I'm a fan of The Economist, but their big flaw is similar to Consumer Reports' problem: when they focus on their core competency (Economist: geopolitics and finance; CR: rating home appliances) they're the gold standard. But when they venture outside, such as this case of trying to give a quick overview of what makes a technology company successful over the long term, it's obvious that they're out of their depth. Similarly, when CR rates something like bicycles or even high tech gadgets, it can be a little embarrassing, because a lot of time they focus on the wrong attributes out of unfamiliarity.
On the other hand, I think we could put together a pretty august panel of experts on the topic of tech company success out of HR readers, and end up with no suitable conclusion, and ultimately do no better than this Economist article.
support for the Iraq war and George Bush, for instance
In what way was it sketchy? Was it just because you happen to disagree? I didn't agree with their endorsement of George Bush either, but I still think their argument for their stance was solid.
I'll have to agree with you there, the part about trashing MS is a little bit silly, Apple is at the top of it's game right now and MS is near the depths of it's game, yet the market cap of the companies are similar and MS just spent the last 10 years being harangued by the DOJ.
It's going to take a couple years to get out of that mindset and into the mobile mindset. It's a little bit silly to think that a company with a market cap of 199 B on a PE of 9 which is highly profitable cannot compete with a company worth 300 B on a PE of 15.
It's way too early to be calling the death of Microsoft, Windows might not be cool, but look around any office of an SMB. The idea that these companies are going to switch to Macs (or iPads) and retrain their entire staff is a little ludicrous.
