What a Fool Believes (Premium)

Microsoft's announcement this week that it has finally abandoned the Groove Music Pass subscription was greeted as both a surprise and a betrayal. It was neither. And it's time for the community of fans who love and respect Microsoft to wake up to a few realities.

The first is that Microsoft has never really resonated with consumers, despite decades of trying and one lonely example---the Windows 95 launch from 22 years ago---that fans still cite as proof to the contrary.

But consumers first latched onto PCs and, later, Windows only so that they could learn and use the same software at home that they did at work, and in the process advance themselves professionally. Over time, as the PC market matured, and PCs became the center of our digital lives, consumers did everything on PCs: Work, play, browse, read, and learn. But as friendlier, simpler, and more mobile devices---smartphones and tablets---appeared, consumers couldn't drop the PC fast enough. Today, the PC is just a tool, for most, something associated solely with the drudgery of work.

The second is that Microsoft's consumer offerings have never, not once, earned anyone's trust. Microsoft has flitted from fad to fad over the years, following others---like Apple with the Zune---inventing technologies that no one wanted or needed---Smart Displays, Portable Media Centers, about a thousand others---and trying to parlay its success with businesses into something that makes sense for normal people; think Windows Home Server.

Even Microsoft's biggest fans are moaning this week about how often the software giant gives up on their favorite products. But that's mostly unfair. Groove Music Pass, the complaint du jour, was in fact supported for 11 long years, far longer than any other company would have needed to get the message.

(Yes, Microsoft Band. But come on, Microsoft never seriously marketed the product, and it seemed to approach the device as an experiment, not a real product. Anyway, there are always exceptions.)

See, the thing is, Groove Music Pass---nee Xbox Music Pass and Zune Music Pass---was never actually successful in any measurable way. And let's be fair, this Music Pass nonsense, like Zune, Windows Media Player Marketplace, Plays For Sure, URGE, and whatever other wastes of time Microsoft engaged in before that, were exercises in corporate self-delusion: Even Microsoft believed its own myth of "build it and they will come." It took decades for them to realize that no one was coming. Consumers abandoned their products and services as soon as they were offered better options. And developers stopped listening too. I've pegged the 2003 Longhorn announcement as the inflection point on that one.

Looking at Microsoft's consumer offerings today, I see good, bad, and ugly.

Groove was in the "ugly" category, sorry, and I gotta tell you, we are way past the point where I'm going to even entertain the notion that, had Microsoft simply stuck with its "superior" Zune ...

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