Intuit - A Despicable Company

Maybe my nerves are frayed today and that resulted in me having an extreme visceral reaction to the TechDirt article: "The End Of Microsoft Money: Big Company Doesn't Always Win". Maybe it was because Mike Masnick mentioned two of my all time "favorite" companies in one post and was off-base with his analysis to boot. Mike's off-base comment was that Intuit "won" the personal accounting product "war" because "Smaller companies are often more innovative and effective at taking on big companies."

The realty is quite different, Intuit, the seller of Quicken, is NOT an innovative company. Intuit "won" this contest because of marketing. In fact, Mike has a link to the underlying Cnet article: "How Intuit managed to hold off Microsoft". What is not mentioned in either the Cnet article or in Mike's analysis is the overly aggressive hyper abusive marketing strategies used by Intuit to sell their products. Additionally, Intuit does not disclose all the onerous business practices they impose to force the buyers into unnecessary "upgrades". Quicken, the personal finance program, is simply a cash cow for Intuit.

Intuit didn't win because it had a better product, it "won" because the more inept company, Microsoft, decided to drop out.

When Quicken was first released, it was a good program, it was innovative, and I had no complaints about Intuit's corporate policy. Over time Intuit has become a despicable company. I won't bore you with the mind numbing details of my negative experience. I'll end it here, but I would suggest doing an internet search so that you can form your own opinion.

PS: Paragraph above corrected based on the comment provided by Anonymous Coward. Also added a link to the Intuit, Inc. page on Wikipedia.