The first is that they seem to presume that when I encounter some sort of problem on the job, the first thing I'm going to do is ask myself "I wonder if some sort of Microsoft product can help me?"

Of course this is hardly the first thing that would jump into my mind, and it completely misses the point of how I would approach the problem and how I would obtain the information I need to to solve it.

The second is that they seem to have -- intentionally or unintentionally -- failed to grasp how much my own process of getting answers has changed in recent years. They don't even include my first choice of information as an answer!

Just look at one of the questions and the offered answers (which I'm supposed to rate on a scale of 1 to 5.):

When seeking information regarding how to be more effective or efficient in your job, how often do you use the following resources?

• Online newsletters
• Formal classroom training at work
• Friends/family members
• Books (includes user manuals, how-to materials and e-books)
• Conferences or other live events
• Professional/industry experts
• Websites (non-Microsoft)
• Newsletters (print)
• Webcasts
• Employer/company internal intranet site
• Manager at work
• Magazines or journals (print)
• Online communities (such as blogs, forums, newsgroups, wikis, or chats)
• Information technology (IT) staff person or consultant
• Formal classroom training outside of work
• Microsoft Website
• Professional association Websites
• Co-workers
• Other, please specify:

Notice anything missing???

And all the questions are like this. They want to know how I might find out about all these fantastic solutions Microsoft wants to offer me that will allow me to do all these fantastic things with office.

Third, this clearly reveals that they want to continue making their money by pushing bloatware on their customers. 95% of the features in Word are unknown and unused by 95% of its users. Same for Excel, Powerpoint and all the others. Even Microsoft Project -- a tool that is generally used by a fairly narrow body of professionals -- includes so much stuff that most of its users fail to bother with most of it.

They seem to realize this is a problem, but can't bring themselves to consider the real solution.

I have no doubt that the folks at Microsoft will get nice clean answers for their management. Like the old joke about them says, it will be completely correct and absolutely useless.

It'll be useless because those good folks doing the survey won't even mention the "G" word.

Yes that. The "G" word. Google.

Or at the very least, the "SE" term. "Search Engine."

But we all know which two companies have a virtual lock on the "SE" business, and we know that neither of them is Microsoft. I think the survey designers know that's not an answer they can present to their managers.

I'll be the first to admit that I've had my qualms with some of the valuations assigned to Google, but I also have no doubt that it's changed the way I work.

If I want to find out how to do something in Excel, I'm not going to any Microsoft website or help page. I'm typing "Excel feature I want" into Google and looking for the answer, wherever it happens to be.

Beyond that, if I want to accomplish something and am not aware of the right tool -- or even aware that a Microsoft tool supported my need -- I'd just type the idea into my Google searchbar and see what comes up.

Sure, in some cases I might supplement that information with information from professional associations or other tightly-focused websites, but they'd be a distant number two, after exhausting the general search possibilities.

Seriously, what would you rather do, figure out how to print labels in Microsoft Word, or just enter "label printing" to a search bar and find multiple simple downloadable applicatons to easily do the task.

The era of bloatware is over. The era in which a manufacturer can control how and where people will get ideas (or criticisms, or reviews) of its products is over. The era in which you can charge for rarely-used, unimportant features that can be easily accomplished with simple online tools is over.

Until Microsoft and their ilk deal with this reality, they're still in trouble.

-btc