Microsoft Wins Everything

David Strom

david@strom.com

SS2: 6 May 1998

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

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.html

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)

Gates certainly gets lots of attention

• Net worth counter

• Just in case you don’t have enough Gates.pix

Today’s 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.

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

Web sites Microsoft would rather you didn’t visit

• Yamoo index at www.tou.com/host/antims/yamoo.html

• Ralph Nader’s 11/97 conference at www.appraising-microsoft.org

• Palladium Interactive’s “Microshaft WinBlows98” at www.winblows.com

• “Zero Micro”Software at micros0ft.paranoia.com

• More humor at www.algonet.se/~elite/noms/nomspage.htm

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

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.

Some suggested Microsoft slogans

• Does Microsoft mean "small and limp"?

• Error Loading Windows : (A)bort (R)etry (B)oot

“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

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!”

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!

Let’s go to the way-back machine

• Gates on first OS/2 Magazine cover (1990)

• Didn’t 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)

OS/2 Magazine (1990)

First Windows 3 ad (1986)

Multiplan ad (1983)

What Gates looked like in 1982

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…”

Insider’s 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?

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.

Things Gates probably wouldn’t 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 isn’t going to change.” (1990)

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. AT&T and Microsoft won't”. -- my own Infoworld column, 9/93

15% of my Web Informant columns cover Microsoft products and issues!!

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.”

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

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

No, James Clark doesn’t take Microsoft personally

“Microsoft is fundamentally an evil company.” -- CJR, 11/97

Maybe he was reading “Stale” (www.stale.com)

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 hasn’t the slightest idea of what I’m going to do. So when the time comes, I’m going to whip the hell out of him.” (From Forbes magazine, 4/98)

And there is even Microsoft bathroom humor

Let’s talk technology

• Competing with Microsoft

• Winners and losers

• Internet timeline, acquisitions

• News from the public relations front

• Microsoft’s final frontier

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

A few have gone the distance

Winners• Intuit Quicken• Citrix• America Online

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

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

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

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

Other products that didn’t 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

Microsoft’s 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

Name your price• 1995: Blue Ribbon Soundworks, Netwise

• 1996: Vermeer ($80MM), Aspect Software Engineering, Colusa Software, Eshop, Resnova, Netcarta ($20MM)

• 1997:Hotmail, Vxtreme ($75MM), Linkage Software, Cooper & Peters ($20MM), Dimension X, WebTV ($425MM), Intersé

• 1998: Firefly

... And this is just Internet-related companies!

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%• R&D: 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 Tarter’s SoftLetter)

With friends like these...

• “The hulking hubris that is Microsoft…. I might not be able to abandon Windows, but I’d sure like to.” -- Pete Wohlken, letter to Infoworld editor, 4/98

• “[Microsoft is] committed to open standards -- when all else fails” -- Dave Molta, suggesting Microsoft’s corporate motto in a Network Computing column, 4/98

My open standards scorecard

The REAL Standard• Sun’s Java• Everyone’s 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

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.

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

Who is left on the battlefield?

• Sun

• Oracle

• Cisco

(not exactly household names)

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)

Anatomy of a good PR pitch

• 1. We’ve 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

Microsoft PR tactics

• Have many firms working for them, few internal people

• Don’t (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

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)

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!

So who is really the competition?

• Desktop OS: Linux? Mac? Java NCs?

• Desktop applications: Lotus? Corel?

• Browsers: Netscape? Opera?

• Web servers: Netscape? Apache?

• Entertainment...

Entertainment: the final frontier

• CarPoint (cars)

• Expedia (travel)

• Investor (stocks)

• Corbis (stock photos)

Let’s 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

Microsoft hasn’t 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