Bill, fire up you Real Audio 3.0 viewer and go to this page. Here's Darth Vadar's (a.k.a. Steve Ballmer) apologia for Microsoft's record to date in the Internet space.
pcweek.com
Note a few interesting comments:
1. Ballmer said that Microsoft has done a top-notch job of developing a state of the art browser (which it has) but that its market penetration is not what he would like it to be.
2. Ballmer expects, that's right, expects Microsoft to lose $400 million on content businessesthis year and to continue to sustain losses over the next 3 years. I wish somebody would ask them how much they are losing every year on Internet Explorer.
3. Ballmer admits that Microsoft Network is rigged so that, although Netscape users can view the "free" materials on the "promotional front end," to use MSN, you have to have an "Active-X enabled browser," i.e., IE. He says develping an internet access service "reguires" the choice of a browser, and Microsoft has (surprise) made its choice in IE. They are basically forcing people to use IE in order to be able to use the Microsoft Network. If you don't use IE, you can't use Microsoft Network.
4. He volunteers that the installed base "is not an anchor around our neck." 'Nuff said about that.
5. When asked about the significance of the fact that internet standards do not originate at Microsoft, Ballmer says "we have to embrace those standards." It seems to me that when standards do not originate with your company, and you have to embrace them to be viable, then your company has lost leadership. At one point, he used the term "embrace and demolish" but then said "embrace and extend is the term we like to use officially" to describe Microsoft's strategy.
Although Ballmer puts as good a face on it as he can, I still think Microsoft's internet strategy, and its browser strategy in particular, is a flop.
There is also an interesting talk by Andressen about the intranet and how that is now being expanded to create "extranets" between companies and their customers. I would expect to see a white paper on it at the Netscape site soon, based on Andressen's comments.
The interesting thing about this is that the extranet, because it is based on open standards, allows companies to connect to each other and to their customers in a way that was not possible in the past. The whole idea relies on the general acceptance of open standards, Microsoft's weakness and Netscape's strength. The technology underlying intranets and extranets is identical, meaning that the differences between them are mainly semantic.
I wonder how Microsoft is going to apply the idea of only allowing users with IE to access and use the most important part of MSN in the intranet/extranet marketplace, where your company may have IE, but your custmers and suppliers might not.
I think Microsoft has a serious, inherent problem here. What do Tom Rearden, Reg and Lawrence have to say about this? |
