Microsoft PR Chief Shreds New New York Times Columnist Over His Advice Column

February 16, 2014 Leave a comment

Microsoft PR Chief Shreds New New York Times Columnist Over His Advice Column

JAY YAROW TECH  FEB. 14, 2014, 2:52 AM

The New York Times recently hired former Slate (and former Wall Street Journal) technology columnist Farhad Manjoo.

In his first column for the New York Times, Manjoo told readers to buy Apple’s hardware products (iPhones/iPads/Macs), use Google’s services (search/Gmail/Maps), and to buy media from Amazon (movies, books, music). He also mentioned Dropbox as the best storage service.

Missing from that list? Microsoft. 

Microsoft’s head of communications wanted to leave a comment, but the Times’ commenting system wouldn’t work, so he sent us his letter to Manjoo.  

Dear Farhad,

When you wrote for Slate, you often championed new emerging technologies that offered the tantalizing prospect of disrupting static markets by putting more power and choices into the hands of the people who use them. So naturally, I was a little confused when I opened the paper of record this morning to find that along with switching your employee badge, you seem to have switched sides, and are now a firm supporter of the status quo.

I’m referring, of course, to your advice column for consumers wishing to avoid “tech extinction” by betting on the wrong horse. Surprisingly though, your predictions seem like you are using a rear-view mirror, not a windshield, to look at the road ahead. You recommend sticking with today’s biggest players in the mobile phone, web services and content marketplaces, diversifying purchases between Apple, Google and Amazon accordingly. The core argument for doing this seems to be that none of these companies are likely to go away, and that spreading your bets reduces the risk of “lock in.”

Ironically, these recommendations do lock you in. To expensive hardware with fewer choices and to aggressive content screening and intrusive advertising.

More importantly though you are discounting the possibility that the best antidote to extinction is actually betting on players who are innovating today, not simply monetizing the products they invented 5 or 10 years ago. Your own advice would have had a 2007 smartphone buyer picking a BlackBerry over an iPhone, a 2001 gamer buying a Dreamcast instead of an Xbox, and a 2008 social media user putting all their contacts into MySpace, not Facebook. This would have look like sound advice at those moments in time, but of course it wasn’t. Not because those products were bad, but because they had already peaked, and were no longer focused on solving customer problems in fresh new ways. The best way to avoid extinction is betting on a commitment to evolution through innovation.

So while your readers could take your advice and blend in with the current crowd, we’d encourage you (and them) to take a look at some alternatives that offer evenbetter ways to get things done. And with a cross-platform connected ecosystem that spans the workplace to the living room featuring best in class products like Office, Skype and Xbox, we’re a pretty safe bet too.

fxs

 

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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