I've been surprised at some of the comments I've seen posted in reply to my call for multiple companies to develop and market the Windows operating system. I think it's time I set a few things straight.
Yes, it's true that I fought the good fight for almost five years at Netscape, but that doesn't blind me to the truth. There were many successes along the way, but Netscape also screwed up in a lot of ways. You may have heard of the infamous 'bad-attitude' internal newsgroup, which Microsoft was so keen to get its paws on at one point during its trial. This discussion area was full of Netscape employees lamenting the company's fall from grace. None of us ever had any illusions that the government would, or even should, bail us out.
Microsoft has the money and the power to buy ANY market it wants to own. Netscape had a great product, which got a lot of attention; Microsoft responded by giving away its own software for 'free,' eating the costs by keeping the prices of other Microsoft software higher. But people KEPT BUYING Netscape's product instead of using Microsoft's free one. So Microsoft poured millions more dollars into developing and marketing its own software until it was, more or less, as good as Netscape's, at which point they finally succeeded in cutting off Netscape's main source of revenue. The initial versions of each of Microsoft's competing products were uniformly terrible, but unlike any other company, Microsoft didn't have to worry about anyone liking them or buying them -- they just kept pouring in cash and stealing features from the competition until the products inevitably got better, and meanwhile they bundled IE with Windows so that every Microsoft customer would have a copy, and they forced their business partners to favor IE over Netscape's browser as a condition of doing business with Microsoft's higher-revenue products.
Microsoft could have offered a 'lite' browser as part of Windows and made a lot of money with the full-featured Internet Explorer. They did this with the bare bones bundled MS Write and the full-featured MS Word; why didn't they do it with IE? Because their (Microsoft's) goal, was to kill Netscape. How could a young Netscape possibly have continued to fight an enemy which has unlimited resources and a demonstrated ability to copy anything its competition offered? And more importantly, what's to keep this from happening to the next small company that hits on a great idea?
Microsoft is in an enviable position right now: if you use a computer, odds are that it has to run Windows. It would cost most businesses far too much time and money to switch to Macintosh or Linux operating systems. And so as long as Windows never becomes quite terrible enough to actively drive people away, it's practically guaranteed to keep its dominance.
What's more, Microsoft doesn't even have to listen to its customers any more. Windows is a headache to maintain, but Microsoft keeps coming out with new flavors of it, each with its own new bugs and compatibility issues, rather than sticking with one and letting it mature. Computer prices fall, but Microsoft has no need to drop the price of Windows. And even though the 'Melissa' virus hit the computing world like an H-bomb, Microsoft's response to it was so tepid that 'ILOVEYOU' had no problem putting on its own show not long after.
This is where my idea comes in. Rather than letting Microsoft continue to decide the future of Windows, I want to see three or more companies -- whether they're fragments of Microsoft after its breakup, other existing companies, or brand-new companies -- all developing and marketing their own compatible versions of Windows, all based on the same open, standard API's to which Windows software itself is written.
The most common complaint I've heard about this is that it would result in many incompatible versions of Windows. Why? If a company released a version of Windows that didn't work well with Windows software, that company would quickly die off, so naturally they would put a high priority on making everything work together, wouldn't they? As long as the API's are published and adhered to, it would be very easy to identify a version of Windows that wasn't compliant with them. This would end Microsoft's game of switching around the API's in every new release of Windows and thereby breaking large amounts of existing software. This would NOT end up in a bunch of incompatible versions of Windows, because if an operating system were not compatible with the API's, it (by definition) wouldn't be Windows, and consumers would quickly know it.
Having multiple sources of Windows would allow consumers to choose a version of Windows which truly fit their needs better. If one company chose to integrate a web browser, great! If another company wanted to offer a bare-bones version of Windows for a lower price, wonderful! If the third decided to charge slightly higher prices to make its version of Windows more stable and harder for an email virus to trash, that's terrific! Competition would ensue, prices would drop, and products would improve at a faster rate; this is the free market in action, and it's certainly not that's happening right now.
Let me state again: the key to this is that all Windows operating systems, like all Windows software, would have to comply with the published and accepted Windows API's, and this is why such a plan wouldn't end up as a Babel tower of half-baked Windows clones. If any operating system or application software weren't compliant with the Windows API's, that OS or application simply wouldn't work correctly, and no one would buy it.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a company being successful, having a monopoly in a market, and succeeding in other markets on its own merits, as long as it doesn't use its monopoly to shoehorn its way into dominance in new markets. I believe that Internet Explorer would not have been a success on its own without having been so closely associated with (and funded by!) Microsoft Windows. What's more, I think that Microsoft's efforts have killed off a lot of innovation and competition in the industry; do you think any new company would seriously hope to make money with a commercial Windows word processor, spreadsheet, or web browser these days? It's time to end the industry's fear of being crushed by Microsoft, and the most effective way to do that is by restoring some healthy competition to the operating system marketplace.
Brian Kendig worked at Netscape for several years as a Web site Engineer, Systems Administrator, and a frequent contributor to the internal "bad-attitude" newsgroup. Brian has also worked at Apple on the iTools project. You can read more of Brian's opinions here. **** Brian Kendig responds in more depth to his peers' TalkBack responses posted after his featured TalkBack Central "Your Turn" column -- Breaking up Microsoft is not the solution. ****
I've been surprised at some of the comments I've seen posted in reply to my call for multiple companies to develop and market the Windows operating system. I think it's time I set a few things straight.
Yes, it's true that I fought the good fight for almost five years at Netscape, but that doesn't blind me to the truth. There were many successes along the way, but Netscape also screwed up in a lot of ways. You may have heard of the infamous 'bad-attitude' internal newsgroup, which Microsoft was so keen to get its paws on at one point during its trial. This discussion area was full of Netscape employees lamenting the company's fall from grace. None of us ever had any illusions that the government would, or even should, bail us out.
Microsoft has the money and the power to buy ANY market it wants to own. Netscape had a great product, which got a lot of attention; Microsoft responded by giving away its own software for 'free,' eating the costs by keeping the prices of other Microsoft software higher. But people KEPT BUYING Netscape's product instead of using Microsoft's free one. So Microsoft poured millions more dollars into developing and marketing its own software until it was, more or less, as good as Netscape's, at which point they finally succeeded in cutting off Netscape's main source of revenue. The initial versions of each of Microsoft's competing products were uniformly terrible, but unlike any other company, Microsoft didn't have to worry about anyone liking them or buying them -- they just kept pouring in cash and stealing features from the competition until the products inevitably got better, and meanwhile they bundled IE with Windows so that every Microsoft customer would have a copy, and they forced their business partners to favor IE over Netscape's browser as a condition of doing business with Microsoft's higher-revenue products.
Microsoft could have offered a 'lite' browser as part of Windows and made a lot of money with the full-featured Internet Explorer. They did this with the bare bones bundled MS Write and the full-featured MS Word; why didn't they do it with IE? Because their (Microsoft's) goal, was to kill Netscape. How could a young Netscape possibly have continued to fight an enemy which has unlimited resources and a demonstrated ability to copy anything its competition offered? And more importantly, what's to keep this from happening to the next small company that hits on a great idea?
Microsoft is in an enviable position right now: if you use a computer, odds are that it has to run Windows. It would cost most businesses far too much time and money to switch to Macintosh or Linux operating systems. And so as long as Windows never becomes quite terrible enough to actively drive people away, it's practically guaranteed to keep its dominance.
What's more, Microsoft doesn't even have to listen to its customers any more. Windows is a headache to maintain, but Microsoft keeps coming out with new flavors of it, each with its own new bugs and compatibility issues, rather than sticking with one and letting it mature. Computer prices fall, but Microsoft has no need to drop the price of Windows. And even though the 'Melissa' virus hit the computing world like an H-bomb, Microsoft's response to it was so tepid that 'ILOVEYOU' had no problem putting on its own show not long after.
This is where my idea comes in. Rather than letting Microsoft continue to decide the future of Windows, I want to see three or more companies -- whether they're fragments of Microsoft after its breakup, other existing companies, or brand-new companies -- all developing and marketing their own compatible versions of Windows, all based on the same open, standard API's to which Windows software itself is written.
The most common complaint I've heard about this is that it would result in many incompatible versions of Windows. Why? If a company released a version of Windows that didn't work well with Windows software, that company would quickly die off, so naturally they would put a high priority on making everything work together, wouldn't they? As long as the API's are published and adhered to, it would be very easy to identify a version of Windows that wasn't compliant with them. This would end Microsoft's game of switching around the API's in every new release of Windows and thereby breaking large amounts of existing software. This would NOT end up in a bunch of incompatible versions of Windows, because if an operating system were not compatible with the API's, it (by definition) wouldn't be Windows, and consumers would quickly know it.
Having multiple sources of Windows would allow consumers to choose a version of Windows which truly fit their needs better. If one company chose to integrate a web browser, great! If another company wanted to offer a bare-bones version of Windows for a lower price, wonderful! If the third decided to charge slightly higher prices to make its version of Windows more stable and harder for an email virus to trash, that's terrific! Competition would ensue, prices would drop, and products would improve at a faster rate; this is the free market in action, and it's certainly not that's happening right now.
Let me state again: the key to this is that all Windows operating systems, like all Windows software, would have to comply with the published and accepted Windows API's, and this is why such a plan wouldn't end up as a Babel tower of half-baked Windows clones. If any operating system or application software weren't compliant with the Windows API's, that OS or application simply wouldn't work correctly, and no one would buy it.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a company being successful, having a monopoly in a market, and succeeding in other markets on its own merits, as long as it doesn't use its monopoly to shoehorn its way into dominance in new markets. I believe that Internet Explorer would not have been a success on its own without having been so closely associated with (and funded by!) Microsoft Windows. What's more, I think that Microsoft's efforts have killed off a lot of innovation and competition in the industry; do you think any new company would seriously hope to make money with a commercial Windows word processor, spreadsheet, or web browser these days? It's time to end the industry's fear of being crushed by Microsoft, and the most effective way to do that is by restoring some healthy competition to the operating system marketplace.
Brian Kendig worked at Netscape for several years as a Web site Engineer, Systems Administrator, and a frequent contributor to the internal "bad-attitude" newsgroup. Brian has also worked at Apple on the iTools project. You can read more of Brian's opinions here.
