Failure to Launch: 5 Brilliant Microsoft Products That Never Took Off

Microsoft. The software pioneer has ceded a lot of ground since the halcyon '90s when it was synonymous with personal computing. Over the last decade, an insurgent Google and reborn Apple have wrested the spotlight from the ubiquitous giant, establishing themselves as must-watch hotbeds of agenda-setting innovation.

But despite its current reputation for spending more time behind the curve than in front of it, the house Bill Gates built has never truly had an ideas problem. The Redmond, Washington-based company and its Research division have always attracted first-rate engineering and creative talent from around the world. Where Microsoft has run into problems is delivery and execution. The company seeds dozens of innovative products that seem to find equally innovative ways to fade from existence... often before they ever make it to market. For every Xbox Live, Bing or Windows 8, there are far too many bold ideas that amount to little more than vaporware—doomed to the silicon wasteland.

Here we present Microsoft's best that never were: the lost tech that, with a little more push or better strategy, could have been the next big thing.

For years, Microsoft Word was the very definition of an industry standard: the first and only name in word processing. But as the focus of computing began to shift online, Microsoft missed the boat—failing to provide a version of its software that allowed users to access, edit, and share their documents from the cloud. Google Docs now has a firm grip on that market, but last year Microsoft finally got its head in the game with an impressive offering of its own.

Docs.com, unveiled in the spring of 2010, is an online hub that allows anyone to use the most popular Office programs (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) as full-featured web apps. The site was built in partnership with Facebook, and the social network's sharing features are fully integrated with the apps—allowing you to collaborate on projects with members of a group, or post a spreadsheet to a colleague's Facebook wall.

Docs.com is still technically in beta, but the service just hasn't been able to catch on. If only it had come along two years earlier.

Long before the iPad, Microsoft created a revolutionary touch display that was supposed to change the way we interacted with computers. As Redmond envisioned it, Microsoft Surface was "gather around" computing, a table-top based cpu with a brilliant and responsive user interface for sharing photos, videos, documents, presentations, maps and more. But the device only ever saw limited distribution among a few casinos and hotels, and Microsoft never developed a version that was practical for home use.

Soon, the multi-touch revolution left Surface behind, and what was once a marvel now looks clunky and dated. Microsoft unveiled a slightly improved Surface 2.0 at the 2011 CES, but the ship had sailed. Surface was the breakthrough touch technology that most people could never get their hands on.

Microsoft Mediaroom, first announced in 2007, was the home entertainment solution for the connected age. The IPTV service was designed to allow you to watch your TV shows on any internet-connected device in your house. Start a program on a TV in one room, stream it on your laptop in another and take it with you on your cell phone when you're on the go.

Mediaroom would integrate with your Xbox 360 as well, eliminating the need for an additional set-top box. And because it connected to the internet, there were rumors that the service would allow apps and email. But Microsoft hasn't been able to get the cable companies on board, so far only securing a limited agreement with the poorly distributed AT&T U-Verse network that doesn't allow laptop streaming. Mediaroom had a headstart at cracking the living room, but in the end Microsoft couldn't bring it home.

Announced in 2010, Microsoft's Kin is already a legendary failure: A new kind of phone that was misunderstood from the beginning, lambasted for its marketing campaign, and completely abandoned a mere months after its release. The phones never got much of a chance to deliver on their promise to become the go-to device for the so-called social generation, but one aspect about them stood out right from the start: The Studio.

Kin Studio was a personal home page for you and your phone. It was a graphic-rich canvas for all the photos, videos, messages, contacts and social network feeds on your phone that lived in the cloud. The studio was automatically and wirelessly updated-- you didn't have to do anything to have a backup of everything on your phone that was accessible from any internet-connected computer at any time. And it came with nearly unlimited storage that was free for anyone with a Kin phone. In short, it was awesome.

When Kin folded, there were hopes that a Studio-like feature would make its way to Windows Phone 7, but so far those prayers have gone unanswered. Now there are rumblings that Apple is planning to overhaul its MobileMe service for iOS devices this summer, perhaps the sound of Microsoft losing its thunder.

The fact that Microsoft has somehow missed the tablet revolution entirely, a segment it basically created with the Tablet PC in 2001, is the cruelest, most perfect distillation of the company's execution problem. The first Tablet PCs failed to distinguish themselves sufficiently from laptops, running essentially the same operating system (Windows XP) with less power and memory and no new, compelling user experience to speak of. Since the iPad took the mantle in 2010, Microsoft has been trying to catch up.

But before tablets saw a resurgence with competitors, Redmond had its own re-imagining of the device up its sleeve. The Courier was a tablet unlike any that came before or since. It adopted a booklet form factor, with two vertically oriented touch screens joined by a hinge. It relied on a stylus for input and was more like a digital journal than the iPod Touch-like devices we're used to today. Because of the way you opened and closed it, the Courier also naturally served as an eReader, and was usually shown with the kind of leather case that you might find on a Moleskine.

Images and video of the Courier first hit the web in early 2010, and naturally, speculation centered on it serving as a competitor to Apple's first iPad. But it wasn't to be. Microsoft announced that it had no plans to develop the Courier as a product, baffling observers who had been intrigued by the tablet's unique concepts. The company's bid for taking back the tablet instantly vaporized.