the most widely used web browser in the world. However, Microsoft was confident and did not know how to come the arrival of Chrome, which in the end cost him the leadership. IE has remained alive until version 11, in Windows 10, and was finally eliminated in the face of Edge , another of the biggest failures.
3D Movie Maker was another of the company’s biggest failures. This program allowed users to create their own videos by using previously rendered 3D environments. A very basic program but loved by users. Years later, the company announced the launch of Windows Movie Maker , one of the best products that Microsoft has launched that allowed you to edit videos very easily. Unfortunately, the company again discontinued this publisher, despite its success. And this has been a great loss.
Although Microsoft has its own personal assistant, Cortana, it’s not actually the first one you experiment with. People have already forgotten Bob , the virtual assistant in Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 capable of not only helping us open programs quickly, but even sending emails over the phone line.
Now everything is WhatsApp and Skype. But Microsoft has had one of the best instant messaging services: MSN Messenger . Millions of users were connected every day to this service, thanks to which we could communicate with other people in real time. It was, clearly, the precursor of WhatsApp, but Microsoft could not adapt to the changes and, not being able to launch a version for mobile phones, in the end it ended up sunk. In addition to Messenger, Microsoft had other products that were part of Windows Essentials , such as a mail client (Mail), a photo gallery, and a program for bloggers to write easily. All of them, in the end, have fallen into oblivion.
Other products that did not succeed either, despite having some utility, were:
- Windows Media Center , a multimedia center on Windows.
- Microsoft Reader , an ebook reader.
- Microsoft Java Virtual Machine (MSJVM).
- Microsoft GIF Animator , creator of GIFs.
- Silverlight , an alternative to Flash that failed even earlier.
- Outlook Express , a mail client that eventually became Windows Mail.
- DirectX Media , a series of APIs that improved (or at least tried to) games.
- The Windows 9x CD player.
- Microsoft Anti-Virus (MSAV), an antivirus for MS-DOS. Also failed Windows Security Essential, which luckily evolved into Windows Defender.
- Encarta , the Microsoft encyclopedia (and one of the best that has ever existed) that could not stand up to Wikipedia.
What will be the next Microsoft product to be forgotten? Time will tell.