Alas, Poor Microsoft ... You Used to Be So Interesting

A tech-savvy friend of mine casually said something the other day that's been bothering me ever since. "Microsoft is in trouble," he said. It's not unusual to hear people in Silicon Valley flip Microsoft the bird, saying stuff like "Microsoft is evil incarnate" or "Microsoft must be neutered." But "Microsoft is in trouble"? That's a new one. How could my buddy possibly believe that Microsoft�Microsoft!�is in trouble?

Right after that, I noticed in some magazine that Microsoft's total shareholder return has actually been negative over the past 12 months. You have to put thoughts like those in perspective, of course. Shareholder return depends heavily on timing. And despite Microsoft's size, its revenues continue to grow at a healthy pace�not to mention the fact that nearly 30 cents of each dollar of revenue is profit. If this company has a financial problem, it's figuring out what to do with all the cash it generates.