A very good interview here
techweb.cmp.com
Technology
Guides
Internet/Intranet
Infrastructure
Wide Area Systems
Network Management
Collaborative Computing
OSes & Services
Security
Middleware
Servers & Peripherals
On Our Site
Site Guide
Network Design Manual
ISDN Sights
Interactive ReportCard
News
Frezza's Forum
Sponsored by:
Site Services
Free Product Info
Subscriptions
Media Info
Web Connection
Newsletter
Search For:
Home
Site Map
Search
Ad Info
Online Exclusive
By Christine Hudgins-Bonafield Gilder on Gates,
Governance and Network Gestalt
"Efforts to absorb communication systems into the OS are a
mistake. You create a system that does everything poorly."
Calling government "irrelevant and too late," technology futurist George Gilder
lambasted efforts by the U.S. Department of Justice to seek sanctions against
Microsoft Corp. for requiring that resellers use a version of the Microsoft
operating system that includes Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.
Gilder says he doubts antitrust efforts will have an effect on Microsoft's
software hegemony. Instead, he says, he believes that "the contest will be
settled by the success of Sun and IBM in perfecting Java, rather than by the
success of Janet Reno in collecting fines from Microsoft."
Gilder predicts that Java-based browsers ultimately will outperform Windows
integrated browsers when it comes to network applications. That doesn't
mean that he envisions a diminished Microsoft. Gilder--flag bearer of
American-styled conservatism and proponent of supply-side
economics--believes Bill Gates already is at work figuring out this latest
challenge. He also considers Microsoft founder Gates a "hero" and an "heroic
figure in American enterprise."
And though he says Microsoft's competitive practices can be "offensive," as
witnessed in its Java licensing dispute with Sun Microsystems, Gilder is
among those who believe that the heightened call for a
government-sponsored Microsoft breakup would be disastrous. We first
caught up with Gilder on tour at NetWorld+Interop, just after Sun announced
it was taking Microsoft to court over Java; and just before the Justice
Department announced it would seek unprecedented $1 million-per-day fines
against Microsoft for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows.
Whether Justice's move is a prelude to further antitrust actions remains to be
seen. It is clear that growing resentment and envy toward Microsoft is
intensifying the ardor with which competitors and businesses urge that the
world's largest software supplier be reined in.
Gilder sees two primary problems with those arguments. The first is that U.S.
antitrust law is a "septic tank" that has little, if any, bearing on the fast-paced
software business. Many, in fact, believe that antitrust law is antiquated when
it comes to today's dynamic markets-- and that any legal decision to break up
Microsoft would necessarily tend to be based more on politics and
competitive ideology than rule of law.
Gilder's second problem with government intervention lies with Microsoft's
growth model--one of tightly integrating the OS with applications. Why
should the government intervene, he argues, when this model is about to
collapse under its own weight? Gilder says that the burgeoning size and
complexity of the OS doesn't play to advantage in an increasingly
network-centric world. He also believes that Microsoft is estranging its
greatest resource--third-party software developers--as it brings more and
more of its own applications (and therefore software profits) into the OS.
As a result, "much of the energy and creativity is flowing massively to
Java-based solutions," Gilder says. "These will allow people to escape the
Windows cage."
Today, Gilder says, Microsoft's model "imposes too much responsibility on
the owner of the system to resolve a series of very complex communication
protocol issues in order just to achieve minimal services, such as e-mail." He
doesn't see the real issue as that of dominance--IBM revenues, after all, are
larger than Microsoft's--but growing frustration by developers, partners and
businesses over the breadth and complexity of Microsoft's model.
Gilder, who is at work on "Telecosm," a fall 1998 Simon & Schuster release
on the future of networking, says one of Microsoft's problems is that of
combining "the content and the conduit." If you have good content, he says,
you want it on everyone's conduit, and if you have a good conduit, you want
it to carry everyone's content. "It is not desirable to integrate all sorts of
content and communications protocols into this gigantic operating system that
is growing ever more complex year after year. That model collapses of its
own internal conflicts and conditions. What you need to do is deliver
interfaces that are robust and that can accommodate software components.
That can epitomize the Internet model, where you have a few crucial
standards that are enforced and that permit the effluence of complexity on the
edges. The efforts to absorb these communication systems into the OS is a
mistake. You create a system that does everything poorly."
Of course, not everyone agrees. Even Gilder's technology-loving 13-year-old
son, Richard, grins with glee at the idea of government stepped in to
disassemble the cords binding applications to Microsoft's operating system.
But Dad is firm. "Such an effort would bring government into an area in which
it is incompetent," Gilder says. Also, by the time "the political and judicial
system could accomplish anything, the entire industry will have changed so
much that the original decision would be irrelevant. It is not possible for
antitrust to function quickly or intelligently enough to accomplish the goal of a
disaggregated Microsoft without damaging it seriously."
Gilder, in fact, believes true monopolies--slow-moving technology empires
that raise prices rather than lower them--are rare today, so rare "no one can
find them." The exceptions, he says, are those monopolies that have been and
are being created by governments through processes like FCC cellular
auctions.
All this is not to say that Gilder is a cheerleader for Microsoft's business
practices--only that he believes in focused application of the law rather than
huge antitrust actions. "A company in Microsoft's position should not use its
existing monopoly as a brute force means of frustrating a competitor with a
different model," he says, referring to Microsoft's use of Java. He even
believes Sun has "a good chance of prevailing" with its lawsuit against
Microsoft.
What Microsoft needs to do, Gilder says, is to create "a
platform-independent Java component system working across the network
and breaking away from the bloatwear it is currently selling."
Will Microsoft do that? Gilder is confident that Gates "will figure out how to
deal with this present crisis in a positive way." He says that Microsoft is at "an
unfortunate point in its history when it will have to change more drastically
than those at the helm want." It's hard for those in charge to see a need to
change, he says, because the model has been very successful. But Gilder
predicts that Microsoft's growth rate will "fall dramatically over the next
several years, and what seemed unstoppable will be more mortal than most
people imagine."
"I think," says Gilder, "that Gates will turn to Java to save Microsoft, and I
think his contribution will be very valuable, but if he tries to wage a tactical
war over Java and to prevent Sun from benefiting from Java, it's unseemly,
perverse and a mistake that he will regret. He didn't invent this technology,
and he has to deal with the companies that did invent it. And he can live with
that."
Updated October 23, 1997
|
