Posts tagged as: gates

What if members of Congress were forced to install Windows?

The amazing performance of Senators Stevens and Sununu at last week's hearings on the broadcast and audio flags has sparked a new meme in the blogosphere based on the idea that all Senators should have iPods. I think we need to take this one step further and lobby for a constitutional amendment that all members of Congress be forced to use and install the latest version of all major applications. Can you imagine what would happen if Ted Kennedy had to install a wireless network under Windows for his Senate office? He'd haul Gates in front of a Senate hearing, and demand to know why the American people are subjected to such abuse.

Disruption is the new Disintermediation

The impetus for the latest round of Microsoft naysayers was a pair of memos from Ray Ozzie and Bill Gates. Dave Winer published the complete text of both documents, and they are well worth reading. What I found most interesting is the way they captured the current "Disruptive" zeitgeist. Ozzie's October 28th memo is titled "The Internet Services Disruption," and Gates declares to his troops that "This coming 'services wave' will be very disruptive," in his response on October 30th.

There is clear evidence on Blogpulse that "Disruptive" is gaining favor among the blognoscenti.

Wikipedia tells me that "disruptive technology" was coined by Clay Christensen (from Harvard of course) in 1997 during the run-up to the Web 1.0 boom, but it looks like it will reach a peak with Web 2.0. My own Harvard training tells me that this phrase is a terrible example of technological determinism. Technologies don't "do" anything, people do things with technology, if a host of circumstances are just right. I also can't help but notice how gendered a term this is. Women cooperate, men disrupt, like a bunch of little boys on a playground smashing each others forts.

The rumors of Microsoft's death are greatly exaggerated

The Web 2.0 bubble has reached the predictable stage of assuming that Microsoft will inevitably fail to adapt to this latest tech craze. You can get the feel for it by reading the comments on Scoble's post about this subject. Where have we seen this before? Oh yes, in December 1982 when VisiOn was announced at Fall Comdex and the press (this was before blogs existed) fell all over itself predicting that Microsoft would lose control of the operating system market to the new wave of integrating environments and integrated products. We saw it again in 1995 when Netscape's browser was going to wipe out Microsoft, because Gates just didn't understand the Internet. Now ten years later we are again hearing that Microsoft is a dinosaur and can't possibly catch up with the latest web services wave.

Let's get serious for a minute. Microsoft has control over 90% of the desktops on the planet. I haven't seen any stats that web based apps are being used by even a few percentage points of the real users out there. As keeps happening, especially in Silicon Valley, the bleeding edge sees everyone they know going crazy over a new set of technologies, and they extrapolate that onto the general public.

History has shown repeatedly that first-movers do not always win, and often disappear. VisiCorp died within a few years of announcing VisiOn, and Microsoft won that round with two products that they hadn't even started work on in 1982: Windows and Office. Netscape failed under the weight of their own arrogance, and IE is now the dominant browser. It isn't just Microsoft who has beat the early market leaders. When Google first appeared, Yahoo was firmly entrenched as the dominant search engine.

I'm far from a Microsoft fan. I've made plenty of jokes about Gates being the Antichrist. I just don't see how the race for a set of technologies that may be exciting (I'm excited by the potential of Web 2.0 too), but haven't produced any products that real people (not bloggers) are using in any sizeable numbers is already over.

Microsoft keeps winning these races for two reasons:

• They keep plugging away at an application area until they do eventually get it right. They have the cash and the fortitude to keep retooling until the market starts adopting their solution.
• Their competitors ALWAYS f*** up. This is the part where I may believe in the supernatural aspects of Gates' success. I've seen it too many times, Fylstra, Kapor, Andreesen. There is something about becoming a billionaire, or at least a hundred-millionaire, that warps people's minds and ability to innnovate. Gates has avoided this, but look at Page and Brin with their new 767 toy. The drumbeat for Google as the new evil empire can be clearly heard.

Do I think Microsoft will inevitably win this race? Of course, not. Nothing is inevitable. But anyone who says the race is already over, and Microsoft can't turn the ship around fast enough is either a fool, has an axe to grind, has no idea of the history of this industry, or all of the above.