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Microsoft and the Economy

In the April Redmond cover story, I stuck my neck out farther than the Toys "R" Us giraffe. In it, I argued that Microsoft has the talent, product set and fiscal discipline to make it through the recession relatively unscathed.

This flies in the face of longtime critics who even in times of prosperity predicted the demise of the Redmond juggernaut. First, it was the Internet that would do away with old styles of computing. More recently, open source signaled the Redmond death knell. And most recently, the Internet and cloud computing re-emerged as Microsoft's doom.

I knew my article would come out just a few weeks before another Redmond earnings report. If the news was horrible, I'd look like a real dope. So what happened? As my colleagues reported this past Friday, revenue and earnings were down, but even in a deep recession, Microsoft pulled in nearly $4 billion in profit.

Not quite Exxon territory but not too shabby. If this is as bad as it gets, Microsoft will do just fine.

Posted by Doug Barney on April 27, 2009


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