

Bill Gates Goes Back to School - nreece
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1630188,00.html

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allenbrunson
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.

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dean
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.

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allenbrunson
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.

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dean
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.

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stevei
40% of the Web sites on the Internet run on Microsoft's IIS, according to
Netcraft...

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stillmotion
That's a pretty old article.

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mynameishere
_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.

~~~
Darmani
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.

~~~
ajju
That's the definition of poverty in the U.S. For the poor in Asia and Africa
poverty still means not getting two square meals a day and sometimes starving
to death.

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Darmani
Yes, of course.

Uncoincidentally, most of Asia and Africa are not very capitalistic

