Microsoft has had 35 years of long term growth. How can you say optimizing for short term profit at the expense of long term profit is their strategy?

> and it relies on the stock market having a memory that lasts no longer than one year

If that was true, you could easily make $billions shorting those stocks that you know sacrifice the long term. Let us know how it goes!

Microsoft doesn't do _everything_ with an eye on short-term gain, is why.

Everything Microsoft did in the 1990s was based on returning profit sooner rather than later. That's the whole point of "embrace, extend, extinguish": liquidate this technology and turn it into money as fast as possible.

Every time you make a decision which gives you money or profit today, and that decision is based on money alone, you are optimizing for the short term at the expense of the long term.

It is easier to think about when you think of personal finances. You can have a slightly bigger paycheck every pay period or you can set aside money for retirement. You can maximize profit today if you borrow from your own future.

I should not have said that Microsoft do this exclusively (and at this very second I'm not sure I said that) because they don't do that exclusively. It is a common approach to decisions regarding stock price and "shareholder value" however.

> Everything Microsoft did in the 1990s was based on returning profit sooner rather than later.

Are you aware of what happened to MSFT stock during the 1990s? The claim is not credible.

> It is easier to think about when you think of personal finances. You can have a slightly bigger paycheck every pay period or you can set aside money for retirement. You can maximize profit today if you borrow from your own future.

This is not what "profit" is.

how in the hell am I this bad at communicating?

optimizing for short term gain IS OPTIMIZING TO MAXIMIZE PROFIT IN THE SHORT TERM.

If your focus is on optimizing for short term profit at the expense of long term, your company won't last long.

If your company does last long, and grows enormously, you are optimizing for the long term.

those companies don't last long, except for those that get lucky, and continue to find new (or create new) things to quickly liquidate.

being a public company and having shareholders more or less requires you to increase stock price at the expense of almost anything else.

investors do not care if a company goes under, provided they get a handsome return on their investment beforehand.