
Wired Interviews Bill Gates (1996) [video] - ytrash
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VFFlO7yBIBM
======
HammadB
My main takeaway here was that Gates thought that the cost of distribution on
the internet would be so low that there would be no large business that could
form. However one of the interviewers pushes back by saying that because the
cost of distribution would be so low, aggregators would naturally form a
monopoly on this business. Incredibly prescient point in a world of Facebooks
and Googles. Anyone know who she is, the Wired interviewer who makes this
point?

~~~
Torwald
Neither FB nor GOOG have become such monopolies in that type of business they
were talking about. What Gates said hold true today.

Think for example about a one person business like daringfireball.net, that
was the type of business Gates was envisioning. Or Drudge report.

~~~
jtr_47
This ISPs have, or will become the true monopolies that will be the
gatekeepers of all access to the internet.

They are entrenched and are not expanding their services, instead, they are
digging in and keeping their foothold within their regions,
limiting/eliminating competition, both from a rules/laws (like preventing
municipal ISPs from forming) and limiting their service footprint to maximize
their "profits" within their regions. Next expanding, but always increasing
the amount they charge to poor service and access to the "internet."

If anything, it appears that ISP behavior is similar to the original Ma-Bell
(USA) telephone Corp. It looks like somebody needs to break them up. But
that's wishful thinking this day & age, just like having a nation wide (USA)
fiber deploy to all states, cities and towns. Imagine, a Renaissance would
develop.

Peace

~~~
patrickaljord
ISP have so far been pretty neutral and have not been acting as gatekeepers.
I'm more worried about Google's Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and Apple who've
been acting as gatekeepers, banning people they do not like from entering
their de facto monopolies. If ISPs start acting this way one day, I will start
worrying about them too but so far, it's these social networks that are the
real gatekeepers.

~~~
fapjacks
That's only because nobody's gone after an ISP for the same kinds of things
that they go after Google for, with respect to the stupid Section 230 changes.
When the outrage mob discovers it can bully an ISP into shutting off political
opponents, then the ISPs will be exactly like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
You already see echoes of this for example with Jeff Atwood's misfire on
Twitter recently, going after Azure because he thought Gab was still being
hosted there (it wasn't)[0]. Incidentally this is one reason why Section 230
was so important. The change is new, so it's probably just a matter of time
before the outrage mob starts going after the T-Mobile and Comcast accounts of
its enemies.

[0]
[https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/1056426165274009600](https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/1056426165274009600)

------
rococode
Wow, is this the original source? Such a low view count for what I feel is a
very interesting look into a more casual Bill Gates. This seems much more
spontaneous than the usual videos we see of him, and it's pretty cool to see
the kind of thoughts he has before being filtered into prepared statements for
the public.

~~~
stevewodil
Well if the interview was in 1996 and YouTube was created in 2005 I would say
it was available elsewhere first

Also the YouTube video itself was just uploaded a couple of weeks ago.

~~~
jahlove
From the video description:

> I don't think we ever did anything with the interview. I had completely
> forgotten I had video'ed it.

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santiagobasulto
I've just watched the first 10 mins, but it's amazing how he's incredibly
aware all of the technical details, and combines a strategy perspective
("unified email client") with all the technical details (low level networking
details) to make those strat decisions a reality.

~~~
abvdasker
Yeah and he demonstrates both a complete and precise knowledge of everything
his company is doing in nearly every arm of the business (not to mention his
encyclopedic knowledge of business Microsoft is _not_ in). It's easy to forget
why Microsoft was so dominant in this era of computing, but listening to him
it begins to make more sense.

------
adventured
I always find it fascinating to compare just how large the tech industry has
become since this era, when Microsoft was already regarded as something close
to a giant in the industry.

Microsoft sales 1995: $6.1 billion ($10b today)

Google is about 12x larger. AWS by itself is about 3x larger. Facebook is 5x
larger. Salesforce is similar in size. Oracle is 4x larger. SAP is 2x larger.
VMWare is closing in on 1x that size, as is Adobe. And Microsoft today is 12x
larger.

If people back then understood how large technology companies would become
today, I wonder what would be different (if anything).

~~~
traskjd
It was considered more than something close to a giant. If anything, it was
considered scarier than anything we have now.

Back then there was nobody else. We've gone from a monopoly to an oligopoly
(ish) which in some ways feels less scary.

It's hard to overestimate Microsoft dominance in the 90s. If there was a wiff
of them entering a category, the players in that space would be in trouble
(similar to Amazon today, though Microsoft followed through more in decimating
their rivals).

~~~
adventured
> If anything, it was considered scarier than anything we have now.

Yes, I recall those days intimately. It was hysteria and laughable even then.
Breathless magazine articles claiming Microsoft was going to dominate
everything, set up toll roads on the Internet, dominate e-commerce,
publishing, media, and so on. None of it was even remotely feasible or
credible.

The fear that briefly surrounded Microsoft's reign was almost entirely
baseless hysteria. Its preeminence and monopoly abuse era lasted for six or
seven years. Facebook has been abusing US consumers with its social monopoly
for longer than that already, as has Google with its search monopoly (they're
at least a decade plus in now). Both Facebook and Google are not only
drastically more powerful and wealthy (greater financial resources by at least
a factor of 10) than Microsoft in 1995-96, their reach is far beyond anything
Microsoft had at that time. World-wide PC sales in 1995 were a whopping 70
million.

Google and Facebook touch nearly all corners of the globe, in real-time, at
all times. Billions upon billions of people. Microsoft's reach in 1995-96?
Extremely slow in nature, and less than ~150 million people globally.

Ability to throw or bias elections and control global commerce? Microsoft had
almost none of that type of power with their operating system, or IE.
Extraordinary amounts of commercial activity and referral flow directly
through Google and Facebook products/platforms each day. Google's algorithm
changes have dramatic effects on businesses. Android is a far larger
gatekeeper and toll road than Microsoft could have dreamed of in 1995. YouTube
by itself is roughly worth as much as all of Microsoft was in March 1995 (and
has dramatically greater influence and reach, along with a monopoly position
in what it does), Instagram is worth even more.

And Netscape, Microsoft's most famous 'victim'? (although not the thing that
really got them in anti-trust trouble) The notion of building a large business
around charging for a consumer browser was a dead-end. Nothing that Chrome or
any other free browser wouldn't have put an end to later. Netscape was always
going to die, short of pulling off a magic in-flight engine change to
enterprise software (which they tried and failed at).

There's no chance Microsoft killed off more competitors in those days than
Amazon has. How many small and mid size retailers has Amazon put under as it
has added $100+ billion to its retail sales? Given the very low consumer &
economic growth of the past decade, the tally would have to be thousands of
businesses across the US. There are radically more retail stores of all sizes
across the US than software companies. It's impossible for Microsoft to ever
compete with the business rival destruction that Amazon must inherently cause
as it grows ever larger. How many physical stores will Amazon destroy as it
adds its next $100 billion in retail sales? It's not detracting from Walmart's
sales, that's not shrinking, so it's coming from everybody else.

------
projectramo
Something to keep in mind: the DoJ consent decree was 1994, and the lawsuit
was filed in 1998.

This was right around the time that Microsoft’s monopoly power was under
intense scrutiny.

In that environment, it makes sense for BG to push back against the notion
that they could use their desktop OS market share into some kind of content
market share.

If you notice he gets particularly vehement whenever someone asks if they can
use their control of the OS (or tools or the browser) into control of the
content.

He emphasizes that the distribution platform has to be neutral.

------
mckee1
"There will be no content club in my life time with $4 billion revenue...you
are on drugs if you think that".

Netflix revenue last year was $11.6 billion.

Fascinating interview.

~~~
blihp
I suspect there was a little rope-a-dope going on on his part. Microsoft was
less than a year in to turning their ship around
([https://www.wired.com/2010/05/0526bill-gates-internet-
memo/](https://www.wired.com/2010/05/0526bill-gates-internet-memo/)) to ride
the Internet wave. So he wouldn't have wanted to telegraph to other large
competitors that this was going to be huge. (hopefully, given their
investments) They already had their hands full with all the tiny startups who
had been there years earlier.

~~~
flashmob
Yep. Also, he had to be careful not to say anything that would suggest that
having a monopoly in the OS market would somehow benefit the dominance of the
content busniess, it seems like the interviews were trying him on that. I
think the antitrust accusations started to simmer around then?

Interesting to note, Microsoft bought Hotmail for $400 million the following
year.

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strayamaaate
For whatever he gets right or wrong, this is a fascinating look back into the
past. Thanks for sharing!

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atq2119
Funny to hear him talk about Encarta. I had totally forgotten that that used
to exist.

~~~
stevewillows
It's funny, at around the 32 minute mark Gates even touches on 'free
information publishing', which seems to surprise the journalists. This 'free
information publishing' would later replace his Encarta, which was costing
~$30m alone to translate.

What a great video! It's fascinating to see the perspectives on the media,
content, advertising, etc, in contrast to our current ad-driven world.

------
trucho
Msft has always missed a bing or two.

------
sfblah
He looks sort of overweight and unhealthy. That surprised me.

~~~
tyingq
He was 41 years old in 1996. Here's the magazine cover:
[https://media.wired.com/photos/5bbbd018b1d78f2d74578369/mast...](https://media.wired.com/photos/5bbbd018b1d78f2d74578369/master/w_2000,c_limit/04.06_g-w.jpg)

Certainly not any sort of athlete, but doesn't look unusually overweight or
unhealthy.

------
Torwald
At ~25-30 min they talk about "content club" as a business. The Wired guys
propose this could be a +4$ billion biz. Gates laughs them off. Now, today we
have the numbers:

\- As of May 2018, Apple Music had 50 million paying subscribers worldwide.
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/604959/number-of-
apple-m...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/604959/number-of-apple-music-
subscribers/)

\- Apple Hits $10B in Revenue From Services Like iTunes
[https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/apple-
hits-10-billion...](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/apple-
hits-10-billion-revenue-services-like-itunes-1157173)

~~~
dpandya
This seems like a questionable comparison.

Apple Music, et al. _license_ content and there are few companies that are
able to do this. This creates a barrier to entry that wasn't present for the
"content clubs" Gates discusses. In fact, his primary point is that due to the
lack of a barrier to entry in the market and no accumulating advantage of any
kind, there wouldn't be a single dominant player.

~~~
coldtea
> _In fact, his primary point is that due to the lack of a barrier to entry in
> the market and no accumulating advantage of any kind, there wouldn 't be a
> single dominant player._

Well, we have at best 2-3 "dominant players" in each field, so not much
better. And doesn't already Kindle dominate in eBooks? Surely iBooks is not
that much of competition.

