Microserfs, fiction by Douglas Coupland in Wired magazin

1
Microsoft Wins Everything

• David Strom
• david_at_strom.com
• SS2 6 May 1998

2
When did you last meet Bill Gates?

• My own stories EMA keynote, PC Forum 91
• The ultimate story for us all
• My own background as editor, consultant, writer

3
Summary

• Microsoft-related humor
• Pundits predictions for the future
• Examine actual technologies and why they win
• Links can be found at strom.com/pubwork/mswins.htm
  l

4
Some perspective from around the industry

• Microsoft is both feared and appreciated
• More coverage than any other vendor
• Helps to have WRM as CEO
• Site of active legislative intervention (see
  remedies paper)

5
Gates certainly gets lots of attention

• Net worth counter
• Just in case you dont have enough Gates.pix

6
Todays strategy for entrepreneurs

• Start Internet-related company with venture
  funding
• Try to get first product marketing plan formed
• Get Microsoft to purchase 10-30 stake in
  company, or...
• Sell out to Microsoft for at least 20MM.

7
Best Microsoft-related literary efforts

• Microserfs, fiction by Douglas Coupland in Wired
  magazine
• www.wired.com/wired/2.01/features/microserfs.html
• www.wired.com/wired/3.07/departments/electrosphere
  /coupland.html

8
Web sites Microsoft would rather you didnt visit

• Yamoo index at www.tou.com/host/antims/yamoo.html
• Ralph Naders 11/97 conference at
  www.appraising-microsoft.org
• Palladium Interactives Microshaft WinBlows98
  at www.winblows.com
• Zero MicroSoftware at micros0ft.paranoia.com
• More humor at www.algonet.se/elite/noms/nomspage.
  htm

9
Top Ten Signs That Linux Has Bill Gates Worried

• 10 - New numbering scheme. Instead of
  Windows95, it is now Windows 3.1.pl95.
• 4 - Flowers sent to Janet Reno with a note
  saying "What's a little anti-trust between
  friends. -- from Brian Lantz, 3/95

10
Another Top Ten Planned Improvements at MSNBC-TV

• 10 - CNBC will include a new section -
  "Microsoft Upgrades Available This Week".
• 7 - New voice-over "You're Watching MSNBC,
  version 1.5, release F"
• 2 - All graphs showing the economy improving
  should be done using Microsoft Excel.

11
Some suggested Microsoft slogans

• Does Microsoft mean "small and limp"?
• Error Loading Windows (A)bort (R)etry (B)oot

12
Microsoft acquires rumors cover the waterfront

• LDS Church, Catholic Church (and issues a denial
  thanks to Rush Limbaugh)
• symbol, 1995, Christmas
• England, USA, DOJ, Philadelphia Mint, even
  Starfleet

13
Microsoft and software bugs have a long history

• Headline in PC Week (1986) Microsoft is Fixing
  Bugs in QuickBASIC 2.0
• Headline this week in Bugnet
• Front Page will erase your hard disk!

14
What else was going on in 1986?

• 2400 bps internal modems from Hayes 800
• 80386 PC 18 Mhz clones with 512 k bytes of RAM
  for 4500
• Microsoft selling Windows 1.03, Word 3.1
• 3Com's 3servers cost 6000 and came with 70
  megabyte disks!

15
Lets go to the way-back machine

• Gates on first OS/2 Magazine cover (1990)
• Didnt take them long to become Windows and OS/2
  Magazine (1991)
• First Windows 3 ad in 1986
• Microsoft ads in first PC World issue (1983)
  Multiplan, Flight Simulator
• Gates interview in first PC magazine (1982)

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OS/2 Magazine (1990)
17
First Windows 3 ad (1986)
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Multiplan ad (1983)
19
What Gates looked like in 1982
20
One vision of the future After Microsoft
(2003)

• by Bob Jacobson at SRI, 4/98
• Five BabySofts companies, separate applications
  from OS
• Credibility blown when I read Now that Windows
  is no longer a de facto standard

21
Insiders myth

• Microsoft's applications programmers see these
  files long before everyone else, are permitted to
  distribute them first, and are the only ones who
  know what the code does. -- Ralph Nader, in an
  USA Today editorial (1/98)
• Then why are there so many bugs in Microsoft
  applications?
• Why are there so many different versions of
  system .DLLs?

22
Another very plausible future (2000)

• AY2K-related bug keeps Microsoft-owned CBS down
  for 18 days, forcing the network to transfer
  broadcast of the Super Bowl to NBC. -- Jimmy
  Guterman, writing what he predicts will happen to
  Microsoft in January 2000 in his Chicago Tribune
  column, 7/97.

23
Things Gates probably wouldnt say today

• 640K ought to be enough for anybody." (1981)
• If you don't know what you need Windows NT for,
  you don't need it."
• "I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most
  important operating system, and possibly program,
  of all time.
• There is nothing in this industry that Windows
  3.0 isnt going to change. (1990)

24
And myself!

• But let's call a spade a spade the coming
  convergence will be less animated spreadsheets
  and more animated entertainment. Time Warner,
  Spielberg, and others will benefit. ATT and
  Microsoft won't. -- my own Infoworld column,
  9/93
• 15 of my Web Informant columns cover Microsoft
  products and issues!!

25
Quaint words of wisdom from Network Computing
(1/91)

• It appears that consistency with upcoming
  versions of Windows will define these multimedia
  and object-oriented standards.
• Installing and running Windows 3.0 on networks
  should be easier.
• The idea that PC-based tools should take
  over functions now performed in the glass house
  is unsound.

26
Now how about that hard disk scanning software?

• Microsoft hopes to get a vig or brokers fee
  on every Internet transaction that employs
  MS-tools. -- Nathan Myhrvold, quoted by Neil
  Hickey in the Columbia Journalism Review, 11/97

27
More from Myhrvold

• My personal position is that we'd be better-off
  without software patents.
• He is real motivated, this is why
• We've paid hundreds of millions of dollars on
  patent claims that, in my opinion, are bogus.
  -- quoted in PC Magazine, 9/97

28
No, James Clark doesnt take Microsoft personally

• Microsoft is fundamentally an evil company. --
  CJR, 11/97
• Maybe he was reading Stale (www.stale.com)

29
General George Patton could be a Microsoft
employee

• I have studied the enemy all my life. I know
  exactly how he will react under any given set of
  circumstances. And he hasnt the slightest idea
  of what Im going to do. So when the time comes,
  Im going to whip the hell out of him. (From
  Forbes magazine, 4/98)

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And there is even Microsoft bathroom humor
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Lets talk technology

• Competing with Microsoft
• Winners and losers
• Internet timeline, acquisitions
• News from the public relations front
• Microsofts final frontier

32
Where are they now?

• Loser
• Digital Research DOS
• Novell Netware
• Stac compression
• Word Perfect
• Spyglass Mosaic
• Central Point utilities
• Lotus 1-2-3
• TopView, OS/2

• Microsoft Winner
• MS DOS, Win32
• NT
• Part of Windows
• Word
• IE/Part of Windows
• Part of Windows
• Excel
• Windows OS

33
A few have gone the distance

• Winners
• Intuit Quicken
• Citrix
• America Online

• Microsoft products
• MS Money
• Hydra/Terminal Serv
• MS Network

34
How they win developer relations!

• Office provides easy upsizing capability to move
  from Excel to Access, from wizards to Visual
  Basic programs. As trite as it sounds, suites
  such as Office Professional can empower the user
  and developer to grow. -- Kevin Boynton

35
Microsoft understands developers

• What tools they need
• How they think
• What sodas they drink
• What snacks they eat
• What games they need to play when not coding

36
How they win (2) bundling!

• NT Server with SP3
• SQL Server with SP3
• IIS v3
• Proxy Server
• FrontPage 97
• Exchange Server with SP1
• Outlook 97
• all for 2000, 25-user version Small Business
  Server

37
Other products that didnt make it

• Microsoft at Work run Windows on your fax
  machine
• BOB!
• Microsoft Network (LAN OS), then Lan Manager
• SQL Server database server
• Active X remember the exploder?
  www.halcyon.com/mclain/ActiveX

38
Microsofts Internet timeline

• 1/93 NCSA Mosaic 1.0 released
• 4/94 Netscape founded, MS hold first Internet
  meeting
• 9/94 Netscape 1.0 released
• 12/94 MS licenses Spyglass Mosaic for IE
• 11/95 IE 2.0 released
• 12/95 MS finally has Internet strategy
• 5/96 IE 3.0 released
• 10/97 IE 4.0 released

39
Name your price

• 1995 Blue Ribbon Soundworks, Netwise
• 1996 Vermeer (80MM), Aspect Software
  Engineering, Colusa Software, Eshop, Resnova,
  Netcarta (20MM)
• 1997Hotmail, Vxtreme (75MM), Linkage Software,
  Cooper Peters (20MM), Dimension X, WebTV
  (425MM), Intersé
• 1998 Firefly
• ... And this is just Internet-related companies!

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How they win (3) Just look at these numbers

• Cost of good sold MS 10, Novell 25 of revenues
• Sales and marketing MS 29, Netscape 51
• RD MS 17, Novell 28
• Operating income MS 38, Adobe 22, Netscape -2
  
• Revenues MS 11.4B, Novell 1.0, Netscape .5,
  Adobe 0.9 (from Jeff Tarters SoftLetter)

41
With friends like these...

• The hulking hubris that is Microsoft. I might
  not be able to abandon Windows, but Id sure like
  to. -- Pete Wohlken, letter to Infoworld editor,
  4/98
• Microsoft is committed to open standards --
  when all else fails -- Dave Molta, suggesting
  Microsofts corporate motto in a Network
  Computing column, 4/98

42
My open standards scorecard

• The REAL Standard
• Suns Java
• Everyones TCP/IP
• Web browsers
• Web servers
• DMI
• SMTP
• ODBC

• The Microsoft Way
• Microsoft WinJava
• Built-in to Win32
• Built-in to Win98
• FrontPage extensions
• nothing yet
• Exchange
• ODBC NG

43
How they win (4) Everything Windows

• What cross-platform really means to Microsoft
• Eventually, everything becomes part of the
  operating system
• Include interfaces initially for features
• Then extract performance
• Case in point Java support. It just works better.

44
Bloody battles of our not-so-recent techno past

• VHS vs. Beta videos
• QWERTY vs. Dvorak keyboards
• RJ11 vs. everything else for phone connectors
• Ethernet vs. Token Ring
• Whether to bundle Windows with every new PC

45
Who is left on the battlefield?

• Sun
• Oracle
• Cisco
• (not exactly household names)

46
How they win (5) Public Relations!

• The latest on CarPoint is a new home page and
  site layout. Based on extensive usability
  testing(1), we found that users have trouble
  finding the info they want quickly using sites
  that have hierarchical layouts and home pages
  with too many links. Consequently, CarPoint now
  has a more task oriented design(2). People are
  coming to CarPoint to research and buy vehicles
  so we've streamlined the home page(3) to these
  two popular areas within CarPoint. The New
  CarPoint user interface puts everything 1 or 2
  clicks away(4) from the home page. As a result,
  users are now finding exactly what they are
  looking for, quickly(5). The majority of Internet
  sites today still(6) have a home page and site
  layout like the old CarPoint.
  
• -- (actual email from Wayne Phillips at
  Shandwick, one of MS many PR firms)

47
Anatomy of a good PR pitch

• 1. Weve done research to prove it!
• 2. Buzzwords meaning good stuff!
• 3. Gives impression of advanced web technologies
• 4. Gives further impression of 3
• 5.Benefits to users realized!
• 6.Trash the competition

48
Microsoft PR tactics

• Have many firms working for them, few internal
  people
• Dont (usually) drop the ball
• Know the editor and what s/he wants to know and
  when they need it
• Know the competition, or at least make them sound
  bad
• Sell concepts, advantages, benefits, and
  leadership

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But sometimes they drive me nuts

• Like the Stepford wives or the Borg, all MS PR
  communicate as one collective mind
• Often tend to confuse future and present tenses
• Give new meaning to being responsive and thorough
• Anatomy of the shifting sands on NDS/NT (Web
  Informant 98)

50
And what software do we use?

• All computer trade press use Word now (Xywrite?)
• Presentations such as these done in PowerPoint
• But there is hope Lotus Notes!

51
So who is really the competition?

• Desktop OS Linux? Mac? Java NCs?
• Desktop applications Lotus? Corel?
• Browsers Netscape? Opera?
• Web servers Netscape? Apache?
• Entertainment...

52
Entertainment the final frontier

• CarPoint (cars)
• Expedia (travel)
• Investor (stocks)
• Corbis (stock photos)

53
Lets review

• Superior technology and developer relations
• Bundling strategy for software and desktop PCs
• Buys everyone in sight
• Better run company by the numbers
• Desktop OS monopolist
• Superior PR tactics

54
Microsoft hasnt won everything yet

• MSNBC-TV (7/96) with 38 million potential homes,
  but 30,000 viewers (.1 )
• Slate with 45,000 readers vs. National Review or
  others with millions
• Sidewalk (lame culture guides)
• MSFDC for bill presentment stalled behind other
  efforts by IBM, Checkfree