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."

Bizarre concept.

[threaded]

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.

Re:Yeah - so?

[hobo sapiens]

I don't know about that. Yes, there were web crawlers way back in the day. 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.

On the other hand, that doesn't entitle MSFT to any preferential treatment. By his same logic, the phone companies and the electric companies laid the framework for the internet because without copper and electricity there would be no computers. MSFT doesn't provide free software to telephone companies and electric companies. Google shouldn't "take it easy" on MSFT either.

In other words, every invention lays the groundwork for successive inventions. Nothing new about that. It's not so much a baseless claim as it is a "duh, so what?" statement.

Mundie's ego matches Gates. We we worried?

[postbigbang]

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.

Revisionist History / The Big Lie

[wonkavader]

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?

Re:Causality

[piojo]

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...

Causality is a fun and complex thing. Some things (most) create ever-growing waves of effects that expand polynomially (or is it exponentially?) throughout time. Other things are engulfed (I think)--I suspect that some movement of molecules turns to friction and energy and whether the molecule bounced in this direction or that direction has no effect. Perhaps the actions of a person that starves and dies on a deserted island are engulfed--their effects on the world diminish with time. A man like Hitler, however, forever altered the world, and this world is constantly getting further from a world where he didn't exist (the changes are still growing, we will never return to what the world would have been).

I'm not sure what differentiates an event that is "lost" from one that catches on and expands polynomially? (Or maybe all actions are engulfed, eventually--the Earth is going to be swallowed by the sun in pretty much exactly the same way as it would be if Hitler had not lived.)

Sorry for my ramblings, and nobody had better mention Godwin's law.

Re:Create the platform???? BWAHAHAHAHAHA

[sconeu]

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.

Al Gore has been seen celebrating

[Opportunist]

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 [snopes.com]. Only that he fueled money into it to get it on track)

Re:OOXML

[yogi]

I thought the OOXML comments were the most interesting ones in the article. Mundie's answers to the question showed Microsoft's attitude to the ISO approval process. He saw the whole thing as "Well, we almost got enough votes to pass, but hopefully we can persude a few others next time around", not "Well, there are a few technical issues that we need to sort out, and then it should pass"

It's worth comparing this with the ODF ISO approval vote, where not a single "No" vote was cast.

MS see ISO as a little administrative/political hurdle to cross to maintain their document format stranglehold. They have ab-so-lute-ly no interest in using ISO as a way to attain a top quality technical standard, agreed by everyone. Most of the comments about OOXML related to incomplete documentation in the (6000 page!) specification. That's a fair comment, not a dig at MS. If MS actually fixed the fscking spec, more people might vote for it.

Re:By that logic....

[msuarezalvarez]

Actually, Windows was originally written (mostly?) in Pascal. That's where the funny calling convention in very early APIs came from.

Re:Yeah - so?

[SEE]

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?

[hobo sapiens]

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?

[kwerle]

True, however: "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"

What was the first email program? What was the first browser? What was the first TCP stack?

Did microsoft eventually do all these things and then deliver them to the masses? Yes. Did they invent them? No. Would they have been crushed if they had not eventually delivered? Yes, they would have been crushed by Apple or IBM or someone else. But they did see it coming and they did deliver.

What was the first search engine? The first online email service? The first web/blog service? The first map service?

Did Google invent any of these things? No. But they [arguably] made them better.

Craig Mundie's statement is fallacy at both ends. Microsoft didn't lay the foundation - they delivered it. And they did it because they had to. I'm not sure that Google has invented any of it's services - but they tie them together and deliver them in a compelling way; which is to say: microsoft could have done any of it (and have/are trying parts), they just fail to do it as well.

It's funny that Google's business feels so completely different than microsoft's. I feel like I could walk away from any of the google services I use and just slip another one in it's place - but there aren't any that I like better. With microsoft you feel locked into everything because if you try to use a 3rd party for something, the rest of the system doesn't work as well. I wonder how much of that is just my perception and how much of that is really true.

The truth is that I probably won't use any microsoft software today, and I'll use google plenty. It's possible that none of the systems between me and google use any microsoft software. So, no, google does not, did not need microsoft to do it's thing. I figure microsoft was just the vehicle the masses chose to get there.