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."
What's he smoking? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What's he smoking? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
*ahem*
I feel dumber even after typing that, knowing it is sarcasm and false...
I think Mundie has a point (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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Re:Give Al Gore a break. (Score:4, Informative)
No, what he said, exactly, was:
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? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What's he smoking? (Score:5, Funny)
This post was brought to you by Microsoft Minitrue(TM)
Yeah - so? (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.
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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 beca
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.
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Re:Yeah - so? (Score:5, Funny)
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Assuming you are...
Leibnitz actually published his work on calculus before Newton published his.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz_and_Newton_calculus_controversy [wikipedia.org]
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: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.
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.
Re:A simple test (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:Yeah - so? (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:5, Informative)
I really do think Microsoft is taking far too much credit here.
Re:Yeah - so? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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 App
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.
No, you don't ignore history (Score:5, Informative)
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
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Please.
The personal computing revolution would have happened with or without Microsoft. It was all a matter of timing and nefarious business practices that allowed Microsoft to be the dominant player and their resulting "defacto monopoly". We they a part of "bringing computers to the masses?" Sure, in a sense because they were THERE, not because o
Re:Yeah - so? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Yeah - so? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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.
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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.
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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'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 pl
Re:Yeah - so? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, if only. If only...
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.
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He's sort of stating the obvious (which is what you're complaining about), but he's also talking bollockss. If Microsoft hadn't existed then Google wouldn't exist in name, but something delivering their serices surely would. Apple could have taken the place of MS, possibly IBM if they hadn't
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Only problem is that he falls in the "after, therefore because of"-logical trap. Chances are that IBM could have pulled off the PC with somebody other than Microsoft, and that somebody else would have made a modular, ext
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Create the platform???? BWAHAHAHAHAHA (Score:2, Funny)
Google would work just as well if MSFT had been nothing more than a long-forgotten BASIC provider.
Almost right... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Create the platform???? BWAHAHAHAHAHA (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Standing on the shoulders of giants (Score:5, Funny)
Well, I suppose they have to; there are no seats left to sit on
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It's completely true (Score:2, Funny)
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You're "that guy" at parties, aren't you?
Bizarre concept. (Score:3, Interesting)
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Of course, [i]any[/i]
without NeXT there'd be no web (Score:2, Informative)
without PARC there'd be no mouse
google wouldn't work without either of these companies, but they'd probably do just fine if Microsoft would go under.
I think they both forgot... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I think they both forgot... (Score:4, Funny)
Chris DiBona
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
--
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.
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Re:Translation - Google Earth (Score:3, Informative)
Face it, Google copies others just like every other company copies others. The whole idea of any company being the One True Innovator is a marketing myth.
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What a heaping pile of poo (Score:4, Insightful)
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Minix.
He's right. (Score:5, Insightful)
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The butterfly effect. (Score:2)
By that logic.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Australopithecus Africanus threw a stone first (Score:5, Funny)
Next thing you know another Boreopithecus Redmondanus is throwing chairs instead of stones.
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Or, for intelligent design types:
Windows is the end result of Noah saving a pair of jackasses.
Hardly... (Score:5, Informative)
Oh...and Goooooogle runs on Linux.
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The fact that Apple (of all companies) has a way, way better claim makes the Microsoft claim seem even more ridiculous. This guy is so far away from reality that I can almost hear all of Microsoft's competitors giggling.
Assumptions (Score:2)
That assumes that only Microsoft could have brought about the proliferation of the common desktop computer. I personally think that Microsoft was a major factor, but someone else would have stepped in later had they never existed. This is just plain arrogance, and easy to state since there's no way to know what would have been oth
They're right, of course. (Score:4, Funny)
heh. (Score:2)
Seriously, its retarded that MS is trying to claim that the internet wouldn't be around except for Windows. I mean PC's don't *have* to run windows. If Windows wasn't around the world would just be running something else. Hell, even PC's aren't that necessary. We could all be surfing with Macs or Amigas or thin clients or something else that didn't get invented in this timeline.
Yahoo and Altavista (Score:2)
Another ridiculous example of Microsoft hubris. Plenty of us remember MS itself being late to the Internet party back in the 1990s.
If anything, Google came about because of Yahoo (with banner ads, etc), and possibly Altavista which was also being sold as local document search/archival platform.
He he ... (Score:3, Funny)
Well, it gets exploited all the time, so they're succeeding.
Cheers
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
Man!! Can these guys bullshit or what? (Score:2)
Microsoft was one of the *LAST* platforms to adopt TCP/IP. (Even counting Trumpet WinSock)
There were web browsers WAY BEFORE IE.
What, exactly, did Microsoft for for Google?
Job Opportunity (Score:2, Funny)
Ahem... (Score:2)
Except for those secret unpublished APIs, that is.
Exploited.... Yep (Score:2)
Let me [avast.com] count [avast.com] the [avast.com] ways [avast.com]!
Don't forget the fastest growing exploit [theregister.co.uk]
Mundie's ego matches Gates. We we worried? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Two Words... (Score:2)
*smirk*
Probably true, but... (Score:2)
I've defended MS before, but (Score:2)
This is the biggest load of bullshit I've heard in a long time.
Let's give credit where credit is due:
1) cheap 14.4/28.8 kbps modems
2) HTML
3)
4) cheap 15+bit color video cards
As far as I can see, MS had nothing to due with any of these things.
Hello... Altavista, hotbot, yahoo? (Score:2)
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!
I think this only underscores the notion... (Score:2)
BTM
Revisionist History / The Big Lie (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Yes and No (Score:2)
In one sense, yes, MS's success ensured that lots of people were out there connecting to the Internet. But in a more important sense, no, MS was not key to making data indexable or searchable. HTTP's success ensures enough data can be indexed by a spider to make it worthwhile; HTML's success ensures enough people can access a web-based search engine, regardless of desktop platform. The only thing MS brings to this party is masses of underserved users, yearning to breathe searchable data.
Sure they did... (Score:2)
Experiment (Score:3, Funny)
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 (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.
No, Luke... (Score:3, Funny)
Google/Luke: He did. He told me you embraced and extended / killed him.
Microsoft/Vader: No, Google/Luke. I am your father!
Google/Luke: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Al Gore has been seen celebrating (Score:3, Interesting)
(Unlike Mundie, Gore actually never claimed he did [snopes.com]. Only that he fueled money into it to get it on track)
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.
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Godwin's law has been invoked (Score:2)