Microsoft rewrites its own history zdnet.com
In true Orwellian fashion, of course. I got to get a copy of 1984, to get the right quotes to go with this stuff. While I got preoccupied with other things, the news has heated up big time. I don't know if anybody's out there anymore, but what the heck. This is old friend John Dvorak, taking on a well-worn subject somebody around here has sarcastically commented on a time or two.
Throughout much of 1995, Microsoft was still clueless, at least in the executive suites. The company was banking on the success of MSN, an online service. Peter Lewis's column in The New York Times on February 26, 1995, on "making Microsoft the king of the online universe" discussed Microsoft's game plan, as implemented by MSN's honcho at the time, Russ Siegelman. The litany was that "tens of millions of personal computers around the world that now use Microsoft software will be connected to a network that both embraces the global Internet and rivals it in size. Although on-line information competitors like America Online, CompuServe and Prodigy have taken nearly a decade to amass an estimated total of six million subscribers, Microsoft hopes to overtake them all within a year of its scheduled launch in August."
At that time, MSN--not a browser--was going to be built into Microsoft Windows 95. Everyone was freaked about Microsoft getting into the online business. The same Times column quoted newsletter pundit Jeff Tarter as saying, "My guess is that the Internet will vanish almost as quickly as it surged into prominence. I think The Microsoft Network is going to be the Internet of 1996." This kind of nonsense was swallowed whole by Microsoft executives. There was no way the company was going to take the Internet seriously!
How long after that was it before Bill put a bullet through MSN's head with the AOL deal? Free wasn't cheap enough to swing that deal. Of course, the whole browser war was just the briefest detour on "the Road Ahead" to Windows World. Word from Bill now is WinTone and Megaserver will put us all back on One Microsoft Way. I leave everybody with a reader comment, again a point that has come up before, here and elsewhere:
Regarding [ reader comment author] Mr. Cashman's concerns about Microsoft's rewriting history on a more global scale: your fears are well founded. This is something that has concerned me ever since they released the first version of Encarta. Can we really trust a company run by Bill Gates to publish an encyclopedia? ( zdnet.com
Cheers, Dan. |
