Business @ The
Speed of Thought By Bill Gates
Penguin
Pages 527
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Some people just love to hate Microsoft. Much as Microsoft would like to dismiss such critics as failed or jealous corporate rivals, there is no doubt that much of the criticism is sincere and there is a serious case for containing the Microsoft juggernaut.
Microsoft has been accused of trying to become a monopoly and thereby killing or gobbling smaller competitors, stifling innovation and flooding the software market with substandard products that critics dismiss as Microsoft 'crapware'. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft is seen as a marketing whiz whose only contribution to software technology was the Disk Operating System that he wrote for the IBM personal computer in 1980. DOS itself is suspected of being nothing but a rewrite of the Control Program/ Monitor (CPM) operating system. (Microsoft bought DOS from a small computer company called Seattle Computer, Digital Research that owned CPM continued to contend that Seattle stole the source code and sold a stripped down version to Microsoft).
Many subsequent Microsoft products have either been bought over from other companies or ideas have been lifted from other products. "Windows 95, made from 100% recycled Macintosh OS" as a screensaver available from one of the many anti Microsoft sites on the internet proclaims referring to the fact that Windows has emulated the Graphical User Interface (GUI) developed by Apple for its Macintosh range of personal computers in 1984.
One of the many ways in which Microsoft stifles competition is by giving its software for free or bundling it with its operating system- like the Explorer browser currently in limelight in the anti- trust case. Its bundling of the browser along with its operating system has enabled it to carve out a substantial share in the browser market previously dominated by Netscape.
Another mechanism has been the 'vaporware' strategy- quelling interest in competitors' products by issuing tantalizing press releases much before the product is launch. An example is Windows itself, it was years before an operational Windows version was released but much hype around it was created. It raised customer expectations and weaned interest away from rival products like IBM's O/S2 and Macintosh while Windows itself wobbled for a number of years before it could stand up. Another example is the announcement of the Unix version of Explorer 3.0. The product was subsequently never released. An anti- Microsoft joke reflected this policy: In which year Microsoft 98 will be released? The answer, of course, is 1999.
Many Microsoft products have been shabby in comparison with competing products and yet dominate the market, for example MS Word, MS Excel and MS Exchange. Competing products like WordPerfect, Lotus 123 and Lotus Notes were years ahead of Microsoft products. However, abrasive and deliberate destruction of competition ensured that Microsoft remained the market leader.
One remembers, not without flinching, the delight that Turbo C and later Borland C++ development environment offered while the Microsoft C compiler was little more than a clumsy command line compiler. Today, Borland C++ compiler and its one time popular Paradox database are all but wiped out.
Starting out from a garage company that essentially wrote operating systems, Microsoft today boasts of a complete range of products. Suites like MS Office, MS Visual Studio and MS Outlook are bundles of Microsoft products that are tightly integrated and aimed at eliminating the space for products from diverse companies- thereby defying the very concept of open architecture that was the bedrock foundation for the popularity of the IBM PC. The irony is that Microsoft itself started out as the underdog initially- it was the Big Blue (IBM) that monopolized the mainframe computer market with proprietary hardware and software. Today, Microsoft itself has become the behemoth.
But that is not all. Much more dangerous is the vision projected by Bill Gates. Much of the technological advances in computing science have taken place as non- profit or governmentally (read public) sponsored programs. Gates has been seen as consistently trying to appropriate these technologies for his personal aggrandizement. He has already succeeded to a large extent in doing so for personal computing. His eyes are now set, as the book under review makes it abundantly clear on the Internet.
The hacker culture, much derided by private interests that control much of the press, has been a key instrument in the development of many computing advances. As Richard Stallman, who worked in the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in early 1970s and influenced by the spirit of the age observed: "American society is already a dog-eat- dog jungle and its rules maintain it that way. We hackers wish to replace those rules with a concern for constructive cooperation".
Stallman developed EMACS, the most widely used UNIX text editor. He went on to form the GNU foundation (http://www.gnu.org) that distributes EMACS and other free software. As a message in the EMACS editor says: " If you distribute copies of a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights you have. You must make sure that they too, receive or get the source code." Microsoft would rather commit hara-kiri than make a statement like that.
Similar was the case with the "People's Computer Company" (PCC), founded by Lee Felenstein, the son of a Communist Party district organizer and a committed radical himself. The PCC was one of the first to be enamoured of the personal computing revolution and it started the Homebrew Computer Club to popularize computers for community and public welfare. This club drew together the initial corps of engineers and programmers who would launch the personal computing revolution. Among the participants were Steven Jobs and Steve Wozniak who went on to form the Apple Corporation.
The hacker ethic pervaded the Homebrew Computer Club that was decidedly anti- capitalist and the idea of proprietary software was anathema to its members except, well: Bill Gates and Paul Allen (co- founder of Microsoft).
The hacker spirit has been at the core of the Internet revolution too. Starting out as a governmentally funded defense project, the Internet was later made available for universities and scientists and engineers who perfected it over a number of years. It is only recently that the net has become a business "opportunity". Bill Gates was late in waking up to the new reality. As late as 1995, he did not see Microsoft making any inroads into the Internet. Now he wants to privatize the net too- and reap the benefits.
For one who has been on the net since the last 5 years, the present reviewer has watched with ecstasy as well as dismay the rapid growth and commercialization of the net. Five years ago, 9 of the 10 most popular sites on the net were university or educational sites, today 13 of the 15 most popular sites are commercial sites. The most popular browser then was Mosaic developed by a US government agency, then it was Netscape that revolutionized the browsers and now one sees Microsoft's Explorer pervading the computer screens.
But the Explorer was only an entry point for Microsoft- it quickly went on to buy Hotmail and FrontPage and set up MSN (Microsoft Network) in its attempt to blitzkrieg the Internet. But the Internet is a harder net, sorry, nut to crack. The most popular search engines still remain non- Microsoft. Its own sites are shabby, if not dismal and this hasn't really helped the company to take a smooth ride. The very nature of the Internet opposes monopoly- but there is no need for complacence. Microsoft, as its critics warn us so often, is ready to bend all rules.
Hence the company's attempt to wean the private CIOs to Microsoft's tunnel vision of the net. Gate's vision is sketched out in the book under review - all that the first 200 pages manage to convince the reader is that email should be used extensively for communication within the company. Preferably, of course, the email program should be a Microsoft product.
Gates attempts to popularize the term 'Digital Nervous System', the Microsoft term for its ecommerce suite of products. It may be noted that that it has been the middle level managers and CIOs of non- technology as well as many technology companies that make decisions to use Microsoft products, Gates' target audience is very clear in the book. Hence the conversational, non- technical verbosity interspersed with jargon and typical management textbook style pep- up stories. The book would please Dilbert's boss with the devil's horns. Dilbert and other lesser mortals will rather log onto the Internet using Netscape on Linux.
Bhupinder
bhupi@bigfoot.com
July 06, 2000
