Paul Graham has an interesting piece on the day that Microsoft "died." Not that Microsoft has gone away. Last I checked, the company is still milking billions of dollars in profits each year. But Paul's point is different. Microsoft is still a successful company, but it's no longer a scary company. A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to a young startup founder about how Google wa Paul Graham has an interesting piece on the day that Microsoft “died.” Not that Microsoft has gone away. Last I checked, the company is still milking billions of dollars in profits each year.But Paul’s point is different. Microsoft is still a successful company, but it’s no longer a scary company. A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to a young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo. I said that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft. That was why they’d positioned themselves as a “media company” instead of a technology company. Then I looked at his face and realized he didn’t understand. It was as if I’d told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow in the mid 80s. Barry who? Microsoft? He didn’t say anything, but I could tell he didn’t quite believe anyone would be frightened of them.There are certain product categories where Microsoft casts a long, dark shadow (If you haven’t yet begun to worry about Sharepoint and you’re in enterprise software, it’s time you woke up and smelled the proprietary lock-in), but increasingly it’s the overweight uncle on the couch, talking to his nieces and nephews about the good old days when he could “wrassle a tiger!” Mary Jo Foley cites three reasons of her own that Microsoft’s dominance has faded:A “simple” lawsuit – or even just a threat of one – can get Microsoft to rethink its positioning and/or packaging plans in a heartbeat. Many new startups are more cautious about entering a market if Google, not Microsoft, is the already in it. Even in cases where Microsoft fielded a first or superior solution (think Outlook Web Access in the Ajax world in the first case; Microsoft Live Maps/Virtual Earth in the latter), many analysts, partners and customers dismiss Microsoft in favor of other, hipper players.I still have healthy respect for Microsoft. Sure, it’s not the Nemesis du Jour, but it’s still a credible company with enough of a hold on 20th Century desktops to have pull on the 21st Century Internet. Or would, if it would stop clinging so tightly to the old world. Microsoft needs to look forward. With Sharepoint, it has shown that it can do just that: Sharepoint holds a firm grasp on the desktop while moving desktop productivity to the intranet, if not the Internet. In other words, Microsoft still holds a credible lock on the enterprise market, because the enterprise market is not going ga-ga over Google like the consumer world has. I’m sure Microsoft recognizes this, though it occasionally gets caught up in the “Google is god” fever and plays follower a bit too ardently. Google has shown a fantastic way forward, but not for all breeds of software. The question for Microsoft will be how it melds the new world into the old one in the enterprise. It should be concerned with the consumer space, but not as fixated on it as the media is. Enterprise software isn’t sexy, but it still pays the bills. Open Source