McNealy Created Millions of Jobs?

cahiha writes "In his blog, Jonathan Schwartz argues that Scott McNealy is single-handedly responsible for making network computing a reality. His timeline is something like that in 1992, the industry was focused on 'Chicago' (Windows 95), while McNealy bravely went his own way-- 'the network is the computer.' He goes on to claim that 'There is no single individual who has created more jobs around the world than [Scott McNealy]. [...] I'm not talking hundreds or thousands of jobs, I'm talking millions.' I have trouble following his argument: client/server computing and distributed computing were already widely available and widely used in the early 1990s. The defining applications of the emerging Internet were, not Java, but Apache, Netscape, and Perl. Sun's biggest response to Chicago was to attempt to establish Java as the predominant desktop application delivery platform, something they have not succeeded at so far. So, what do you think: is Schwartz right in giving credit to McNealy for creating 'millions' of jobs? Or has Sun been a company on the decline since the mid-1990s, only temporarily buoyed by the Internet bubble?"

Comments

OK, Gore just 'took the initiative in creating'

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, there's a big fucking difference between claiming to 'invent' something and claiming to 'take the initiative in creating'. Yeah, the difference is so fucking huge you might even be able to slip a piece of paper in the space between them - if you oiled it up first.

Either way, Gore was trying to take credit for the Internet.

Quit trying to defend Gore on that one. The entire defense is nothing more than parsing the difference between trying to take credit for inventing something and trying to take credit for creating something.

Only a true idiot would think there's a lot of difference there and that Gore wasn't trying to claim credit for the Internet.