Gates Successor Says Microsoft Laid Foundation for Google 500
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."
Yeah - so? (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
What a heaping pile of poo (Score:4, Insightful)
He's right. (Score:5, Insightful)
By that logic.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah - so? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah well, they don't hire people to run Microsoft based on honesty or an actual understanding.
Re:What a heaping pile of poo (Score:3, Insightful)
Not quite like IBM (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Close, but not quite right (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
Re:Yeah - so? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't laugh too hard (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Yeah - so? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah - so? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow - that's bold (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:He's right. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah - so? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:4, Insightful)
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? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd disagree on this one issue. I think stuff like NCSA Mosaic and Eudora had a part in making the internet friendlier to the masses. If not that, one could arguably say that mega BBS services like AOL and Prodigy were the precursors before melding the internet into their offerings. Web/file/mail servers were largely (if not almost entirely) running on Unix/Linux platforms around the time the internet was released fully to the public domain. MS basically just happened to have a popular OS for the XT platform at the time. If MS had not been around, these apps/service software would probably just have been developed for a different OS.
Microsoft didn't invent the GUI (which likely had a big part in making the internet popular), just one of many who developed and refined it into what it is today. In doing so, they're following exactly the path you made in your last point.
Re:Yeah - so? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah - so? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Yeah - so? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Yeah - so? (Score:1, Insightful)
Also, even mathematicians from Antiquity used crude forms of integration for obtaining geometric formulas for areas and volumes as well.
Re:Yeah - so? (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of us were actually around in the late 1970s and early 1980s and remember the Apple II, the ZX80, the Tandy Model 1, the Color Computer, the VIC 20 and the Commodore 64. For us, the claim that Microsoft was somehow the spearhead is utterly without foundation. They were the spearheads of the second generation of personal computers, when PC compatibles and (to a much lesser extent) Macs became the dominant machines. There was still some competition even in the late 1980s from Atari and Commdore, both of which had pretty damned impressive systems, but not the software or the clout that Microsoft had initially gained by partnering with IBM.
As to the Internet, as I've said elsewhere, IBM released OS/2 quite aways ahead of Chicago, and it came with a pretty good TCP/IP stack (ported, as I recall, from AIX), along with the basic tools of the time (sendmail, FTP, gopher, web, telnet). Microsoft came very late to the game, and for Windows 3.1, people were using Trumpet Winsock, Mosaic and then later Netscape, along with Eudora (the early king of email programs). When I first started working for an ISP in technical support, while Windows 95 was still in early days, Trumpet, Netscape and Eudora were on a floppy, and were the way that the bulk of people got on the Internet.
Re:Yeah - so? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, if only. If only...
Re:Yeah - so? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
A simple test (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
IBM let the PC free, not Microsoft. (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft developed nothing that google needs. (Score:3, Insightful)
none of which was developed on windows.