Bill Gates: Energizer Bunny of the Digital Age
Every so often a tale surfaces of a Japanese soldier being discovered on a remote island in an even more remote region laboring under the belief that World War II was still being contested in earnest. The last legitimate claim of this happening appears to have occurred in 1953 but people don’t like to let facts stand in the way of a perfectly good story so the story is repeated with the timetable adjusted for whatever period the teller feels would lend the greatest amount of shock value (generally the day before yesterday). When hearing the story for the first time the credulous among us are struck by the virtue of unwavering loyalty of the earnest Japanese soldier and yet taken aback by the conscript’s untenable rigidity. There is a certain dichotomy in the actions of the forgotten foot soldier that could lead to an interesting discussion of human behavior versus individuality but we are saved from such a meaningful discussion because the tale was adapted and thoroughly explored on that most cerebral example of American television: Gilligan’s Island.
The set up out of the way the payoff is all too obvious: Mac Users are the Japanese soldiers…just kidding. The unwavering-willing-to-fight-the-war -at-all-costs-for-however long-it-takes-soldier of the digital age is Bill Gates. Which, at first blush, seems odd. One would think Bill Gates would be the most satisfied individual on the planet after all he has enough cash to take a black diamond level ski run on a mountain of 100 dollar bills, just about every who owns a computer uses Microsoft software in one way or another and the vast majority of computer users are as dependent on Windows as mammals are on oxygen. Most people wielding that kind of stroke would be sated that the world, judging by pocketbook voting, embraces their products and thereby vindicates their vision. Of course there is a reason Bill is worth billions and people like me have a net worth equivalent to their couch change.
If you’re wondering just what world’s Bill has left to conquer he’s happy to tell you. For the link averse the article basically recounts Microsoft’s most recent failures. They took a drubbing at the hands of Google in the search engine field, are obviously lagging a bit in the video game arena and missed the music boat piloted by Captain Jobs. No big deal in the broad scheme of things one would think, why bother trying to out ad revenue Google (sure Google’s product is searching but their business is advertising)? At this point some will argue that you have to constantly grow the business to satisfy investors and that Microsoft is simply trying to expand into under served markets but this notion rings hollow. Microsoft will still grow nicely as the number of computers in use expands (witness Microsoft’s wooing of China) and there are plenty of mature companies who still attract investors even though their business is not expanding rapidly. So if it is not a business reason compelling Microsoft to expand into every arena that employs a one or a zero one is left wondering just why Bill Gates feels the compulsion to dominate the computing world so completely and thoroughly. Many people will merely chalk it up to ego but that is a shortsighted as well. The truth is probably because Microsoft is used to winning and winning feels good.
Beating Google, Apple and Sony is going to much more difficult than displacing earlier rivals such as Lotus. With the blossoming of the internet people can avail themselves of a great many resources which were unavailable when Microsoft fought their old battles. It isn’t going to be enough to ship an iTunes killer bundled with Vista unless it is substantially better than iTunes. People have become used to Google so convincing them to accept a different set of results is going to be very hard unless the results are markedly better than the ones Google returns. The easiest product to knock off is going to be the next PlayStation, if the Xbox 360 has enough compelling games PlayStation users will gladly jumps ship.
Two out of the three stated goals of Microsoft seem highly improbable. Google is a near monopoly when it comes to searching and the difference between a monopoly and iTunes is semantic at best. But here is where the apocryphal Japanese soldier comes out in Bill Gates: even faced with overwhelming odds he won’t quit. He will slug away in the computer equivalent of a Javan jungle swamp for as long as it takes to dominate any particular market he thinks is of enough interest to be worthwhile. On one hand this is a scary thought: A digital world completely dominated by the compromise-ridden blandware that comprises the majority of Microsoft’s offerings (bland sells, ask McDonalds). On the other hand the folks at Google, Apple and Sony undoubtedly know of Bill’s doggedness and are thus compelled to produce ever better products to stave of the seemingly inevitable day when Microsoft takes over the world. Oh, don’t fret, someday Microsoft will finally lose.
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“At any point in our history, we’ve had competitors who were better at doing something,” it is to hear Bill himself say that other people made better products than microsoft made.
The Wars Microsoft have won are generally done in the same way. Look at competitors product…create knockoff that sucks but is cheaper or free. Watch other company die on the vine because they don’t have the cash reserves to follow MS into deep water.
MS can’t beat Sony because Sony is Japanese and gamers will remain faithful to the PS barring any huge missteps from Sony. They “will” add an xbox to their arsenal but a wholesale switch is unlikely.
MS can’t beat Google because Google is damn near all internet and their tools are already free. Thus MS is stuck competing on features and they don’t win wars on features they win on price. Advantage Google in a landslide(although I think Googles search is overrated).
MS versus iTunes- This is Microsofts best chance to win simply because Apple can be prone to make the missteps that allow competitors to gain traction. If Apple can evolve the iPod lineup beyond cool little portable units that hook up everywhere. If Apple can create a multimedia center for the home and continue add automobile companies to the iPod supported list then they have a good chance of staving off a MS charge.
I’m impressed with MS’ lineup in business software but I remain wholly unimpressed by their attempts to dominate CE and other industries. I’m waiting to see if MS can win a war via a smart product rather than trying to be the cheapest.
Look at competitors product…create knockoff that sucks but is cheaper or free.
You make good points, hmurchison, but I disagree on this point. It’s not enough simply to make something cheaper or free. There are mountains and mountains of free software out there, and yet better more expensive products beat them out all the time.
What MS tends to do is make their products “good enough” (which is different from “sucks”) and release it for cheaper or free. IE was almost as good as Netscape, helped along by Netscape’s incompetence and bloatware. Had it really been total crap, it’d still be sitting on some unused space on your harddrive, like Windows Movie Maker. WMM is an example of crap that has gone nowhere despite being free and included with XP.
Right now is the time. It’s going to be a small window where under the right circumstances, a shift can begin to occur. Vista is a while off, and in the mean time, Apple is blazing foreword adding features to the OS. There’s still one big problem: Apple needs to let people know they exist, and get into retail in a big way. Every minute they waste, Microsoft adds more of their look and feel to Vista. People are fine with being extorted by the blocker and antivirus companies, and they seem quite fine with taking their machine into the shop because of malware induced comas. If Apple misses this boat it could be some time before they get a foothold in the PC market.
It seems to me like Bill Gates has a calling. He is driven to be on top of the biz, and he’s succeeded. Will people be able to wait through one more iteration of the registry and continue to pay the way of cottage industries, whom in my opinion shouldn’t even exist? Does anyone really care who makes their software that runs internet explorer? Is office 2000 really good enough? Time will tell if all these feature rearrangements make any difference and are worth paying for. If not, then it’s going to be time for many companies to tighten their belts, not only Microsoft.
I personally don’t care who wins, just as long as Apple continues development on OS X, and of kick out a new iPod every so often. Also, I think it’s time for another platform to pop up and make them all rethink how we use our computers and what we use them for. After 20 years of computing, it’s time for a shift of sorts. Let’s all save our pennies and wait for something better.
I don’t think video game console players would ever jump ship. They want options - all of ‘em. They will sell their souls to own every system to gaurantee that they’ll have access to the best games. Given the Xbox’s track record and the preliminary screen shots for the Xbox 360 (and the generic gamers’ preference for better graphics over anything else), I doubt many people would abandon their PlayStation systems (PS, PS2, PS3, PSP) for the Xbox. Ever. Would they add an Xbox 360 to their lineup? Oh, yes. Definitely.
Will I? Absolutely not. Not because I dislike Miscrosoft, but because the Xbox 360 may very well suffer the same fate as the Xbox. If the original Xbox with its 3-4 games I felt might be interesting to try couldn’t compel me to buy one, then there’s no way I’m going in on a 360.
Microsoft may not ever take over the world, but they’ll never go away.
I dislike the idea of included content being considered free. If I buy Mac OS X and it includes applications like Safari and Mail, they weren’t free. They were a portion of the USD$129 I payed.
I so hated Navigator, it just sucked like a hoover in a black hole. Big, slow, bloated, bug ridden, and they wanted $50 for it haha. Oh and MS offered IE which (ok at the time) was faster, more stable, and ran smoothly and was free. Ok whine all you like about how MS did this and that and killed off Netscape, but Netscape brought it on themselves and personally didn’t mind the fact they fell off the browser map.
Console wise its a curious one. The Xbox wasn’t necessilary a kill all Sony thing, more a entry into a new market and whipe out Nintendo. After all, Gates himself once offered to buy Nintendo, but for Nintendo saying no. I dunno, but I wouldn’t put it too far away that they might actually go back on that decision. Sony though is a wholely different beast to anything which MS has ever faced before. They are by far the most evil corporation on the planet when it comes to questionable practices, and also have very very deep pockets just as MS. The big advantage MS has though is its development tools, both PC and console wise (and this oddly also includes Avalon for OS X which yes, MS is for some reason doing what Apple should of done themselves in providing better tools to write software and pages on the MacOS), and for anyone looking at how developers are flocking to the 360 as MS has provided tools that the devs wanted, which is actually allowing them to do what they want to do easier. The 360 is an interesting bit of kit and I can’t personally wait to get my hands on one (if only for the MCE features).
The PS3 is an interesting bit of kit also, but I really don’t know about it. Sony has a long way to go in bringing it the right tools for developers, if they can then it might just work out for them, if not then they are sunk. Design wise its lacking also, those new boomarang controllers are just a bad idea on so many points. And then there’s the cost of it…ok no one knows but its not looking to be cheap.
As for the iPod and mobile phones. I dunno what MS might have planned, but if I was them I would pretty much ignore the iPod and go more for the phone market…turn that into a fully functional mobile pda with music, video, phone, email, and camera functionalities and you’ve pretty got an all in one handheld bit of kit which will do everything. Ok, others are already doing that like Nokia with the N91 (which utterly rocks) and personally I see that as the ideal iPod killer. Video, Camera, Phone, Music, all in a small device which looks damn nice. I would more think thats the kinda thing MS would be looking at going after.
Don’t forget besides offering cheap product, MS also forces you to use their products as part of a package or for access to their Site. There is no reason why IE is required to access Window Update website except for MS to keeping you from deleting IE from your computer once you upgrade to FireFox.
amadore—there is a great reason why you have to use IE to run Windoes Update: ActiveX. Sure, ActiveX is a security nightmare, but its design makes it really easy for malware to take over the system and for Windows Update to patch it.
Microsoft’s successes of the last 25 years were built not on cheaper or better or good enough, but on compatibility.
DOS compatible, Windows compatible, Office compatible, Internet Explorer compatible
It was like a whirlpool. With each MS product you got, it sucked you further into its inescapable grasp.
MS convinced the IT world that standardising onto MS products was a good thing. Compatibility. That was their home run. I mean, it still is - people still say “but Macs aren’t compatible…”.
This is why they can’t beat Google. Google’s products work on Windows. They’re already compatible.
There’s no compatibility at all in the game console arena so compatibility is a non-issue. You make your choice Sony, Nintendo or MS - and that’s that.
In the digital music player market, Apple controls compatibility. Steve decides what will be compatible and what not. Although he made iTMS compatible with Windows, the reality is he made Windows compatible with iTMS. What if he did a Microsoft and started reeling that in tomorrow by cutting back features a little bit for Windows users, gently nudging them over to Macs? He probably doesn’t have enough iPods out there in the Windows world to do that. Yet…
Bill can’t control compatibility in any of these three areas, and that’s what frustrates the heck out of him - he can’t force users to change for compatibility reasons.