For those unaware, Microsoft announced some very good financial results last night and in after-hours trading their stock shot through the roof adding about $30 billion to their market cap. Obviously that’s big new for a stock that’s been stagnant for a very long time, but today we have some bloggers out there demanding that everyone else give Microsoft “props” just like they would if the news were from Apple or Google.

My response to this? Yes, Microsoft is great at making money. That has been abundantly clear for the past 20+ years. Good for them. What earns my “props” however is when a company is actually great at making PRODUCTS – Google and Apple are quite good at this, Microsoft is not.

All I’m hearing in my ear is about the 88 million copies of Vista that have been moved. That is wonderful, but until Microsoft starts telling us how many consumers actually walked into a store and bought just a Windows Vista retail box, this means absolutely nothing to me. Vista is moving so many units because people are buying new computers and having Vista shoved down their throats. As I’ve stated before, it’s like if a crappy movie opened at #1 at the box office because theaters were giving away tickets due to long-standing relationship with the studio behind it.

Zoli has it exactly right:

Time for a reality check. Product quality, customer satisfaction and market success have very little to do with each other when you have a monopoly.

The Vista problems are real, they are not fantasies created by bloggers.
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Customer demand for Vista? No, it’s customer demand for computers, in a market with no choice.

So yes, Microsoft had a good day financially; their first in a long while. Meanwhile as I write this that stock is sliding back down, already about a dollar and a half off its after-hours high last night. It almost seems as if some people now think that since the stock had one good day it’s going to enter Apple and then Google territory. Microsoft has almost 9 and a half billion shares outstanding – Google, by comparison has 300 and some million – there is no way Microsoft could ever get to those prices. At Apple current stock levels, Microsoft’s market cap would be around $1.7 trillion dollars – at Google levels Microsoft would have a market cap well over $6 trillion dollars! As long as there are 9 billion plus shares outstanding, people should get used to prices in the 20s and 30s.

Not to mention the fact that Microsoft has now very likely inflated expectations with this good quarter. The Vista problems will remain for the foreseeable future, there is no Halo 4 coming next quarter. These are not good signs. Is Microsoft still going to make a lot of money? Sure, but don’t expect a blow-out quarter like this one again.

The point is that we’re all writing stories today about Microsoft making money. That’s great, it’s also extremely old news. Microsoft could do everything wrong and make money for years on end given their dominant position. If they start making great products, then I’ll start giving them “props”.