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."

What's he smoking?

[kmac06 (608921)]

I think I want some.

Re:What's he smoking?

[by Anonymous Coward]

but... but... ./sarcasm --on

If it werent for microsoft, there would have been no internet, or at least no web browsers for it!

I mean didn't Microsoft invent networking?
The first web browser (Internet Explorer, the Mosaic thing is a LIE!), wasn't that created by MS?
And everyone knows IIS was the first web server!
Certainly BSD, Sun, Apple, and the rest didn't have any internet access before they stole it from Micrsoft. ./sarcasm --off

*ahem*
I feel dumber even after typing that, knowing it is sarcasm and false...

I think Mundie has a point

[NickFortune (613926)]

I feel dumber even after typing that, knowing it is sarcasm and false...

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.

Re:Give Al Gore a break.

[Kymermosst (33885)]

Al Gore never claimed he invented the internet.

No, what he said, exactly, was:

During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the internet.

While it doesn't actually say "I created the internet," it's a phrase that is intended to imply to the average idiot that he did, in fact, create the internet.

Yes, he took plenty of "information superhighway" initiatives. Thanks to some of those initiatives, we have the commercialized internet. However, the internet existed before that - not necessarily funded by any of his initiatives and certainly not because of much legwork done by him.

It was a disingenuous statement and it'd be nice if more politicians were held accountable for that type of spin.

Re:What's he smoking?

[stox (131684)]

I don't think you want to smoke what he is smoking. It obviously kills a lot of brain cells. I guess he kept a vintage stash of PCP from the late 1970's.

Re:What's he smoking?

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

He's completely right. If Microsoft hadn't invented TCP/IP, the network Google runs on would not exist. If they hadn't written Linux, Google would not have had the platform they use for hosting services (they'd have had to use BSD or something). If they hadn't written Apache, Google wouldn't have been able to serve web pages. If they hadn't written Mosaic or Netscape Navigator, then the web on which Google runs would have been a small scale research toy.

This post was brought to you by Microsoft Minitrue(TM)

Yeah - so?

[DarkFencer (260473)]

And many others (IBM, Bell Labs, Xerox, Apple, etc.) were needed for Microsoft to be successful. Who cares?

Re:Yeah - so?

[MightyMartian (840721)]

This claim is pathetically off-base, however. There were Internet search programs before Microsoft even noticed there was an Internet. Search engines like Webcrawler existed while Microsoft's Internet iniative was in its infancy.

Ah well, they don't hire people to run Microsoft based on honesty or an actual understanding.

Re:Yeah - so?

[Greyfox (87712)]

CP/M was already out there and pretty popular when Microsoft rolled onto the scenes. Back in the early-to-mid 80's there was a general computing boom going on, with several companies putting forth systems designed for home use. You had Tandy, Atari, various CP/M systems, Texas Instruments and Commidore. Oh and Apple. All my high school programming classes were done on Apple II machines. Most college CS departments had UNIX machines and the more well funded ones had Sun workstations running CDE. Well before Microsoft even started to think about GUI programming, I might add.

Had the PC or Microsoft not come onto the scenes, one of the others would have ended up on top and we'd possibly even be further along than we are now. Who knows what would have happened if the industry hadn't standardized on Intel's crappy segmented memory architecture and Microsoft's crappy APIs. We probably would have fusion and flying cars right now if it weren't for Microsoft and Intel. Ok, that's exaggerating a little, but the PC platform was not the only one out there and it wasn't even the one with the best design or the most usable interface.

And as much as Microsoft would like to rewrite history, they were very late to the Internet party. When they finally realized that it was important they came over and started doing their own thing. They didn't lay the framework for anything. They're still playing catch-up. They really are a company of very little technical vision. They ARE at the industry leader at claiming the work of other people as their own, though. I'll give them that.

Re:Yeah - so?

[Timothy Brownawell (627747)]

But you have to admit, Microsoft helped bring computing to the masses. If there had been no Microsoft, the internet would be what USENET was back in the day: something used by geeks and scientists and not much else.

No. If there had been no Microsoft, someone else would have done that. Maybe Apple, maybe BSD, maybe Linux/GNU/etc, maybe some company we've never heard of. Maybe OS/2 would have taken off.

Really, it tends to be complete garbage to say that a particular advance would not have happened if whoever did it hadn't been there. Once the foundations are in place things become pretty much inevitable, and being remembered for starting something is just a matter of out-competing everyone else and/or getting things working two weeks before the next guy.

Re:Yeah - so?

[Alien Being (18488)]

You're absolutely right.

MS claims to have paved the way for Google, yet their initial goal was to make the Internet irrelevant with "The Microsoft Network". Ever since they embraced the Net, they've been creating speedbumps, potholes and tollbooths. In my estimation they have set the computing world back at least a decade from where it could have been without them.

Just look at how late they were in offering a memory-protected multitasking OS. How many years were lost fighting "The browser wars"? How many good software companies have been destroyed by their predatory practices? How many serious security problems did they fail to address? How much extra hardware has been deployed in order to cope with the inefficiencies of MSWindows? How much data is locked away in their proprietary formats?

Re:Yeah - so?

[jkabbe (631234)]

How many years were lost fighting "The browser wars"?

Actually, the browser wars were good. It's what happened in the "dark ages" after the browser wars were over that set us back. Thankfully, the browser wars are back in full swing now.

A simple test

[Tony (765)]

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.

Re:A simple test

[thephotoman (791574)]

You can keep your NeXT box. I'll be sitting here on my Mac--same operating system, 17 years later.

Re:Yeah - so?

[hobo sapiens (893427)]

"Really, it tends to be complete garbage to say that a particular advance would not have happened if whoever did it hadn't been there."
Um, no, I am not saying that. That's you putting words in my mouth.

You are right, someone else would have done what MSFT did. But MSFT was there, and they did what they did well -- bring computing to the masses, nefarious business practices aside. I guess I said something contrary to the groupthink here because people are pretty rabidly trying to refute my post, which in most cases, it is obvious they did not read. I am NOT defending MSFT, I too dislike their business practices. I generally dislike their software, and I too believe that IE is THE inhibitor to the web's progress. It's just that in the mid 90's, MSFT did *something* right, even if that something was to market an inferior OS to the point it became dominant.

When you mention obscure operating systems, I have to laugh. The point that you and almost everyone else who replied to me fails to see is that if the internet was just a place for geeks, hobbyists, and scientists to communicate, that is, if someone hadn't made it feasible for virtually EVERYONE to have a home PC, google might exist but they most certainly wouldn't be the multi-billion dollar corporation they are now. That is no slam on google -- as someone else posted, everyone stands on the shoulders of giants. Innovation comes from innovation.

Again, I AM NOT defending MSFT. But give credit where credit's due, even if that credit is to acknowledge that a company was very successful in marketing an inferior OS to the masses. Saying that MSFT did a good job in marketing an inferior product to the masses, which in turn allowed for everyone to be on the internet, which in turn paved the way for countless individuals to make a crapload of money is not the same thing as saying MSFT invented the internet or that google owes MSFT royalties. I don't know how much clearer I can make it. Please don't put words in my mouth.

And what is wrong with admitting that MSFT has been successful at making the world of computing more accessible to the layperson? I honestly didn't think that would be such a controversial statement; it just seems like an acknowledgment of fact. It's not like I am even saying that Windows is better than *nix or Mac OS, or that the popularity of Windows hasn't caused problems of its own, or that I think all the people on the net these days make meaningful contributions, or even that MSFT still makes computing easy. Those would be opinions. I figured what I stated is a fact, provable that most poor computer users are all prisoners of bill to this day, and most PCs used by people to connect to the net are (malware infested) windows computers.

Re:Yeah - so?

[SEE (7681)]

OS/2 was heavily written by Microsoft in the early years (the 1.x versions were all called "Microsoft OS/2"); if Windows/386 hadn't been invented (setting the stage for Windows 3.0) and prompted the IBM-Microsoft Divorce, Microsoft would have still been the dominant PC OS vendor in the 1990s, selling OS/2. Which, given various factors, probably would have had a 16-bit 2.0 version similar to OS/2 1.x, and a 3.0 version based on the Windows NT kernel with a more OS/2-like 32-bit API.

However, let's assume Microsoft is wiped out by some sort of financial scandal in, oh, 1984. It ceases to exist, IBM winds up with exclusive control of PC/MS-DOS, Windows never comes along, IBM tries developing OS/2 in-house for the 286 processor.

Well, the most likely result here is the Revenge of Digital Research. DR ships DOS Plus (a predecessor of DR-DOS able to run both CP/M-86 and DOS 2.11 programs) and GEM/1 (a GUI) in 1985; the clonemakers buy both from DR instead of just DOS from IBM.

The likely evolution of PC OSes probably then follows the historical late 1980s evolution of DR products -- you wind up with a multitasking GEM (similar to the historical GEM/XM) and DOS (probably something similar to Concurrent DOS) pretty much filling the Windows 3.x role as everybody's standard x86 PC desktop, and an evolved version as Windows 95-equivalent. (Past there gets murky; does DR do a Windows NT? Do they use 4.4 BSD Lite and create a Unix that runs DOS/GEM programs? Or does a competitor knock them off the perch?)

Re:Yeah - so?

[MightyMartian (840721)]

I was using a SLIP connection to access the Internet from Linux and OS/2 before Windows 95 came along. Both these operating systems ran on PCs, so no esoteric monster hardware was required. Yes, there were TCP/IP stacks from Windows (Trumpet being the most well known, not to mention the Windows for Workgroups TCP/IP stack), but what we're talking about here is Microsoft's general acknowledgement late in the development of Chicago that the Internet was *already* something. IBM had already figured that out, and had put a fully functional set of TCP/IP tools; email, web, gopher, FTP and telnet into OS/2 Warp. Microsoft was, in fact, the late-comer to the game, something they acknowledged to some degree at the time.

I really do think Microsoft is taking far too much credit here.

Re:Yeah - so?

[hobo sapiens (893427)]

Dude, read your own comment: "I was using a SLIP connection to access the Internet from Linux and OS/2 before Windows 95 came along."

What's the first word in that sentence? I? Yeah. Ask most people on the street what Linux and OS2 are and you'll get a blank stare. At work, our web servers are RHEL. We have a guy on our team who is deaf, and his interpreter, during a conference call, asked how to spell that word we kept using, what was it, linx? linuts? liniz?. I howled with laughter; I mean, what rock was she living under, right? But in reality, stuff geeks might prefer to use are incomprehensible to most folks. That's why we're geeks. If someone calls himself a windows geek, we laugh, right? I know I do.

My point was this: just because some people were using the net before windows 95 came out doesn't mean that everyone was capable of doing that. If the web wasn't polluted with 999,900,000 people who know jack about technology but like to buy stuff online, google would be just another geek tool like telnet or SQL. Yes MSFT was a late comer, but they also made it easier (maybe just by perception) for average Joe to get online. That brought the money, and that's why many of us have jobs today. If not MSFT, then probably someone else, and things might have been better for it today. But that's not the way it went down, and it's pointless to speculate on what would or could have happened. As much as I don't like MSFT, you do have to give credit where credit's due.

Again, I don't even understand why that's such a controversial statement. You'd think I advocated DRM or something.

Re:Yeah - so?

[AJWM (19027)]

Who made DOS and Windows a large part of the market?

IBM

Until IBM came along and blessed it, the PC industry consisted of Apple (Apple DOS) and a handful of makers of mostly Z-80 based systems (CP/M), plus the mostly game/home use systems from Atari etc. For business use, PCs were either AppleDOS or CP/M. Microsoft's presence was pretty much limited to Microsoft Basic.

Through a combination of underhandedness, blind luck, and opportunism, Microsoft got the contract for the OS that IBM would put on their PC, and (even more luck, because IBM still wasn't taking the PC market very seriously) would retain rights that let them sell MS-DOS to the PC clone makers.

The ubuquitous platform would have been whatever IBM went with for their OS. That was very nearly CP/M-86. It might even have been a Unix-derivative, if Motorola had been able to guarantee a sufficient supply of 68008 processors. (IBM originally wanted to go with that chip, a 68000 with an 8-bit external data bus (analogous to the 8088), because frankly the architecture of the Intel part sucked, but Motorola couldn't guarantee the volume production (it was a new chip), so IBM went Intel instead. Microsoft (and Intel, to a degree) just lucked out.

No, you don't ignore history

[Moraelin (679338)]

Don't ignore history; DOS and Windows were the large majority of the market even then. Its doubtful anyone would jump from PC to some propritary and more expensive hardware just to get on the internet. At that point, businesses still didn't know what quite to do with it, and consumers were (likely) draw to the sex sites.

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

Re:Yeah - so?

[skuzzlebutt (177224)]

Yeah, and if Jobs and Woz hadn't built Lisa, where would the Birkenstock industry be today?

Re:Yeah - so?

[+Newander+ (255463)]

The Internet came to the masses despite Microsoft.

Re:Yeah - so?

[king-manic (409855)]

But you have to admit, Microsoft helped bring computing to the masses. If there had been no Microsoft, the internet would be what USENET was back in the day: something used by geeks and scientists and not much else. In that sense, I think he's right.

I wouldn't credit Microsoft, I'd credit IBM and their incredible lack of foresight. It was cheap computing that made PC's ubiquitous. If for some reason Apple had thought of cheap commodity hardware first we'd all be complaining about a apple hegemony and how much we fear and hate the evil apple empire. We'd bemoan the cruel and restrictive titan etc... MS was lucky to get where they are. I have no doubt MS would have been successful due to its shrewd business practices, ruthless direction etc.. but it's total dominance is more about luck then talent or skill.

Re:Yeah - so?

[Chris Burke (6130)]

But you have to admit, Microsoft helped bring computing to the masses.

No, I have to admit that cheap IBM PC clones which double in power and drop in price every year or two helped bring computing to the masses. If Microsoft hadn't been there, it would have been some other OS that ran on these clones and that would have been that. If IBM had signed an exclusive license with MS for MSDOS, then it would have been any of the other disk operating systems and any of the other DOS-based GUIs that would have become the standard PC OS.

If anyone has the right to say that they brought computing to the masses, it was Compaq who reverse engineered the IBM BIOS and then won the resulting legal battle.

Especially considering that the real "platform" which Google is based on is the WWW, which Microsoft is infamous for having first underestimated (along with the 'net in general) as a passing fad, then viewed as a threat to their monopoly that they had to embrace and extend to make sure you still needed Windows to use the Web.

Re:Yeah - so?

[Hatta (162192)]

If there had been no Microsoft, the internet would be what USENET was back in the day: something used by geeks and scientists and not much else

Oh, if only. If only...

Re:Yeah - so?

[flyingsquid (813711)]

And what if the Nazis had won WWII, like in Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle? Instead of having little Windows icons on our start menus, we'd have little swastikas!

Then again, given that the Allies were the leaders in computing during WWII, a victory by the Third Reich would probably have delayed the PC revolution by many years. So really, Google couldn't have happened without Germany's disastrous decision to assault the Soviet Union... and we all know who made thatdecision. What that means, of course, is that Google really owes their very existence to Hitler.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

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 ;)

Bizarre concept.

[threaded (89367)]

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.

I think they both forgot...

[pieaholicx (1148705)]

That without Benjamin Franklin neither of them would be in business. So where's his praise MS and Google? Huh?

Re:I think they both forgot...

[chrisd (1457)]

Here you go: Mad props to Benjamin Franklin from Google.

Chris DiBona

Translation

[eldavojohn (898314)]

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.

Translation: There were no other operating systems before us. Networking did not exist. Microsoft is GOD. Everything that happens from this point on only happens because we allowed it, we are the original creator, the original thought vector of computing itself. We are the beginning & the end--the Alpha & the Omega! *eyes roll back up into head as lightening strikes in the background*

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 utilise it.

Translation: Microsoft maintains a symbiosis with malware developers. 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). In 'some ways' (which I won't list) other developers have an advantage over us because they aren't closed minded to other technologies. Also, we will define standards and strong arm them into the community or make it look like the community made the decision to accept them. Then we will charge you money to develop for them. Remember, we want you to exploit our platform so in the end we can exploit your dependence on us. It's a standard bait and switch procedure. Something looks free then we step in and reveal the cost once you're dependent on it.

For example, as much as our Virtual Earth product uses a lot of local 3D rendering technology, so does Google Earth. So I think there will be other ways in which we distinguish ourselves and where our knowledge of the platform and ability to continually evolve it, will be a business advantage for us.

Translation: Remember when we copied Google in the whole mapping and Google Earth thing? Yeah, that was actually totally our idea. I don't recall who came first but I'm certain it was Microsoft. What we'll probably do is use our income in other markets to make sure that nobody ever hears about things like NASA's World Wind [nasa.gov] again. Remember how we lost money on the XBox? Doesn't matter! And we'll lose money on Virtual Earth too if we have to. It's really too bad Google is doing the same thing because we could have totally been making bank off of Virtual Earth from day one if there wasn't a free alternative. It's all a game to see who can get the most developers hooked first, we'll see where it goes from there.

It is just the difference between being part of the infrastructure of the internet as well as competing directly in the service or client capability as well.

Translation: Microsoft is bigger than Jesus.

--

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.

Re:

[DaveWick79 (939388)]

Yes, I just looked it up and Terraserver went online in June of 1998, Google opened it's doors in September of 1998.

What a heaping pile of poo

[stox (131684)]

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.

Re:

[Horn (517263)]

Right, because google made all their money serving ads to people who use FreeBSD. I think his point (although a poor one) is that without the windows users out there google wouldn't be anywhere near as successful as it is. He's pretending that is Windows didn't exist then Windows users wouldn't exist where in all likely hood they'd be OS/2 or Mac users.

Re:

[Nom du Keyboard (633989)]

Please tell me what Microsoft contributed that made this possible?

Minix.

He's right.

[faloi (738831)]

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.

By that logic....

[spookymonster (238226)]

Microsoft owes everything it has to Unix, since C was created for Unix, and Windows couldn't have been written with C...

Australopithecus Africanus threw a stone first

[140Mandak262Jamuna (970587)]

Well, the logical conclusion is that everything became possible because the Australopithecus Africanus discovered that the stones could be used as projectiles and gradually learned to use it as a tool. From there it is just a short skip and jump to the taming of fire, the domestication of dog, invention of agriculture, domestication of other animals, the invention of wheel, invention of script, invention of paper, invention of the printing press..

Next thing you know another Boreopithecus Redmondanus is throwing chairs instead of stones.

Hardly...

[techmuse (160085)]

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.

They're right, of course.

[Phat_Tony (661117)]

Just look at the evidence. There's no way they could ever make Google compatible with Macs or Linux.

He he ...

[gstoddart (321705)]

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.

Well, it gets exploited all the time, so they're succeeding. :-P Though, maybe not the way they think.

Cheers

Not quite like IBM

[RyanFenton (230700)]

...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

Mundie's ego matches Gates. We we worried?

[postbigbang (761081)]

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.

Close, but not quite right

[rjamestaylor (117847)]

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!

Revisionist History / The Big Lie

[wonkavader (605434)]

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?

Experiment

[moeinvt (851793)]

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.

Don't laugh too hard

[fm6 (162816)]

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.

Almost right...

[WebHostingGuy (825421)]

Microsoft didn't invent the net. Google owes its success to Al Gore.

Re:Create the platform???? BWAHAHAHAHAHA

[sconeu (64226)]

Alas, that's a canard that people tend to use.

There was a Law&Order episode, for example where Fred Thomson's character says, "Somehow I don't think this is what Bill Gates had in mind when he invented the Internet".

And unfortunately, many people will see that sort of thing on TV and believe it's true.

Re:

[mlwmohawk (801821)]

Small point, no one invented electricity, it's nature was discovered, and not by Benjamin Franklin.