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Gates Successor Says Microsoft Laid Foundation for Google
thefickler writes "According to Bill Gates' successor Craig Mundie, there would have been no Google without Microsoft. 'I mean, the fact is: Google's existence and success required Microsoft to have been successful previously to create the platform that allowed them to go on and connect people to their search servers. Now, Microsoft's business is not to control the platform per se, but in fact to allow it to be exploited by the world's developers. The fact that we have it out there gives us a good business, but in some ways it doesn't give us an advantage over any of the other developers in terms of being able to utilize it.' This comment comes from a lengthy interview between Mundie and APC magazine, which talks with the newly installed strategy and R&D head. Other interesting topics discussed include the future of Microsoft and Windows, OOXML, and and the 'rise of Linux' on the desktop."
I think I want some.
And many others (IBM, Bell Labs, Xerox, Apple, etc.) were needed for Microsoft to be successful. Who cares?
MS clearly paved the way for monopolistic tech companies to form.
Funny, I didn't know MSFT created the internet, desktop computing, and web browsers.
Google would work just as well if MSFT had been nothing more than a long-forgotten BASIC provider.
So, what microsoft are saying is google is standing on the shoulders of giants.
;)
Well, I suppose they have to; there are no seats left to sit on
liqbase
Al Gore was working for Microsoft when he invented the internet.
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
I thought Google only needed a browser to run on, and you can get a browser on any of the various OS I've tried. Well, maybe not that one in the Engine Management Unit, but there again it's not something I thought necessary.
threadeds blog
That without Benjamin Franklin neither of them would be in business. So where's his praise MS and Google? Huh?
http://blog.heavensdomain.net
--
I think this article should have been filed under "It's Funny, Laugh" as the notion that Microsoft 'laid the foundation' for anything is humorous. Did this man ever stop and consider that technology and advancements in networking or bandwidth made Google possible? That the early Google founders themselves may have had something to do with their fate? This was more of a marketing pitch than an interview.
I think someone should point out to this man that simply because Microsoft became successful doesn't mean that another technology wouldn't have risen to fill the same gap.
Like my father always told me, there ain't no shame in being humble. I think Microsoft is forgetting that humility is a virtue & if they continue to talk like they're the savior of man then they're never going to fix the flaws that plague them. This is the classic example of business tactics & marketing trumping technology & progress.
My work here is dung.
The first time I used Google was on an SGI IRIX machine, and the overwhelming majority of my usage has been via FreeBSD and Linux. Please tell me what Microsoft contributed that made this possible? I come up with a big fat ZERO in answer to that question.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
After all, if Microsoft had been able to create a decent search engine for the Internet early on, Google would've never come in to being. Without Microsoft all but ignoring the rise of the Internet in its early stages, Google would never be what it is today. Microsoft's continued dedication to bringing really poor web content to the world allows Google to step up and offer web mail services and tools for the desktop that are useful.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Microsoft invented the Internet. -- IV
http://www.LinuxMedNews.com Revolutionizing Medical Education and Practice.
Of course, google would not be what it is without Microsoft. It also wouldn't be what it was without Linus Torvalds. Or Thomas Edison. Or George Washington. Or any number of others in history.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Oh. Wait....umm
we hate google. i'll kill them!
damm. we cant beat google.. soooooooooo....... WE CREATED THEM! YEAH! THAT'S THE TICKET!
ow... i think i broke a funny bone reading that headline. thats some mighty fine crack they must be smoking over at microsoft. hmmm... kind of explains the mess of vista doesnt it?
Microsoft owes everything it has to Unix, since C was created for Unix, and Windows couldn't have been written with C...
- Despite popular opinion, I am not perfect.
If there was no Microsoft, there would still be a Desktop PC. They existed before MS-DOS did and WIMP GUIs existed before Windows. 3D graphics standards existed before Microsoft was involved. Google required a lot of other businesses to exist before they could, but Microsoft is not one of them.
Microsoft didn't invent the net. Google owes its success to Al Gore.
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
Hey, you know. My grandfather was a Canadian soldier who met my oma in Holland during World War 2. World War 2 was started by Adolf Hitler. THEREFORE, I would never exist without Adolf Hitler. I guess I'd better be thankful...
Next thing you know another Boreopithecus Redmondanus is throwing chairs instead of stones.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The "platform" that Goooooogle uses was not developed by Microsoft. The Internet originated with DARPA. Other companies developed the routing and networking infrastructure. The Web originated at CERN, on a NeXT machine. Web browsing was common on Unix machines long before it was available or easily usable on Windows machines. Windows didn't even support TCP/IP natively when the browser was developed. The web server also originated at CERN, although the first popular one (NCSA HTTPD) originated at UIUC's National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Microsoft was late to the game, late to recognize the usefulness or importance of the Internet, attempted on a number of occasions to try to gain control of the Internet as a platform, and has done little or nothing to advance the Internet on its own (except for adding extensions to standards that would lock people into its own platform.)
Oh...and Goooooogle runs on Linux.
Google's existence and success required Microsoft to have been successful previously to create the platform that allowed them to go on and connect people to their search servers.
That assumes that only Microsoft could have brought about the proliferation of the common desktop computer. I personally think that Microsoft was a major factor, but someone else would have stepped in later had they never existed. This is just plain arrogance, and easy to state since there's no way to know what would have been otherwise.
Developers: We can use your help.
Just look at the evidence. There's no way they could ever make Google compatible with Macs or Linux.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Huh? I thought it was Al Gore that invented the internet.
Seriously, its retarded that MS is trying to claim that the internet wouldn't be around except for Windows. I mean PC's don't *have* to run windows. If Windows wasn't around the world would just be running something else. Hell, even PC's aren't that necessary. We could all be surfing with Macs or Amigas or thin clients or something else that didn't get invented in this timeline.
The market decided on Windows, partly from features and partly with a bit of brute force applied against vendors that would have chosen otherwise. But, had OS/2 or Mac or Amiga won, there would still have arisen a TCP/IP stack, then HTTP, a browser, and still a Google....
This is my sig.
Is this the white flag saying we can't beat Google in the search arena?
And just think where we would be if Ben Franklin hadn't invented electricity!
Another ridiculous example of Microsoft hubris. Plenty of us remember MS itself being late to the Internet party back in the 1990s.
If anything, Google came about because of Yahoo (with banner ads, etc), and possibly Altavista which was also being sold as local document search/archival platform.
{ - Generic Guy - }
Well, it gets exploited all the time, so they're succeeding.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
...yes, sort of like IBM looking for a quickie outsourced OS helped to create Microsoft.
But not really.
While IBM created the environment for Microsoft to thrive, Google wasn't aided by being inside Microsoft to give them the advantage of official endorsement. Google thrived on their own merits, and didn't have to pull a switcheroo with an existing product line of theirs to get people to use their main product. The packaging they did do was remarkable in it's lack of crassness - simple text advertisements, relatively clean services for images, maps, and tools, etc.
It's the usual progression to see Microsoft's PR switching to a "Well, we're really just like Google - we're really their buddy, see" approach after the usual dismissive phase.
Ryan Fenton
If I remember correctly, Microsoft was the one saying the internet would amount to no more than a fad and ignored it until netscape really started going off then they bundled an arguably inferior browser with their OS and put an end to any serious competition for a few years. So I wouldn't say Microsoft helped Google, more like thought about strangling it with its own guts.
Google does not use Microsoft internally to run their servers.
Microsoft was one of the *LAST* platforms to adopt TCP/IP. (Even counting Trumpet WinSock)
There were web browsers WAY BEFORE IE.
What, exactly, did Microsoft for for Google?
The Bush administration has taken a liking to Microsoft's public relations and historical accounting techniques and wishes to hire them.
Table-ized A.I.
Except for those secret unpublished APIs, that is.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
from inside the monkey house...
Now, Microsoft's business is not to control the platform per se, but in fact to allow it to be exploited by the world's developers.
Let me count the ways!
Don't forget the fastest growing exploit
No. The 'salvation' attitude at Microsoft will continue. They can do no wrong, and will defend each legal claim until exhausted (and have the money to do it, too). Their success is an accident of history, boorishness, and illegal behavior, as documented through hundreds of judgments. There's a nugget of good work done here and there, but you won't change their ego, their testosterone-driven hubris. It's silly to try. Step aside, let the train go through, and continue on. Let Gates retire, the sooner, the better. Mundie adds little.
The nice thing about dictatorship is that eventually, the dictators either retire or pass on, leaving lesser leaders in their place. These lesser leaders inevitably fail.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Some people credit Nazi Germany ran by Adolf Hitler with the fabulous reconstruction of Europe in the post WWII era. The Marshall plan and the creation of a unified Europe based on equality would never have been possible without the Nazi led preparing ground work of leveling the old Europe beforehand. Of course this is outrageous as the Nazi's never intended todays basis for the society in Europe. Likewise Microsoft cannot be given credit for any competitor they did not kill off timely. Microsoft's only contribution to ICT is proving racketeering a successful concept on the basis of the judiciary not understanding the basics of computer programming.
Trumpet Winsock.
*smirk*
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
I just left the men's room where I laid the foundation for this lunch I'm about to eat from Burger King. I'm not going to be responsible for the box it came in, only assisting in BK's usage of my digestive system.
without NeXT there'd be no intertube-web-information-highway thingamajig.
without PARC there'd be no mouse
google wouldn't work without either of these companies, but they'd probably do just fine if Microsoft would go under.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
If Microsoft hadn't done it, someone else would have. Not only that, but almost all of the other players who were in a position to 'lay this foundation' probably would have done a better job! I'm really not sure how comparing yourself to a cement contractor is a good thing...particularly when the foundation you've laid is full of cracks.
This is the biggest load of bullshit I've heard in a long time.
Let's give credit where credit is due:
1) cheap 14.4/28.8 kbps modems
2) HTML
3)
4) cheap 15+bit color video cards
As far as I can see, MS had nothing to due with any of these things.
And let's not forget about Archie and Veronica.
So how did Google become popular?
Dear Microsoft: Search engines are a natural consequence of the World Wide Web. They didn't need you. Google got popular because of its indexing algorithm. Period.
Yes, MS laid the foundation for Google to be a success, but not as Mundie suggests.
The analogy would be more akin to Detroit, in the 1970s, laid the foundation for the success of Japanese automakers.
Instead of laying a positive foundation, it was a foundation of failure that gave Google a chance to seize upon.
Much could be said for the entire Web economy -- it was Microsoft's Monopoly position on the desktop and subsequent Failure To Innovate that opened the way for desktop-less computing. And Linux. And for a resurgence of Apple (which could have easily been killed off if not for Microsoft Pinto, I mean, Millennium Edition's reliability and XP's Security).
Thanks, Microsoft!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
...that Microsoft really hasn't provided the foundation for ANYTHING in computing.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
This is very interesting. It is, of course, untrue at almost every level and clause. (The clause "The fact that we have it out there gives us a good business" seems true, though you could argue that it takes a lot more than that.) But this two paragraph set constitutes is a big lie. Or I should say Big Lie. It doesn't matter that it's wrong, some will believe and parrot it. The more energy you spend fighting it, the more people will hear it, and some believe it. Even if you (if you were a senator, FTC commissioner, DOJ head, etc.) don't believe it, you can still grin and use it as an argument against... something.
That's where things get interesting. Why is Microsoft saying this? Is this just the normal self-importance of Microsoft, or the naivite of Craig Mundie, or does Microsoft have a plan to annoy Google by making Google Microsoft's child? I suppose it could be used over and over in arguments against Google, where MS and Google disagree, but is there something in specific?
In one sense, yes, MS's success ensured that lots of people were out there connecting to the Internet. But in a more important sense, no, MS was not key to making data indexable or searchable. HTTP's success ensures enough data can be indexed by a spider to make it worthwhile; HTML's success ensures enough people can access a web-based search engine, regardless of desktop platform. The only thing MS brings to this party is masses of underserved users, yearning to breathe searchable data.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
That's funny since Google deploys to a browser, which more people than just Windows users use. Even more amusing is that most of Google's success on Windows is via Firefox...which again is on more platforms than merely Windows.
Up until XP windows used the BSD networking stack. Google runs on BSD servers. The BSD code, or a fork thereof, is used on a majority of servers. Most routers run kernels based on the BSD code. Most DHCP clients are based on ... well you get the idea. I mean seriously... BSD => Microsoft, that is quite a typo...
Thanks for the laugh ... I really needed that today!
Let's send a machine back in time(running Linux on a PowerPC architecture so they don't get any bad ideas)
to assassinate Bill's mother before he was born, thereby erasing his entire existence. We can then observe the effects on the present and determine if the statement is true.
After only 16 posts.
Microsoft was late to the party to begin with. Then it crashed in, and flailed around causing more damage than good. It tried to take on various bits at the party with little success, then this new guy comes in and does something that microsoft failed at, and Microsoft is now trying to claim the glory for itself?
It looks to me like a grasp at straws.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Claiming credit for others peoples successes.
Every event in time effects all future events. Yes, if the creation of a company 30 years ago that effected the economy and computer industry (for good or ill) as much as Microsoft has had never occurred, then yes, history would have transpired differently and Google would almost certainly not exist.
There is not a doubt in my mind, however, that some other company would have arisen that would have done pretty much the same thing that google does now. It's a niche that would need to be filled.
Technoli
I think this is just another example of the delusional management culture at Microsoft. Look at what's been coming out of Redmond lately:
- We made Google what they are (and by implication can un-make them)
- Vista is setting sales records! (and so are voluntary downgrades to XP, which they're conveniently not reporting)
- Anti-competitive? Us? (Yeah, you)
- OOXML is a great standard! (so good we have to bribe partners to vote for it)
- Zune is an iPod killer! (iDontThinkSo)
- Forced updates were just a lack of communication (coupled with a lack of intelligence)
- We listen to our customers (the same way Bush listens)
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Only in a very roundabout way, shooting-the-messenger style. Yeah, sure, their OS runs most of the computers in the world, most of which use Google, but that's a faulty line of reasoning; Apple or NeXT could plausibly have taken over the market in the same way.
Perhaps, by making the PC affordable and almost omnipresent, they helped enable Google's success. But they sure as hell didn't contribute to it, nor did they form any kind of bedrock for it.
I write bullshit
TFA also has some interesting comments about OOXML:
It's interesting that this is both similar to, and different from, Miguel de Icaza's recent comments. It's similar in that they both completely deny the validity of the main criticism that's been leveled at OOXML, which is that it says a lot of things have to behave like certain MS products, without saying what that behavior is. It's different in that Miguel seems to have emphasized his opinion that some other aspects of the criticism of the standard has helped to improve the standard and make it something that really would allow other people to implement it, whereas Mundie seems to be saying that the entire ISO debate was a worthless FUD attack on poor little MS, and that MS simply intends to win the vote through politics, without making changes in the standard in response to the criticisms.
Find free books.
This is exactly Microsoft's problem, and the reason why Craig Mundie can't fix it. He sees the world through Microsoft blinders, and believes all goodness has come from them -- even though their most successful products were developed outside of MS and acquired by them. With Craig Mundie in charge, MS will continue to make the same mistakes it has in the past, and won't end up changing when it needs to change.
I remember far enough back to when IBM was considerd by all convention wisdom to have an "unbreakable lock" on the computer market. We all know what happened there.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This is why ms needs to perish.
Really, if ms went down the crapper, local and world business would keep rolling along for at LEAST a YEAR. In the mean time, others would pick up the slack, and it would be BETTER, with one LESS gigantic megalomanical company calling the shots. And, it would put intelligence gathers in a tissy since they wouldn't for long be collecting handed-over back door keys, too.
EAT your arrogance, mshaft.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I could not have said it better myself. You've covered nearly all of it. The one point that you did not expound upon is the illegal bundling of IE with Windows in an attempt to quash Netscape (who had the dominant browser at the time).
What a bunch of self-serving egotistical drivel.
I believe the world had a need for personal computers. There was a demand for the technology, and there was competition. Turns out windows became the dominant platform in the end... But honestly, had Microsoft never existed, does anyone seriously think we'd be any less advanced technologically than we are today?
Some details would surely be different, but please, let's not pretend that the visionary company who developed an OS that didn't have (built-in) networking support until 1995 invented the internet, HTTP, web browsers and e-mail.
Annnnnnd really, was there no USB, we'd still have Firewire.
Google wouldn't be possible without the American taxpayer and a number of enterprising engineers from around the world. We paid for the research upon which the Internet was built, and the initial implementation through DARPA. Given that he intends to turn Microsoft in an "Internet" company, I suggest he say a big "thank you" to us as well.
Google wouldn't exist if it wasn't for that butterfly flapping its wings in China.
Google filled a void at the right time and took a more subtle approach to what is basically advertising hucksterism. Microsoft at that time was doing what it usually does -- having no clue. .net, without usenet since I have to look up something that's not in the msdn docs, maybe once or twice an hour. I think microsoft based IT shops would be in trouble without google groups. If google wanted to cripple microsoft all they'd have to do is mess with the archive a bit.
Now, since google controls the only usenet search archive, they control microsoft software development to some extent. I can't program windows,
The logic seems to be something like this: Google needed lots of home and office computers to succeed, and most of those computers ran Microsoft software. But that doesn't mean that those computers wouldn't exist without Microsoft. If history had gone differently, they might well be running an OS derived from CP/M instead of from MS-DOS (which was Bill Gates's original recommendation to IBM). Or they might all be running a Unix-like OS (something Microsoft itself once assumed was inevitable). Or IBM might have stayed out of the desktop computer market (which they almost did) and there'd still be no de-facto standard for desktop computers. Or one of the other players might have created the commodity system, and we'd be running something derived from the Amiga or the Atari ST. That last scenario was always unlikely, but personally I'm very sorry it didn't happen that way.
So of course, this claim is hilarious. But we shouldn't laugh too hard. This isn't the first time I've heard technogeeks congratulate themselves for "changing the world" when all they did was surf the waves of technological progress. Even Brin and Page, who deserve a lot of credit for their technological savvy and also for correctly anticipating how search engine technology had to evolve, are just surfers, not the equivalent of Lord Neptune who gets to decides where the waves go.
At Microsoft, the BG Reality Distortion Field spreads inward, causing top management to believe there were no computers at all until Microsoft came along.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Microsoft/Vader: Sun/Obi-Wan never told you what happened to Netscape/your father.
Google/Luke: He did. He told me you embraced and extended / killed him.
Microsoft/Vader: No, Google/Luke. I am your father!
Google/Luke: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Wonderful, quotable, line!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Networking existed in many microcomputers in the mid 80's in the OS, except that PCs required a third party solution, often Novel. MS eventually fixed this hole in MS Windows 3.11 for workgroups.
The cheap microcomputer itself is largely a product of Compaq reverse engineering the IBM PC. The innovation of the OS consisting of a significant part of the cost of computer is an MS innovation.
The internet, which externalized the communication costs, is the result of many public and private firms, most notably DARPA.
Perhaps the most significant MS innovation, as it often is, is the programming tools which allow ordinary people to develop software. This may have lead to the significant number of dishonest person who broke the Alta Vista engine by putting in unrelated keywords on their page, and thereby ended the happy days of the internet, forcing us to use a ad driven power hungry search engine.
I think when we look for who innovated the internet, look at who has the machines, who has the IP blocks, and who carries the traffic. For not innovating, look at who is used to send out the attacks.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
however, this proclamation *is* rather ridiculous :)
Finally someone else has stepped up to be the fool of the year as the one who "invented the internet".
(Unlike Mundie, Gore actually never claimed he did. Only that he fueled money into it to get it on track)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Networking did exist (Xerox Networking, TCP/IP, etc). Note that the Xerox system was adopted by Novell and became IPX/SPX.
The major accomplishement Microsoft had was in breaking the vertical integration of the software/hardware industry and thus creating an environment where the computer could become affordable. Phoenix and Compaq were the other companies involved in this dynamic. Microsoft *has* accomplished a great drop in computer pricing (one which nearly put IBM out of buisness!) and this has lead to the experience of the internet we know today.
My own understanding is that open source does what Microsoft does well, only better. We can commoditize non-specialty hardware and software, and help break the monopolies that have formed due to proprietary licensing. We are actually the successor to Microsoft.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
But it depends on how you look at it.
That statement he made is complete BS.
Google is successful because of the rise the popularity of the internet.
This can be attributed to cheaper access to broadband, and cheaper and faster PCs.
It just happens that most people accessing the internet use Windows. Ok I'll give them that.
But google owes more to opensource than anything else. With out Linux and Apache, and whole slew of other open source projects, there would be no google. Sure they could have built their infrastructure on Microsoft products, but it would have cost a lot more money, and they may have never been able to get that little startup off the ground.
Shameless plug alert: Game server control panel
There is NOTHING in the google search engine OR the HTML that Google uses for search that comes from MS. The bulk of the internet tech comes from OSS and the commercial unix world. About the only places that MS has made contributions that helped Google was their stealing tech that lead to AJAX, which is used in maps and mail.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
and the creation of the PC that allowed Microsoft to become successful, so what?
They win the right place at the right time lottery so that someone else could win the right place at the right time lottery? By virtue of implying Microsoft's success was tantamount to Google's success, why stop there? If there was no Microsoft, there would be no internet as we know it. Makes perfect sense... pause... NAAAAAHHHT!
NCSA Mosaic.
*sigh*
Here's some more help for followup posters: Gopher, MUDs, NNTP, Anonymous FTP, SMTP, UUCP. At no point in the long history of the internet did Microsoft contribute usable technology.
Liberty you never use is liberty you lose.
Isn't that the basis of technological evolution? In order to advance to a new level, existing technologies must be leveraged.
Is he talking of IE getting you to Google.com !?
Because if he is, IE was the browser in slumber and there's always been competitors to it for as long as it has existed. Since many have been superior too, if there was no Windows, no IE, we would probably have evolved *faster* to an improved "web browsing experience" (to use their language) than today.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I'll get my coat...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
What Microsoft provided was an environment that anyone could use.
Not necessarily a great OS or infrastructure, and certainly not one they created out of nothing.
Just one that worked well enough that the average user could get by.
Now, everybody has PC and they want to go online and find stuff.
The service Google provides is now relevant.
Page & Brin create Google.
Thus Microsoft "created" Google.
Similar scale issues make PCs much cheaper, so one can potentially install a free OS into a cheap PC and have a working system for little or no money.
By the same reasoning (I'm NOT the first one to put this one forward), Microsoft also "created" GNU and the whole free software movement.
A great invention does not spring out of empty space:
Many sources contributes to an environment in which a great invention becomes relevant or feasible.
The inventor contributes the great invention.
We ALL stand on the shoulders of giants.
A more accurate measurement of one's height may start at one's feet, not at the ground far below us.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
So if I were to time-travel back to lets say February or March of 1955, kidnap Bill Gates' mom and force her to have an abortion:
Would I effectively prevent MS from ever existing.
Therefore the PC we know today would not exist.
Therefore the Internet we know today would not exist.
Therefore Google would not exist.
Therefore spam would not exist.
With the exception of Google not existing that doesn't sound so bad. Damn I need to get back to work on that flux-capacitor QUICK!
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, For you are crunchy and go well with ketchup.
Google Earth is not a Google developed product - they just bought the Keyhole viewer. And you can thank ESRI, MapInfo, Microstation, and others for developing that market.
Face it, Google copies others just like every other company copies others. The whole idea of any company being the One True Innovator is a marketing myth.
The Tao that can be spoken is not the one eternal Tao
"Standing on the Shoulders of X"
./ right?
I'm sure we can all define an amusing X for the above. I did not do so at the risk of offending any particular X's out there. Monkeys? There's no actual "Pan troglodytes" reading
Your .sig reminds me of an old chestnut:
No weapon of the enemy's is as dangerous as one of your own second lieutenants armed with a map and compass. (From Murphy's Laws of Combat, I believe, though I'm probably mangling the quote.)
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
... that Microsoft created Google.
Just like Al Gore created the Internets.
It takes an idiot to do cool things - that's why it's cool!
And without Hitler there would have been no European Union ,United Nations, or Israel...
Well the first part is true. Microsoft's claim is a bit silly.
If it had not been Microsoft it would have been Digital Research, or Commodore, or Sinclair, or DEC. Someone would have come out with a new workable standard or Digital Research's CP/M would have evolved into from CP/M-86 into CP/M-86+GEM into a full 32 bit multitasking OS, or maybe OS/2 would have worked because Digital Research would have stayed the course with IBM and made it work.
Or Novell and or AT&T would have figured out how to market Unix or Apple would have grown to be the the great Evil Empire that it could have been.
Or Radio Shack/Tandy would be the major computer manufacture on the planet.
So many possibilities some better then what we have now and some worse.
What if IBM had realized that they where going setting a standard that would live for 25+ years? Do you think they would have created Microsoft and Intel? Or do you think that they would have made their own CPU and OS? Maybe we would all be living with CPUs based on the IBM 360 today?
Just as if the Wright Brothers hadn't built their plane Sanitos Dumont would have been the first. If not him then someone else.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
...and, with any luck, Google will lay the foundation for Microsoft's demise.
...Microsoft has hired the Iraqi Information Minister.
More than 60,000 Windows programs won't run on Linux.
I read TFA and it doesn't really say much more than that. He doesn't say what platform he's talking about. Is this some day going to be another infamous "took initiative in creating the internet" vague out-of-context [mis]quote?
[smartass]If he were talking about Symantec, McAfee, and the other AV companies, I would understand the statement. It took a lot of vision in the 1990s to have the guts to deploy applications that effortlessly run untrusted code. No one would have gotten the idea of having IM programs, mail readers, and web browsers run external code by having the user click a link.[/smartass]
Or is he talking about the 1970s? No one debates that in the 1970s, Microsoft's BASIC interpreters made personal computers a lot more "approachable" and the explosion of the early 1980s might have gone much more slowly without them. It wasn't until the late 1980s that Microsoft's entrenched legacy started really inhibiting progress. But I think of Google as happening long after that, and the idea of sophisticated OSes running on client machines can more realistically be traced to companies like Commodore and Apple. If Microsoft wants to take credit for something that long ago and currently irrelevant (I haven't seen a personal computer with a BASIC interpreter in ROM, in a long long time), ok, but it's damn near meaningless.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Isn't this like saying that there would be no internet without Al Gore?
In space, no one can hear you moo.
Paul Baran is one of the fathers of the Internet and says something along the lines of "each man added a brick and says 'I built a cathedral'"
If you search Google books for "Where Wizards stay up late" you can find the exact quote (but I can't cut and paste it).
It's more like "OK, you win, you win, but without us, you won't win." This manager is weak.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Most arrogant fuck ever. My God what's next. I suppose he'll claim that Microsoft cured cancer because people used office to write their research papers.
Gotta love the 'tags' for this article.
hellno, no, noway
I feel so relieved to know that the next time I want to search for relevant articles on these fine topics, I'll be able to get to them quickly and easily.
No. If there had been no Microsoft, someone else would have done that.
Sometimes I wonder. What if there had been no Microsoft and instead the market was divided between, say, Apple, Atari, Amiga, BeOS, OS/2 (though OS/2 was arguably IBM's response to Microsoft Windows). So (at least) 5 incompatable operating system and 5 incompatable hardware platforms. So I picture a smaller overall market with little standardization between platforms. Linus would probably have been an Amiga or BeOS fanboy and wouldn't have been forced to write Linux.
Through Bill Gate's sheer ruthlessness Microsoft incidentally created an ubiquitous hardware platform that allowed the development of standardized interfaces; everything from keyboards and mice to video cards and optical drives. Which, arguably, incidentally allowed Google to standardize on massive numbers of cheap, industrial standard computers running Linux instead of more expensive, proprietary computers with a proprietary operating system; i.e. Apple, Amiga, Atari or BeOS.
I believe the existence of Microsoft may have helped Google become successful.
Do you think the slogan "Don't be evil" would have even been thought up if a company like Microsoft was not the market leader?
Further Microsoft helped by doing a horrible job whith their own web services, like hotmail and the rest of the MSN network.
No offense, but please take your own advice and don't ignore history. At the time:
1. There was nothing magical about DOS. It just happened to be the OS that IBM selected for their computer, and their computer turned out to be insanely popular. People didn't give a fuck about the OS as such, it was just the thing that came with their PC. If Microsoft hadn't existed, IBM maybe would have made a better offer for CP/M or maybe would have written their own micro-OS.
There was nothing revolutionary about DOS. It was a clone of CP/M. And having worked with both MS DOS and CP/M, I can tell you they were barely program loaders and the most primitive filesystem imaginable (though each in its own way.) Even you could have written your own DOS, if you wanted to, and so could IBM. But again, IBM wouldn't really have had to: CP/M was already insanely popular on 8 bit micros, so it would have been a no-brainer to license it instead.
2. Windows was nothing special either. OS/2 had a graphical interface too, and so did GEM and half a dozen other stuff. MS Windows may have been the most popular graphical interface at the time, but it wasn't the only one by far. The idea that without MS Windows you'd have had to buy some uber-expensive hardware instead, is just absurd. Without MS, you would have gotten GEM or any of the other GUIs instead.
Even skipping past the fact that someone would have filled the void eventually anyway, the fact is: they wouldn't have had to, because there was no void to start with. Alternatives already existed.
Now we can debate whether Windows was the best, and it certainly was the most popular. But thinking that without MS you wouldn't have had a graphical browser on the PC, is just absurd.
3. The IBM PC itself, again, was nothing fundamentally special. There were _plenty_ of other computers competing for the market at the time. Another one would have filled the void.
Everyone rants and raves about how MS brought us finally to $300 computers, but seem to ommit that we had been there before already. E.g., my first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000, a.k.a., ZX-81, which cost IIRC 60$. Now ok, a ZX-81 couldn't exactly run a graphical browser, but a lot of others could. I see no reason why a Sinclair QL or Amiga couldn't have evolved to fill the niche if the PC didn't exist.
Basically the PC may have been the best bang/buck, but it wasn't the only offering by far. It also wasn't the cheapest.
So basically the assertion that without a PC surely you'd have ended up with something much more expensive to go online, is flawed. We don't know at what price the market would have stabilized, if the PC hadn't pushed everyone else out of the market.
4. You'd be surprised how much of the PC's evolution had _nothing_ to do with MS. It was wildly cloned because IBM allowed anyone to clone it, as long as they paid the royalties for the BIOS. Then Compaq did a clean room reverse-engineering and that was the beginning of PCs which aren't encumbered even by that. And so on.
There were a myriad of factors that combined to make the PC ubiquitous, most of which had nothing to do with MS. Hearing that MS single-handedly brought computing to the masses is nothing but revisionism of ludicrious proportions. While they might have had _some_ of the merit, they were just one among hundreds of companies which contributed to the phenomenon.
Heck, even with their DOS, at some point IBM got sick and tired of MS's 32 MB partition limit, so they bought DOS from MS, wrote a better filesystem and sold it back to MS. The intermediate IBM version was IBM DOS 4.0. Or for Windows a lot of the work was paid for b
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If Microsoft wasn't the one successful as a user's operating system, allowing them to connect with Google, etc...
Then someone else would have been successful on the desktop side of the equasion (Apple? IBM? DEC? Linux? Unix?) and users still would have accessed Google, giving them their current position. It matters not if it was Microsoft or not, as while their positions are mutually beneficial, they are not directly tied to one another.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
I used the "surf the wave" analogy just a second ago, in another post.
And you used it much more effectively, all poetical and stuff.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
JtRipper insists that it was his reduction in the number of the ladies of leisure that help found the schools of marriage guidance counselors after encouraging gentlemen to stay at home.
Microsoft did enable Google
By being so inept at putting out quality product that the door was left open for Google.
Look what Microsoft did with IE and dominance of activeX. Now where would we be if Microsoft had continued to develop and improve IE after they squashed Netscape? Where would we be if activeX was fast, secure, and clean?
Microsoft had MSN and hotmail. But they wanted netservices to be such a tool of the "Microsoft Way" that they limited them so much it drove people away to more innovative services.
Microsoft is its own worst enemy. Hampered by its desire to dominate.
He's talking to politicians.
What he is trying to establish is the maxim that GM used:
"What's good for GM is good for the US".
He is trying to make this:
"What's good for MS is good for the US (as shown by the creation of Google)"
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
"Among the other vendors offering Winsock-compliant TCP/IP stacks were 3Com, Beame & Whiteside, DEC, Distinct, FTP Software, Frontier, IBM, Microdyne, NetManage, Novell, Sun Microsystems and Trumpet Software International" -- wikipedia (It's a valid list)
Microsoft defined the Winsock interface, but originally did not even release an implementation. Which is why, back in the day some of us were dialing up using the copy of Trumpet that came on the CD/Floppy from our ISP. Along with Netscape Navigator.
"Craig Mundie: Well yes and no. I mean, the fact is: Google's existence and success required Microsoft to have been successful previously to create the platform that allowed them to go on and connect people to their search servers."
Microsoft's contribution is that they took control of a market that existed before them. Being successful in the market does not automatically mean you laid the foundation.
Without Microsoft Windows we obviously would be running Amigas, Macs, OS/2 or maybe even OpenStep on PC. And if there was MS Windows, but they didn't deliver IE and Winsock, we would be using Netscape, Trumpet/whatever.
It's not like we would not be using desktop computers if Microsoft didn't bring us DOS and Windows. It was inevitable. If Microsoft didn't exist to be the market leader, someone else would have. And a search companies would have started popping up once enough people got online to make advertising worthwhile.
The only valid scenarios I can see is that if it wasn't for Microsoft millions of people would not have gone online to get help with getting Windows to work correctly.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
DEC built AltaVista. It was supposed to be a demonstration of good & powerful DEC servers were and was offered as a public service.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alta_Vista
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I am not sure what I was using as a system when I started using google, but I am so very sure it wasn't a microsoft product I could make a bet on it. .... really not sure which, but not Windows....
.... and it is not google and never was ....
.....
...... those few million OS/2 and Mac and UNIX users did not exist //// OMG !! This stupidity got me mad ...
It must have been BeOs, OS/2 or linux
MS wanted THEIR SEARCH, and THEIR BROWSER only. Naturally windows comes with IE, and we all know where all misspelled words and other searches take you
It is like saying, if MS did not exist there would not be Amazon or Ebay, or Video games
ahha
What will you do when that MSCE is worthless? We're 50% there now. What will you do? You can join all those Novell CE's sitting down at the pub crying in their beer about the good old days.
When that day happens (and it will come), remember me... I'll be laughing at you.
He never said he invented the internet. From the link you gave, this is what Al Gore said:
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
That isn't quite how they did it. Both Borland (compilers, Quattro Pro, Paradox, etc) sold cheap software that was superior to Microsoft's equivelents. WordPerfect wasn't terribly expensive, and they dropped their prices to match Microsoft's prices; and WordPerfect was far superior to MS-Word. (WordPerfect for the NeXT was perhaps the best word processor for a decade. Too bad their MS-Windows version blew.)
Microsoft had one advantage that stemmed from their unique position of supplying the DOS for PC compatibles. They were able to make exclusive deals with computer manufacturers. They used their superior market position to push MS-Windows, to lock out DR-DOS, and to bundle MS-Office with every business computer sold.
It had nothing to do with "good enough," or price. There were plenty of competitors to fight them on both the quality and price metrics.
Microsoft realized the tremendous business potential of essentially owning the supply chain, and using that to freeze out competitors.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Alongside that, we give away free software to universities so that students use it. Then we charge hundreds of dollars for an individual to program the .NET framework. It's free to get the framework's runtime environment on your machine (like Java) but in order to develop anything useful for it, you have to pay us money (unlike Java).
.NET software (the C++ version lacks some essential features for writing Win32 software, however). WebMatrix (for ASP.NET development) is also free. Command line development tools are included in the framework runtime distribution, and are used by free third party IDEs (like SharpDevelop).
.NET.
Visual Studio Express editions, available for C++, C# and VB.NET, are free, and are perfectly adequate for writing
You don't have to pay microsoft a penny to develop on
Wow! -- I can't quite believe he said that. Coming from the next in command at Microsoft, this would seem to translate as :
- Diffusion cycle : more and more people start to use (new) MS products -- the 'get sucked in' phase.
- Exploitation cycle : once the market is sufficiently locked down, we start the exploitation -- for example, by forced unnecessary upgrades to new and more expensive editions of the OS (e.g. Vista) by removing support for older versions (2000, XP, Win98 etc).
This seems nicely in keeping their current marketing strategy.Google truly can thank M$ most of its success, but only because M$ was slow to realise how much money is in the Web. If there was no M$ the Mac would have took over its place, and Linux would have still be born. What we would miss is probably the vast spam and malware, because that stuff wouldn't thrive so much without the vulnerable dungheap Windows is.
People could still have a choice, those who don't care with computers but need one, could still use the Mac. And the rest could use the various BSD/Linux etc. Heh, probably even Beos and OS/2 would still be alive. Sorry, M$ guy, without M$ the world would have been so much happier.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
With the way Microsoft is going, it will either be forced to get back into the game by putting the customer first, or it will crumble.
Reading that article it's obvious to me that the guy is nothing but a salesman. Unfortunately, it's not enough to be good at selling something when the product is crap, because word spreads, and people do remember not to come back.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
Gray did a lot of presentations at UC Berkley in the Mid 90's.
The architecture that he was pushing is exactly what ended up being adopted by Google.
The funny thing is that he was mostly ignored within Microsoft until much later. If you read about the versions of the Terraserver project, you can get a feel for how much he was ignored.
Here is a link to the presentations he did at UC. 'http://research.microsoft.com/~Gray/talks/McKay2.ppt#256,1,Parallel Database Systems A SNAP Application'
Take a NeXT computer. Use it for a while. (Never mind how slow it is. You're working with 15-year-old hardware.)
Then use whatever version of MS-Windows you like. Find one that matches the ease-of-use, flexibility, and just niceness of the NeXT. Subtract the difference in age between the two operating systems.
That'll give you a good idea of how far Microsoft has set us back.
In my estimation, it's about 17 years and counting.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Google is based on Clippy!
And if people like me had not been making their own S100 bus computers and using ARPA to advertise that we needed to sell our old textbooks and canoes when we moved back from campus ...
Bill G has little to do with it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Individuals with grandiose delusional disorder have an over-inflated sense of self-worth. Their delusions center on their own importance, such as believing that they have done or created something of extreme value or have a "special mission".
Microsoft shareholders beware: "new Gate's" is seriously delusional.
Sell, sell, sell...
I wonder if comments like this would spark downgrades for the stock.
Al Gore invented Microsoft and then Microsoft invented the Internet. It makes perfect sense now.
...the streak of white-male US presidents would have continued forever. But because of W, no one ever again could even consider the question of "can a woman be president" or "can a black man be president", for more than a millisecond before bursting into a combination of tears and laughter.
Thanks W. You have changed the world. You've without a doubt set the bar, that all future presidential candidates will be judged by.
That's not really fair.
I think it's fairly clear that Mundie is referring to the sudden increase in global data flow that coincided with the advent of the Internet. In effect, I think he's making the claim that without Microsoft's valiant attempts to choke off this dataflow, without its deliberate obfuscations and distortions, without the calculated policies of embrace and extend... I think he's suggesting that without these factors, there would be no need for Google; that without Microsoft fscking it up for the rest of us, we wouldn't need Google to find useful information. And to that extent at least, I think he has a point.
All the same, I still think he's giving MS too much credit: The main problem was that even despite MS' best efforts, there was still to much information to easily organise.
Still, I can see where the man is coming from.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
It gives me warm fuzzies to see yet another company so disconnected from reality (like the RIAA) and equally disconnected from the customer.
I understand the geek mentality to take that statement and break it down and get mired in the techie details as to why they are right or wrong. It's all goo.
... sad.
But I take a different approach. Suppose that statement is 100% correct. So? Great, Google owes Microsoft a nice thank you card. "Thank you. Now, lead, follow, or get out of the way."
It just seems like sour grapes to me. Someone trying to get some credit for others' success. If Microsoft were a person, that person would seem to have an inferiority complex. More than anything, I find that just
**Shudder**
...
That's a name I have not heard in a very long time
That's a relatively new development. Express Editions are crippled and I don't remember seeing them before 2005.
Like it or not, Microsoft enabled a lot of people who couldn't care less about computers to feel comfortable enough to invest in a computer and use it.
The "monopoly" part is nearly inevitable -- people want a standard. Just like hardly anybody cares about the HD-DVD/Bluray format war except that there will be a winner so that they can go buy the right device to play new movies, most people didn't own computers in the early 80's because there was such a wide choice and your entire investment was truly obsolete in a few years. Own a Commodore 64? Too bad, Commodore's new and better computer, the Amiga, doesn't run the software, or even have a compatible disk drive. Same with Apple, TI, Atari, etc.
So yeah, Microsoft made it possible for Google to make a ton of money advertising to all of the people who would not otherwise own computers. But I wouldn't brag about it -- they were in the right place at the right time. Their success is due more to luck than any other factor.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Yeah but the question remains, why would this statement come out of MS? Obviously they know better... what're they trying to do here? Obviously they're not out to look like idiots. What's the real reason?
Indeed!
Thsi is silly. Al didn't invent the internet,nor did he claim to.
He just said he created it. Big difference.
So Microsoft wants a piece of the pie? Big Surprise. Now they are saying they made the pie too. Big Deal. What irks me is when they say they have a corner on the search engine market...and people actually believe them. I use MSN.com as my homepage (in IE7) purely because I'm too lazy to care. It works well enough for me...except when i want to browse away from MSN. Say I open up my browser, and while it's still loading the page, I can't type in a new address. Once the page is loaded, I click the address bar, and start typing my destination...only to look up and find out that the cursor has deciced that i want to search for google.ca using microsoft's search engine, instead of browse to it as intended. Freakishly akin to trying to type the recipient's email address in a hotmail email...it decides halfway through that you should probably start with what you want to say. In any case, I have a feeling their "high" (~12%) number of all internet searches is based more on people accidentlly using their service like myself half the time...btw...Google still get's about 50% of all searches...so half of that pie.
If the Red Cross didn't come along, where Bill Gate's mother sat on the board with the IBM chief and asked him if he could help his son with some contract opportunity, Bill Gates would have never had a chance to license DOS to IBM and Google would exist without Microsoft.
Microsoft is full of crap, as usual. Al Gore never claimed he invented the internet. It's so frustrating the way people paraphrase rather than quoting just to make a headline. It was the work of our corporate-owned media who was determined to make Gore look stupid in order to pave the way for that election thief and traitor who currently occupies the Oval Office. Al Gore for president!
Freedom is free.
The MSX and Amiga BASICs were especially good, IMHO.
MS were the Kings of BASIC. They delivered BASIC interpreters, which in that time was synonymous to "the major part pf the OS" to any number of 8-bit systems.
Yes, including Apple systems, and Commodore ones including the Amiga.
Microsoft was a 800-pound gorilla on the OS market long before before Bill stole and rewrote DOS for the IBM PC.
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
When Google first came out, I used it almost exclusively to look up Microsoft Windows NT / 98 error codes. Google helped me launch my career in the IT service business by letting us little ol techs find the "magic" fix to all of our user boxes out on the floor. Without Microsoft, what else was I suppose to waste... er.. spend my time productively searching for?
Steve Jobs claims that without Apple, there would be no Microsoft.
Microsoft are simply providing a flexible, seamless and scriptable API for application providers to enhance the user experience of each installation of Windows.
Last i heard Google ran linux, who's roots didnt come from Redmond. Also, the last i heard the IP network came from other places, not Microsoft.
This guy stoned or just drank too much of the koolaid himself?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Microsoft can be credited for Google's continued success if you grant the success of any major medication to local pharmacy chain that happens to dispense the medication to end users.
That's not true, that's impossible!
But I thought most of Google's servers ran Linux? Does that mean that the Linux operating system is responsible for the creation of the search engine? I call BS ...
The PC platform could have been dominated by any number of companies other than MS -
... (insert favorite web entity) has unleashed on the world?
IBM, Apple, Digital Research come to mind. Well, we all know it was MS that won, and
they have reaped the rewards. An interesting book that explores the economics and history
of platforms is "Invisible Engines: How Software Platforms Drive Innovation and Transform Industries."
But I think the comments from TFA indicate that MS (at the highest levels) does not fully
grok that the web (as a platform) is replacing the PC as the platform of interest and profit.
I am old enough to remember when a new PC application or OS was the focus of attention. But honestly,
what is more relevant today - the announcement of Vista or what new App/API Google, Facebook, Ebay, Amazon,
Saleforce.com,
MS mastered and dominates the PC platform, so far they haven't executed well on the web platform and from the
looks of things aren't headed in that direction.
cheers.
Microsoft tried to destroy the browser as a platform to protect their monopoly. The claim is ludicrous, and moreover they stand on the shoulders of giants. This guys attitude can be very damaging for a company, when they start believing in shit like this and have a profound sense of their own entitlement they can start to behabe very badly indeed.
Saying that Microsoft was "necessary" for google to succeed is a statement that's 10% true.
Microsoft OR SOMETHING LIKE THEM was necessary for the internet to take off, but if Microsoft had never existed, as people have pointed out, someone else would've filled the niche.
But for Microsoft to suggest that the ONLY WAY this could've happened was through them is at best a misinformed position and at worst a mendacious thing to say.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
While IBM, Bell and Xerox did unique things necessary for Microsoft's (and Apple's) success, Microsoft has yet to come up with anything unique of it's own. If Bill Gates had died as an infant, Google would still be here today, and so would the desktop in a different (probably better) form.
Who invented Internet again?
Microsoft did not invent TCP/IP. It was developed under the auspices of DARPA in the mid 1970's.
This:
"The Internet? We are not interested in it"
-- Bill Gates, 1993
Or maybe this?:
Bill Gates even stated flatly at a press conference that the Internet was a passing fad and unimportant. He said this at the announcement for its new BBS, Microsoft Network (MSN).
MCP Magazine
What utter bollocks.
google was the first company to realise the vision, 'the network is the platform'.
microsoft wouldn't exist without apple inventing the PC, and douglas englebart
inventing the mouse, and Shockley inventing the trasistor -- and all this depended on
a generation of tube electronics, which depended on the existence of AC power
distribution -- which wouldn't have existed without Nikola Tesla inventing AC
power distribution... and on it goes right on back up the chain.
the hardware of computers assumes the prior existence of universal power.
microsoft supplied their OS by assuming universal hardware, and google
supplied their service by assuming a universal network layer.
So what MS is saying is that "If we hadn't sucked so bad you guys wouldn't be so great!"???
It was IBM that was under heavy scrutiny back in the day when predatory monopolies was considered harmful for a free market. IBM was under hard pressure and didnt dare to act against anybody, tipping toes. As a result they didnt go after Compaq for reverse engineering the bios and essentially let the PC platform free. Because of this multiple manufacturers of computers could build against an open platform and make clones of IBM PC. Microsoft got in by pure luck and not so little dishonesty. Bill Gates sold an OS he didnt own (QDoS) that wasnt at all ready for use to IBM. Its also believed that Dos did contain a fair amount of CP/M in it. IBM wanted CP/M but a kink in the relationship got them to turn to other places instead. Microsoft didnt in any way contribute to the success of the PC. It was IBM and US antitrust regulations that made the PC what it is today. It could have been any other of the multitude of good OS out there who got a hold of the PC. I had the pleasure to run CP/M before Dos became more usual and Dos was a horrid piece of crap in comparison. My point is that Microsoft greatly overestimatis its importance in getting computers out to everyone. It was just a matter of time and any number of OS could have easily replaced Dos without any problems. All Microsoft has done is to hold computing back by seriously stifling anything thats better by choking and killing things off instead of competing on its products merits.
HTTP/1.1 400
Not just Mac either. I can personally attest that it was quite easy for Amigans to browse the web and email by the time Bill Gates wrote The Road Ahead, which (before its redaction) barely mentioned the internet.
The biggest hurdle was finding an ISP that didn't suck (i.e. wasn't AOL, which refused to port its proprietary client to Amiga anyway) and wasn't long-distance. By the 90's, long-haul long distance was cheaper than short-haul, so my first ISP was 2,000 miles away in Silicon Valley. Web-browsing was an after-11pm affair, though in those days there was as much on Gopher as on the Web. My small-town environment didn't get a local ISP until 1994.
Is there an online video clip of this? That's funny. I didn't find it via video.google.com.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
third party basic compiler
Blitz Basic. AMOS was another one, though I think it came a bit later.
With Google there may be no Microsoft.
A few years ago, while browsing around the library downtown, I
had to take a piss. As I entered the john a big beautiful all-American
football hero type, about twenty-five, came out of one of the booths.
I stood at the urinal looking at him out of the corner of my eye as he
washed his hands. He didn't once look at me. He was "straight" and
married - and in any case I was sure I wouldn't have a chance with
him.
As soon as he left I darted into the booth he'd vacated,
hoping there might be a lingering smell of shit and even a seat still
warm from his sturdy young ass. I found not only the smell but the
shit itself. He'd forgotten to flush. And what a treasure he had left
behind. Three or four beautiful specimens floated in the bowl. It
apparently had been a fairly dry, constipated shit, for all were fat,
stiff, and ruggedly textured. The real prize was a great feast of turd
- a nine inch gastrointestinal triumph as thick as a man's wrist.
I knelt before the bowl, inhaling the rich brown fragrance and
wondered if I should obey the impulse building up inside me. I'd
always been a heavy rimmer and had lapped up more than one little
clump of shit, but that had been just an inevitable part of eating ass
and not an end in itself. Of course I'd had jerk-off fantasies of
devouring great loads of it (what rimmer hasn't), but I had never done
it. Now, here I was, confronted with the most beautiful five-pound
turd I'd ever feasted my eyes on, a sausage fit to star in any fantasy
and one I knew to have been hatched from the asshole of the world's
handsomest young stud.
Why not? I plucked it from the bowl, holding it with both
hands to keep it from breaking. I lifted it to my nose. It smelled
like rich, ripe limburger (horrid, but thrilling), yet had the
consistency of cheddar. What is cheese anyway but milk turning to shit
without the benefit of a digestive tract?
I gave it a lick and found that it tasted better then it
smelled. I've found since then that shit nearly almost does.
I hesitated no longer. I shoved the fucking thing as far into
my mouth as I could get it and sucked on it like a big brown cock,
beating my meat like a madman. I wanted to completely engulf it and
bit off a large chunk, flooding my mouth with the intense, bittersweet
flavor. To my delight I found that while the water in the bowl had
chilled the outside of the turd, it was still warm inside. As I chewed
I discovered that it was filled with hard little bits of something I
soon identified as peanuts. He hadn't chewed them carefully and they'd
passed through his body virtually unchanged. I ate it greedily,
sending lump after peanutty lump sliding scratchily down my throat. My
only regret was the donor of this feast wasn't there to wash it down
with his piss.
I soon reached a terrific climax. I caught my cum in the
cupped palm of my hand and drank it down. Believe me, there is no more
delightful combination of flavors than the hot sweetness of cum with
the rich bitterness of shit.
Afterwards I was sorry that I hadn't made it last longer. But
then I realized that I still had a lot of fun in store for me. There
was still a clutch of virile turds left in the bowl. I tenderly fished
them out, rolled them into my handkerchief, and stashed them in my
briefcase. In the week to come I found all kinds of ways to eat the
shit without bolting it right down. Once eaten it's gone forever
unless you want to filch it third hand out of your own asshole. Not an
unreasonable recourse in moments of des
The entire tech boom in the 90s wouldn't have been possible without Microsoft... specifically Windows 95. Win95 really did change everything, and it brought computers out of the PC lab and the office, and into people's homes.
Since the demand increased, it allowed the price to come down, which allowed even more demand, and further lowered the price, etc. We went from at least $3000 for a home PC setup to today's sub-$500 home PC setup... and NONE of it would have been possible had Microsoft not started the ball rolling.
You can also attribute the rise of the internet back to MS, the iPod would have not been possible without MS enabling all those people to get on the internet (especially when they offered an OS which didn't require people to pay $50 for a WinSock, $50 for a TCP/IP protocol stack, and $60 for Netscape).
Thank God for Microsoft. The world would be a much poorer place without their existence. And seeing as how Bill Gates is now the greatest philanthropist in human history, we can also say thank God for Bill Gates, and know that many people around the world would not be alive today if Microsoft did not exist.
DOS
Hope is the currency of fools
ANYTHING coming out of the mouth of ANY Microsoft employee authorized to talk to the public - and most of them that aren't authorized to talk to the public - is a LIE.
Microsoft sells lies, not software.
They are like Zionists or neocons or religious authorities or politicians or lawyers - constitutionally incapable of telling the truth even when it would serve them better to do so.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
1. Internet by Microsoft? Checksum Failure
:)
2. Web Browser concept by Microsoft? Checksum Failure
3. Search Engine on the Internet (or off) concept by Microsoft? Checksum Failure
4. Non-intrusive advertising concept by Microsoft? Checksum Failure
5. Mostly benevolent policy by Microsoft? Checksum Failure
6. Reality? Checksum Failure
Well, at least there's consistency
IBM laid the foundation for yesterday's Microsoft.
;-)) attributed to them.)
(Needless to say, someone else laid foundation for IBM, and so on and so forth. This is how things have always been. Only foolish Microsoft would want _all_ success (and no failure
So MS invented the internet now, not Al Gore?
Actually, the previous message may be even underestimating the lack of importance MS had.
When I say that MS launched a TCP/IP stack and a browser in Windows '95 (launched at the end of August 1995), you have to actually remember that IE 1.0 was actually only available at the time in the Win 95 "Plus Pack", that cost extra money and most people didn't actually buy. It also was mostly advertised as a collection of themes and some minor utilities, not as internet access.
IE 1.0 only became a free download in late December 1995, moving the timeline to: 10 days _after_ AltaVista was launched.
But that's irrelevant anyway, because noone gave a damn about it until IE 3.0. It also only started actually being included with Windows (i.e., you know, the point at which you can argue with a straight face that MS really did more to bring it to the masses than the gang who were also offering a free download) in Windows '98.
By which point already a lot of search engines aready existed.
Google itself was incorporated in September 1998. Although that _is_ technically right after the Windows 98 release, it's outright laughable to assume that in slightly under 3 months Win '98 had already changed the face of the internet so much that it singlehandedly made Google necessary.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
To be fair, it was Microsoft taking Netscape's idea of browser-as-application-platform and making AJAX out of it that enabled Google to write its apps. It wasn't the platform.
If Alexander Graham Bell hadn't tried to make the telephone someone elsewhere would have--we know this through various filings and lawsuits that occurred after AGB began selling his phones and services. The argument that his cronnie at Microsoft tries to make has been debated a million times over, and over a longer period of time than even he has been alive. He's naive. He doesn't think outside the box. He will harm Microsoft, but how cares!?!
Google would have come into existence and grown no matter what. It would have become what it is no matter who created the OS. No matter who propagated the browser, etc. If Microsoft's OS hadn't taken off then IBM's would have or Apple's would have. If IBM hadn't done such a good job with mainframes from years ago someone else would have. If DEC hadn't make great minis then someone else would have. If Apple hadn't make great desktops someone else would have. If Apple hadn't implemented the GUI for the mass media someone else would have.
By this cronnie's logic Microsoft's sheer existence is due to Apple computer. What the hell is wrong with those people at Microsoft? Are they trying to play games with how history writes their footnotes? These guys are so utterly out there that we really need to continually question their motivation and in this case their competency. Microsoft was no more responsible for the creation of Google than Apple is. These companies are no more responsible for it than the anyone else.
There was a program on done by a man named James Burke. He had a very nice PBS mini series where he talked about connections and the day the universe changed. He tracks the changes that one person or entity and took from others to make something new that was then taken by others and something even newer was made, and on and on and on.
These comments by Microsoft are stupid and show their sheer jealousy and contempt for the success of Google.
Microsoft eats up a lot of space in the Redmond area yet they are not even responsible for putting in a single park or helping the community (except maybe in taxes--which they only collect for in-state sales). They have done nothing really for the community, nor have their employees. But Google is sponsoring a prize for reaching the moon by a private enterprise. Do you see Microsoft doing anything like that? NO, not even their charity to other countries is as pure as you might think. They generally only help a country who's leaders agree to buy Microsoft's products. So, charity at a price. But Google does much more.
Microsoft is no more responsible for the computer revolution than any other entity that contributed their piece that others built upon.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
well if they can claim credit for that, then i guess i can claim credit for building the moon.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Really, M$ is just an upstart, and would be absolutely nowhere without AT&T. Forget all the arguments for the development of modern programing languages, or complex switching algorithms ... what about those phone lines that first connected everyone to the internet to begin with?
... why, if it wasn't for AT&T, we'd have no social life at all!
And consider how much communication you do with others without e-mail or phone, or chat
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -- "Step Right Up", Tom Waits
Property is theft.
Google doesn't need windows, they just need browsers, html and http, and their linux servers.
none of which was developed on windows.
I thought Al Gore took the initiative to create the Internet...