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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (24085)	6/13/1999 6:30:00 PM
From: brian z	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74651

McNealy critical of Microsoft investments By Tim Clark Staff Writer, CNET News.com June 13, 1999, 3:00 p.m. PT Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun Microsystems, says the government should force Microsoft to divest itself of recent investments, including its recent $5 billion stake in AT&T. "The way I put it is: Chapter 58 in most antitrust textbooks is 'Bundling the Browser With Your Operating System.' Chapter 1 is 'Buying Your Distribution Channel,'" McNealy said in an interview with Newsweek magazine to be published tomorrow. "It's like Standard Oil buying gas stations." Sun's top executive says that Microsoft should be given six to 12 months to sell off all minority equity investments, and then be barred from making other equity investments or buying new intellectual property for another five years or so. McNealy, a long-time and vocal opponent of Microsoft, has no objection to the government's antitrust scrutiny of that company or others. "I think the U.S. government was right to scrutinize IBM. They were right to scrutinize Standard Oil. They were right to scrutinize AT&T. And they're right to scrutinize Microsoft. I hope someday to be in a position where they need to scrutinize us. I hope to get there legally, and ethically and through good, hard competition," he said. McNealy hopes Microsoft will be to revise its pricing practices, end exclusive contracts, and publish APIs or application programming interfaces, the rules of how to write programs for Windows. That would make it easier for Sun or others to work with computers that run Microsoft's Windows operating system.

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (24085)	6/13/1999 6:48:00 PM
From: RTev	Respond to of 74651

And here's a story that's right on topic: A look at the process of developing IE and some of the internal debates about Microsoft's internet strategy. (Although, there's something odd here. The story doesn't explain why Microsoft's first browser was little more than a re-branded off-the-shelf version of Mosaic licensed from Spyglass. I might be wrong, but I believe that O'Hare -- the project that's the subject of this piece -- was IE 3 and not the first version released.) Meet Ben Slivka, the burr under Microsoft's saddle as it reaches for Internet power seattletimes.com Starting in the summer of 1994, Slivka began asking uncomfortable questions about Microsoft's browser strategy. At the time, Netscape Communications' browser had not yet been announced by Mosaic Communications, as the company was then known. ... When Ludwig asked him to take over the project lead for Microsoft's still-amorphous Web browser effort, Slivka took it as a green light to the autobahn. On Oct. 6, 1994, Slivka disclosed details of what he termed the Internet client, but what would actually become the Web browser, for Chicago, the code name for what became Windows 95. With typical fast-track aggressiveness, Slivka projected the new effort's deadline to be Feb. 17, 1995, for beta testing. ... Slivka suggested a breakthrough procedure: Grab the text first, filling the screen, then draw the images one at a time without reflowing the text. And he added another wrinkle: If the user wanted to keep scrolling down the page and reading text without looking at the images, O'Hare would simply keep drawing all the text, even if image sizes were not immediately known. ... ...Microsoft had not invented BASIC nor DOS nor the graphical user interface nor the word processor nor spreadsheet nor any other "killer app" for desktop computers. But it had succeeded time and again by analyzing existing technology, combining the strengths of the field, and then improving through its own unique blend of features, ease-of-use enhancements and improved usability. Microsoft's strength - its creativity, ingenuity or whatever other term might apply - came in taking existing technology much further than its creators were capable of taking it. ... By May, he had put together a long essay, "The Web as the Next Platform," talking about how Netscape could, under the right circumstances, turn its browser and server into a programming platform that would undermine Microsoft's cash cow and No. 1 product, Windows. ... Slivka also argued that Microsoft should put its resources and weight behind improving HTML, the browser standard for document formatting and layout. That threatened Microsoft Word overseer Peter Pathe, who along with other Microsoft Office partisans felt the way to go was to make Word the document standard on the Net. ... Pathe appealed to Gates himself, Slivka recalled: "So Peter was saying, Bill, could you tell Ben not to add any new features to HTML? And Bill sort of said, Ben, you shouldn't add too many features to HTML. And I sort of ignored him." Ignore the chairman? It was the kind of supreme chutzpah that earned Slivka the admiration, if not envy, of Microsoft colleagues.

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (24085)	6/13/1999 6:52:00 PM
From: Ian Davidson	Respond to of 74651

From the WSJ: June 12, 1999 Rivals Agree on a Standard For Easing Web Purchases By NICK WINGFIELD THE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION Some of the Internet's fiercest competitors have agreed upon a single standard for electronic wallets, a technology designed to simplify purchases for online shoppers. Microsoft Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc., America Online Inc. and International Business Machines Corp., along with Visa USA Inc., MasterCard International and others, will Monday endorse a new technical format called ECML, or electronic commerce modeling language. Dell Computer Corp., Hollywood Entertainment Corp.'s Reel.com subsidiary, Beyond.com Corp. and Nordstrom Inc. are among the online merchants pledging to use ECML to accept credit-card payments. Much as the hypertext markup language created a standard for the presentation of all Web pages, ECML is designed to give Web merchants a way to accept credit-card payments from consumers without requiring them to renter their personal information during every transaction. Software firms, for their part, will use ECML to store payment data in a shopper's Web browser or on a server on the Internet. The initiative follows years of unsuccessful efforts by technology companies to gain broad support for rival electronic wallets. Merchants largely shunned the wallets because they required purchasing special software or reprogramming their sites to accept the various incompatible formats. "Unless you wanted to support all of them you had to place bets," said Dave Rochlin, chief operating officer of Reel.com. Some merchants like Amazon.com Inc. have been more successful with credit-card wallets that work only on their own sites. Magdalena Yesil, a venture capitalist who previously was an executive at CyberCash Inc., one of the earliest developers of an electronic wallet, said high-tech and Internet companies previously hoped to develop a tighter relationship with consumers by promoting their own proprietary wallets. The lack of a standard "had a lot to do with politics and market share," Ms. Yesil said. "I don't think it was ever a technical issue." The cooperation of Microsoft and its bitter rivals Sun and AOL shows how much importance the companies are placing on wallet technology as a catalyst for electronic commerce. Earlier this year a report by Jupiter Communications LLC, a New York research firm, showed that 27% of Internet shoppers abandon their orders before check out because of the hassle of filling out forms with credit-card numbers and other data. "Whether we're competitors or not, this gives us all a bigger pie," said Blake Irving, general manager of Microsoft's consumer commerce group. Some analysts believe the latest initiative may have a better chance of succeeding than past technology. "ECML is a baby step, but at least the baby is walking," said Paul Hagen, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.