I’ve often wondered just how Microsoft could be so incompetent. This quote might just shed some light on it:

[…] Notwithstanding Kin’s shortcomings as a product, the most entertaining aspect of the cock-up is that it appears to be the result of ego battles in Redmond: rumor has it that Kin was throttled in its billion-dollar crib by an executive who saw it as a threat to Windows Mobile. […]

Of course it’s a threat to Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile is a piece-of-shit operating system, notable only by its complete mediocrity; any marginally decent phone OS would be a welcome replacement. But that’s not the point of the quote.

The point is: why is this executive still working for the company? The purpose of a company is to make money; the sole task of each and every employee is to follow that purpose. Executives are still employees. If any employee is deliberately destroying company value, he should be fired. Full stop. Non-executives are fired for merely not contributing enough to the bottom line; how does anyone, executive or no, get away with deliberately sucking value out of it?

Microsoft’s tolerance for this kind of behavior explains a lot about the quality of its products over the years.