Bill Gates Goes Back to School(time.com)
time.com
Bill Gates Goes Back to School
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1630188,00.html
15 comments
there have been so many times when microsoft could have easily wound up like lotus and ibm, i.e., unable to embrace change and suddenly irrelevant. but bill was always there to see the problem and point the company in the right direction. classic example: the rise of the internet in 1994. what happens when the next big inflection point comes and bill isn't there to turn the ship? personally i don't think ballmer can possibly fill that role.
We always hear about this so-called classic example of how Microsoft made a huge change and embraced the internet back in 1994, but did they really? What did they do? They created Internet Explorer, destroyed Netscape, and that's about it. And Internet Explorer is really just another desktop application.
In fact, Microsoft let IE languish for years precisely because they explicitly do NOT embrace the internet. They know that the internet is a platform in direct competition with Windows. They saw that. They "embraced and extended and extinguished" the web browser in order to prevent it from becoming a new platform.
Microsoft did not change direction for the internet, they are the same company pre and post internet and this example should stricken from the literature once and for all.
In fact, Microsoft let IE languish for years precisely because they explicitly do NOT embrace the internet. They know that the internet is a platform in direct competition with Windows. They saw that. They "embraced and extended and extinguished" the web browser in order to prevent it from becoming a new platform.
Microsoft did not change direction for the internet, they are the same company pre and post internet and this example should stricken from the literature once and for all.
oh, microsoft very much did change direction for the internet. i'm sure the company's first response, right down to the core of its being, was to try to ignore the internet out of existence. "so people want to get online now? fine, let them sign up for msn." i'm sure that's what billg wanted to do as well, in his heart of hearts. but he was smart enough to know that it was a battle that microsoft was going to lose, monopoly power or no.
who remembers trying to get on the internet with win3.1? it was abysmal. it had either horrible tcp/ip support or none at all, i can't remember which. everybody i knew bought trumpet winsock. all microsoft would have had to do, to follow its usual modus operandi, would be to go on pretending that the internet didn't matter. but then win95 came out, and it's tcp/ip support was outstanding. it was actually easier to set up than the unixes of the day. and its various office apps gained the ability to export to html, amongst other internet-friendly advances.
yes, internet explorer is stagnant now, because it no longer serves any purpose for ms to improve it. netscape is already dead, after all.
who remembers trying to get on the internet with win3.1? it was abysmal. it had either horrible tcp/ip support or none at all, i can't remember which. everybody i knew bought trumpet winsock. all microsoft would have had to do, to follow its usual modus operandi, would be to go on pretending that the internet didn't matter. but then win95 came out, and it's tcp/ip support was outstanding. it was actually easier to set up than the unixes of the day. and its various office apps gained the ability to export to html, amongst other internet-friendly advances.
yes, internet explorer is stagnant now, because it no longer serves any purpose for ms to improve it. netscape is already dead, after all.
What you describe is Microsoft doing the absolute least they could do to accommodate their users who wanted to get online. Things like making the technology a little easier or having Word export to HTML -- I don't consider this "embracing the internet". I don't see how these can be considered as changing the direction of the company. The direction of Microsoft was not changed at all. Their cash cows were the Windows OS and the Office Application Suite before the internet got big, and those products were still the main focus and direction of Microsoft afterward.
40% of the Web sites on the Internet run on Microsoft's IIS, according to Netcraft...
This takes me back. My roommates and I spent a year in college trying to get a browser to work on Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. We failed. I had to wait until Windows 95 came out the next year to get on the damn Web.
How many times does the word "internet" appear in the book, "The Road Ahead" in 1994?
Zero.
Kinda ironic, huh?
Zero.
Kinda ironic, huh?
That's a pretty old article.
He's all for capitalism...but he gets that it's not going to take care of everybody. The financial incentives to take care of the disadvantaged just aren't there.
Maybe something was lost in the translation from reportee to reporter, but capitalism doesn't "take care" of anybody. And the incentives to "take care" [ie subsidize] the disadvantaged are never going to be there. This is a point of mathematical certainty.
The incentives are of a strictly different type--for instance, the incentive of an evil old billionaire trying to buy his way into heaven.
Maybe something was lost in the translation from reportee to reporter, but capitalism doesn't "take care" of anybody. And the incentives to "take care" [ie subsidize] the disadvantaged are never going to be there. This is a point of mathematical certainty.
The incentives are of a strictly different type--for instance, the incentive of an evil old billionaire trying to buy his way into heaven.
The standard of living has increased seven-fold in the past century. As a result, the definition of "poverty" is no longer homeless people starving to death, but a family living in a small house who own a car, TV set, and other "luxuries." Yeah, I think capitalism has done a lot to "take care" of people.
And actually, the incentives to "subsidize" the disadvantage have always been there (why do middle-class atheists give to charity?), but that gets into sociobiology.
And actually, the incentives to "subsidize" the disadvantage have always been there (why do middle-class atheists give to charity?), but that gets into sociobiology.
I am defining "take care" as "subsidize". No, capitalism doesn't "take care" of anybody, and if it did, it wouldn't work.
I'd be very surprised if Bill was using the same definition.
It's usually not a good idea to mix different definitions of a word.
I know. To quote myself:
Maybe something was lost in the translation from reportee [ie Bill] to reporter
Maybe something was lost in the translation from reportee [ie Bill] to reporter