Microsoft is Dead

http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html

Microsoft is Dead

April 2007

A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to
a young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo. I
said that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of
Microsoft. That was why they'd positioned themselves as a "media
company" instead of a technology company. Then I looked at his face and
realized he didn't understand. It was as if I'd told him how much girls
liked Barry Manilow in the mid 80s. Barry who?

Microsoft? He didn't say anything, but I could tell he didn't quite
believe anyone would be frightened of them.

Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years
starting in the late 80s. I can remember when it was IBM before them. I
mostly ignored this shadow. I never used Microsoft software, so it only
affected me indirectly—for example, in the spam I got from botnets. And
because I wasn't paying attention, I didn't notice when the shadow
disappeared.

But it's gone now. I can sense that. No one is even afraid of Microsoft
anymore. They still make a lot of money—so does IBM, for that matter.
But they're not dangerous.

When did Microsoft die, and of what? I know they seemed dangerous as
late as 2001, because I wrote an essay then about how they were less
dangerous than they seemed. I'd guess they were dead by 2005. I know
when we started Y Combinator we didn't worry about Microsoft as
competition for the startups we funded. In fact, we've never even
invited them to the demo days we organize for startups to present to
investors. We invite Yahoo and Google and some other Internet companies,
but we've never bothered to invite Microsoft. Nor has anyone there ever
even sent us an email. They're in a different world.

What killed them? Four things, I think, all of them occurring
simultaneously in the mid 2000s.

The most obvious is Google. There can only be one big man in town, and
they're clearly it. Google is the most dangerous company now by far, in
both the good and bad senses of the word. Microsoft can at best limp
along afterward.

When did Google take the lead? There will be a tendency to push it back
to their IPO in August 2004, but they weren't setting the terms of the
debate then. I'd say they took the lead in 2005. Gmail was one of the
things that put them over the edge. Gmail showed they could do more than
search.

Gmail also showed how much you could do with web-based software, if you
took advantage of what later came to be called "Ajax." And that was the
second cause of Microsoft's death: everyone can see the desktop is over.
It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the web—not just
email, but everything, right up to Photoshop. Even Microsoft sees that now.

Ironically, Microsoft unintentionally helped create Ajax. The x in Ajax
is from the XMLHttpRequest object, which lets the browser communicate
with the server in the background while displaying a page. (Originally
the only way to communicate with the server was to ask for a new page.)
XMLHttpRequest was created by Microsoft in the late 90s because they
needed it for Outlook. What they didn't realize was that it would be
useful to a lot of other people too—in fact, to anyone who wanted to
make web apps work like desktop ones.

The other critical component of Ajax is Javascript, the programming
language that runs in the browser. Microsoft saw the danger of
Javascript and tried to keep it broken for as long as they could. [1]
But eventually the open source world won, by producing Javascript
libraries that grew over the brokenness of Explorer the way a tree grows
over barbed wire.

The third cause of Microsoft's death was broadband Internet. Anyone who
cares can have fast Internet access now. And the bigger the pipe to the
server, the less you need the desktop.

The last nail in the coffin came, of all places, from Apple. Thanks to
OS X, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare
in technology. [2] Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised
when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we
fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience
at startup school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now.
Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only
does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses
Microsoft's anyway.

And of course Apple has Microsoft on the run in music too, with TV and
phones on the way.

I'm glad Microsoft is dead. They were like Nero or Commodus—evil in the
way only inherited power can make you. Because remember, the Microsoft
monopoly didn't begin with Microsoft. They got it from IBM. The software
business was overhung by a monopoly from about the mid-1950s to about
2005. For practically its whole existence, that is. One of the reasons
"Web 2.0" has such an air of euphoria about it is the feeling, conscious
or not, that this era of monopoly may finally be over.

Of course, as a hacker I can't help thinking about how something broken
could be fixed. Is there some way Microsoft could come back? In
principle, yes. To see how, envision two things: (a) the amount of cash
Microsoft now has on hand, and (b) Larry and Sergey making the rounds of
all the search engines ten years ago trying to sell the idea for Google
for a million dollars, and being turned down by everyone.

The surprising fact is, brilliant hackers—dangerously brilliant
hackers—can be had very cheaply, by the standards of a company as rich
as Microsoft. So if they wanted to be a contender again, this is how
they could do it:

1. Buy all the good "Web 2.0" startups. They could get substantially
all of them for less than they'd have to pay for Facebook.

2. Put them all in a building in Silicon Valley, surrounded by lead
shielding to protect them from any contact with Redmond.

I feel safe suggesting this, because they'd never do it. Microsoft's
biggest weakness is that they still don't realize how much they suck.
They still think they can write software in house. Maybe they can, by
the standards of the desktop world. But that world ended a few years ago.

I already know what the reaction to this essay will be. Half the readers
will say that Microsoft is still an enormously profitable company, and
that I should be more careful about drawing conclusions based on what a
few people think in our insular little "Web 2.0" bubble. The other half,
the younger half, will complain that this is old news.

Notes

[1] It doesn't take a conscious effort to make software incompatible.
All you have to do is not work too hard at fixing bugs—which, if you're
a big company, you produce in copious quantities. The situation is
exactly analogous to the writing of bogus literary theorists. Most don't
try to be obscure; they just don't make an effort to be clear. It
wouldn't pay.

[2] In part because Steve Jobs got pushed out by John Sculley in a way
that's rare among technology companies. If Apple's board hadn't made
that blunder, they wouldn't have had to bounce back.

--
Priceless quotes in m.p.w.vista.general group:
http://protectfreedom.tripod.com/kick.html

Most recent idiotic quote added to KICK (Klassic Idiotic Caption Kooks):
"poor little MADAM albright still got your knickers twisted. how are we
supposed to believe you know anything about computers when you cannot
even dress your self. oh and pull that skirt down."

"Good poets borrow; great poets steal."
- T. S. Eliot

I really do wonder about people like this. From this and other articles on
his site, it is clear that while he may be savvy about a small group of
technologies and have some business acumen, he knows next to nothing about
economics and uses very poor reasoning.

There was a time very long ago when ancient people knew nothing about the
weather and climate, and they invented all manner of demons and gods to
explain what they could not fathom about winds and storms and tides. The
same is true today. Very few people really understand economics or can
explain the interactions of the forces working on the participants.
Widespread ignorance of the most basic laws of economics has made people's
minds fertile ground for bogeys of bugaboos galore. Myths and fallacies
dominate them, and their ignorance is promoted and pandered to by
politicians, educators, and the media and entertainment industries.
Elaborate conspiracy theories are created to guard their thoughts from the
light of truth, and slick argumentation dances around fundamental errors in
reasoning. It is not long until they are completely persuaded of utterly
false and even destructive ideas.

Here is a quote from one of this man's articles on his site, and it contains
a common fallacy of logic:

"In software, paradoxical as it sounds, good craftsmanship means working
fast. If you work slowly and meticulously, you merely end up with a very
fine implementation of your initial, mistaken idea."

Did you spot it? Notice how working "slowly and meticulously" is associated
with "mistaken ideas" and "working fast" is associated with "good
craftsmanship". A false dichotomy is to erroneously oversimplify a matter
by casting it as a choice between two things or conditions or ideas when
others are possible. In this case, it is clearly possible for slow and
meticulous to produce good craftsmanship and for working fast to produce
only junk. Moreover, working fast can just as easily exist in context of
mistaken ideas as working slowly can correct ones. The associations that he
draws are in no way exclusive or even necessarily correct.

The fact that the Microsoft Corporation is of no consequence to him does not
mean that it is not of enormous consequence to the rest of the world. This,
too, is a false dichotomy. There is also the arbitrary assigning of evil
designs, means, and ends to the company as so many others do without
justification.

Here is a thought from his article here:

"All you have to do is not work too hard at fixing bugs—which, if you're a
big company, you produce in copious quantities."

Aside from the error "big=evil" that drips from this little gem, we can see
once again the sloppy reasoning at work here. Perfection is not possible
for anyone, and as big companies do much bigger things, they are bound to
produce many more imperfections than little companies. The simple fact is
that all but the most trivial computer programs are going to have bugs. The
bigger and more complex they are, the more they will have. But, most bugs
have no impact whatsoever on the usefulness of a program for the majority of
its users in a majority of their individual uses of it. If companies waited
to release software until there were no bugs left, they would never release
anything.

As one great philosopher once said, "There are many voices in the world, and
none are altogether unpersuasive." The unfortunate thing about people such
as the writer of this article, is that they are believed uncritically by
huge numbers of people who become utterly persuaded of erroneous ideas, and
their minds are absolutely closed and locked tight against all counter
arguments. Their view of the world is so parochial and jaundiced that no
apologia from their enemies can get a purchase on their thinking.

Opus

"Nina DiBoy" <> wrote in message news:eva5ge$g6v$...
> http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
>
> Microsoft is Dead
>
> April 2007
>
> A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to a
> young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo. I said
> that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft. That
> was why they'd positioned themselves as a "media company" instead of a
> technology company. Then I looked at his face and realized he didn't
> understand. It was as if I'd told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow
> in the mid 80s. Barry who?
>
> Microsoft? He didn't say anything, but I could tell he didn't quite
> believe anyone would be frightened of them.
>
> Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years
> starting in the late 80s. I can remember when it was IBM before them. I
> mostly ignored this shadow. I never used Microsoft software, so it only
> affected me indirectly—for example, in the spam I got from botnets. And
> because I wasn't paying attention, I didn't notice when the shadow
> disappeared.
>
> But it's gone now. I can sense that. No one is even afraid of Microsoft
> anymore. They still make a lot of money—so does IBM, for that matter. But
> they're not dangerous.
>
> When did Microsoft die, and of what? I know they seemed dangerous as late
> as 2001, because I wrote an essay then about how they were less dangerous
> than they seemed. I'd guess they were dead by 2005. I know when we started
> Y Combinator we didn't worry about Microsoft as competition for the
> startups we funded. In fact, we've never even invited them to the demo
> days we organize for startups to present to investors. We invite Yahoo and
> Google and some other Internet companies, but we've never bothered to
> invite Microsoft. Nor has anyone there ever even sent us an email. They're
> in a different world.
>
> What killed them? Four things, I think, all of them occurring
> simultaneously in the mid 2000s.
>
> The most obvious is Google. There can only be one big man in town, and
> they're clearly it. Google is the most dangerous company now by far, in
> both the good and bad senses of the word. Microsoft can at best limp along
> afterward.
>
> When did Google take the lead? There will be a tendency to push it back to
> their IPO in August 2004, but they weren't setting the terms of the debate
> then. I'd say they took the lead in 2005. Gmail was one of the things that
> put them over the edge. Gmail showed they could do more than search.
>
> Gmail also showed how much you could do with web-based software, if you
> took advantage of what later came to be called "Ajax." And that was the
> second cause of Microsoft's death: everyone can see the desktop is over.
> It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the web—not just
> email, but everything, right up to Photoshop. Even Microsoft sees that
> now.
>
> Ironically, Microsoft unintentionally helped create Ajax. The x in Ajax is
> from the XMLHttpRequest object, which lets the browser communicate with
> the server in the background while displaying a page. (Originally the only
> way to communicate with the server was to ask for a new page.)
> XMLHttpRequest was created by Microsoft in the late 90s because they
> needed it for Outlook. What they didn't realize was that it would be
> useful to a lot of other people too—in fact, to anyone who wanted to make
> web apps work like desktop ones.
>
> The other critical component of Ajax is Javascript, the programming
> language that runs in the browser. Microsoft saw the danger of Javascript
> and tried to keep it broken for as long as they could. [1] But eventually
> the open source world won, by producing Javascript libraries that grew
> over the brokenness of Explorer the way a tree grows over barbed wire.
>
> The third cause of Microsoft's death was broadband Internet. Anyone who
> cares can have fast Internet access now. And the bigger the pipe to the
> server, the less you need the desktop.
>
> The last nail in the coffin came, of all places, from Apple. Thanks to OS
> X, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare in
> technology. [2] Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I
> come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y
> Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at startup
> school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for
> grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no
> longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway.
>
> And of course Apple has Microsoft on the run in music too, with TV and
> phones on the way.
>
> I'm glad Microsoft is dead. They were like Nero or Commodus—evil in the
> way only inherited power can make you. Because remember, the Microsoft
> monopoly didn't begin with Microsoft. They got it from IBM. The software
> business was overhung by a monopoly from about the mid-1950s to about
> 2005. For practically its whole existence, that is. One of the reasons
> "Web 2.0" has such an air of euphoria about it is the feeling, conscious
> or not, that this era of monopoly may finally be over.
>
> Of course, as a hacker I can't help thinking about how something broken
> could be fixed. Is there some way Microsoft could come back? In principle,
> yes. To see how, envision two things: (a) the amount of cash Microsoft now
> has on hand, and (b) Larry and Sergey making the rounds of all the search
> engines ten years ago trying to sell the idea for Google for a million
> dollars, and being turned down by everyone.
>
> The surprising fact is, brilliant hackers—dangerously brilliant
> hackers—can be had very cheaply, by the standards of a company as rich as
> Microsoft. So if they wanted to be a contender again, this is how they
> could do it:
>
> 1. Buy all the good "Web 2.0" startups. They could get substantially
> all of them for less than they'd have to pay for Facebook.
>
> 2. Put them all in a building in Silicon Valley, surrounded by lead
> shielding to protect them from any contact with Redmond.
>
> I feel safe suggesting this, because they'd never do it. Microsoft's
> biggest weakness is that they still don't realize how much they suck. They
> still think they can write software in house. Maybe they can, by the
> standards of the desktop world. But that world ended a few years ago.
>
> I already know what the reaction to this essay will be. Half the readers
> will say that Microsoft is still an enormously profitable company, and
> that I should be more careful about drawing conclusions based on what a
> few people think in our insular little "Web 2.0" bubble. The other half,
> the younger half, will complain that this is old news.
>
> Notes
>
> [1] It doesn't take a conscious effort to make software incompatible. All
> you have to do is not work too hard at fixing bugs—which, if you're a big
> company, you produce in copious quantities. The situation is exactly
> analogous to the writing of bogus literary theorists. Most don't try to be
> obscure; they just don't make an effort to be clear. It wouldn't pay.
>
> [2] In part because Steve Jobs got pushed out by John Sculley in a way
> that's rare among technology companies. If Apple's board hadn't made that
> blunder, they wouldn't have had to bounce back.
>
> --
> Priceless quotes in m.p.w.vista.general group:
> http://protectfreedom.tripod.com/kick.html
>
> Most recent idiotic quote added to KICK (Klassic Idiotic Caption Kooks):
> "poor little MADAM albright still got your knickers twisted. how are we
> supposed to believe you know anything about computers when you cannot even
> dress your self. oh and pull that skirt down."
>
> "Good poets borrow; great poets steal."
> - T. S. Eliot
>

"Opus" <> wrote in message
news:111112F9-F71E-4ADB-930C-...

> As one great philosopher once said, "There are many voices in the world,
> and none are altogether unpersuasive."

And who might that be? Whoever it was, it's a pity they didn't learn to
write grammatical English...

"Nina DiBoy" <> wrote in message news:eva5ge$g6v$...
> http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
>
> Microsoft is Dead
>
> April 2007
>
> A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to
> a young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo. I
> said that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of
> Microsoft. That was why they'd positioned themselves as a "media
> company" instead of a technology company. Then I looked at his face and
> realized he didn't understand. It was as if I'd told him how much girls
> liked Barry Manilow in the mid 80s. Barry who?

Interesting article, but the death of the desktop OS is greatly
exaggerated.... at least, for awhile to come.

Even Barry Manilow had a number one album last year. ;-)
He actually debuted at the top of the Billboard 200.
My mom's fan. :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Manilow

Now, all the mouth running about "Web 2.0"-
that's got exaggeration and "WTF is that anyway?",
written all over it... the next internet bubble to bust.


-Michael

"Opus" <> wrote in message
news:111112F9-F71E-4ADB-930C-...
>
> Here is a quote from one of this man's articles on his site, and it
> contains a common fallacy of logic:
>
> "In software, paradoxical as it sounds, good craftsmanship means working
> fast. If you work slowly and meticulously, you merely end up with a very
> fine implementation of your initial, mistaken idea."
>
> Did you spot it? Notice how working "slowly and meticulously" is
> associated with "mistaken ideas" and "working fast" is associated with
> "good craftsmanship". A false dichotomy is to erroneously oversimplify a
> matter by casting it as a choice between two things or conditions or ideas
> when others are possible. In this case, it is clearly possible for slow
> and meticulous to produce good craftsmanship and for working fast to
> produce only junk. Moreover, working fast can just as easily exist in
> context of mistaken ideas as working slowly can correct ones. The
> associations that he draws are in no way exclusive or even necessarily
> correct.
>

A long standing joke in my business these days is
"How do you want it? Good, Fast or Cheap? Pick two.

--
=======================================
"If you can't make it good, at least make it look good."
- Bill Gates
=======================================

Microsoft may be dying a slow death, but I assure you it isn't dead. It
will be a major player for another 10 years. Guaranteed. Don't believe the
dribble you read.


"Nina DiBoy" <> wrote in message news:eva5ge$g6v$...
> http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
>
> Microsoft is Dead
>
> April 2007
>
> A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to a
> young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo. I said
> that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft. That
> was why they'd positioned themselves as a "media company" instead of a
> technology company. Then I looked at his face and realized he didn't
> understand. It was as if I'd told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow
> in the mid 80s. Barry who?
>
> Microsoft? He didn't say anything, but I could tell he didn't quite
> believe anyone would be frightened of them.
>
> Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years
> starting in the late 80s. I can remember when it was IBM before them. I
> mostly ignored this shadow. I never used Microsoft software, so it only
> affected me indirectly—for example, in the spam I got from botnets. And
> because I wasn't paying attention, I didn't notice when the shadow
> disappeared.
>
> But it's gone now. I can sense that. No one is even afraid of Microsoft
> anymore. They still make a lot of money—so does IBM, for that matter. But
> they're not dangerous.
>
> When did Microsoft die, and of what? I know they seemed dangerous as late
> as 2001, because I wrote an essay then about how they were less dangerous
> than they seemed. I'd guess they were dead by 2005. I know when we started
> Y Combinator we didn't worry about Microsoft as competition for the
> startups we funded. In fact, we've never even invited them to the demo
> days we organize for startups to present to investors. We invite Yahoo and
> Google and some other Internet companies, but we've never bothered to
> invite Microsoft. Nor has anyone there ever even sent us an email. They're
> in a different world.
>
> What killed them? Four things, I think, all of them occurring
> simultaneously in the mid 2000s.
>
> The most obvious is Google. There can only be one big man in town, and
> they're clearly it. Google is the most dangerous company now by far, in
> both the good and bad senses of the word. Microsoft can at best limp along
> afterward.
>
> When did Google take the lead? There will be a tendency to push it back to
> their IPO in August 2004, but they weren't setting the terms of the debate
> then. I'd say they took the lead in 2005. Gmail was one of the things that
> put them over the edge. Gmail showed they could do more than search.
>
> Gmail also showed how much you could do with web-based software, if you
> took advantage of what later came to be called "Ajax." And that was the
> second cause of Microsoft's death: everyone can see the desktop is over.
> It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the web—not just
> email, but everything, right up to Photoshop. Even Microsoft sees that
> now.
>
> Ironically, Microsoft unintentionally helped create Ajax. The x in Ajax is
> from the XMLHttpRequest object, which lets the browser communicate with
> the server in the background while displaying a page. (Originally the only
> way to communicate with the server was to ask for a new page.)
> XMLHttpRequest was created by Microsoft in the late 90s because they
> needed it for Outlook. What they didn't realize was that it would be
> useful to a lot of other people too—in fact, to anyone who wanted to make
> web apps work like desktop ones.
>
> The other critical component of Ajax is Javascript, the programming
> language that runs in the browser. Microsoft saw the danger of Javascript
> and tried to keep it broken for as long as they could. [1] But eventually
> the open source world won, by producing Javascript libraries that grew
> over the brokenness of Explorer the way a tree grows over barbed wire.
>
> The third cause of Microsoft's death was broadband Internet. Anyone who
> cares can have fast Internet access now. And the bigger the pipe to the
> server, the less you need the desktop.
>
> The last nail in the coffin came, of all places, from Apple. Thanks to OS
> X, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare in
> technology. [2] Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I
> come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y
> Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at startup
> school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for
> grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no
> longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway.
>
> And of course Apple has Microsoft on the run in music too, with TV and
> phones on the way.
>
> I'm glad Microsoft is dead. They were like Nero or Commodus—evil in the
> way only inherited power can make you. Because remember, the Microsoft
> monopoly didn't begin with Microsoft. They got it from IBM. The software
> business was overhung by a monopoly from about the mid-1950s to about
> 2005. For practically its whole existence, that is. One of the reasons
> "Web 2.0" has such an air of euphoria about it is the feeling, conscious
> or not, that this era of monopoly may finally be over.
>
> Of course, as a hacker I can't help thinking about how something broken
> could be fixed. Is there some way Microsoft could come back? In principle,
> yes. To see how, envision two things: (a) the amount of cash Microsoft now
> has on hand, and (b) Larry and Sergey making the rounds of all the search
> engines ten years ago trying to sell the idea for Google for a million
> dollars, and being turned down by everyone.
>
> The surprising fact is, brilliant hackers—dangerously brilliant
> hackers—can be had very cheaply, by the standards of a company as rich as
> Microsoft. So if they wanted to be a contender again, this is how they
> could do it:
>
> 1. Buy all the good "Web 2.0" startups. They could get substantially
> all of them for less than they'd have to pay for Facebook.
>
> 2. Put them all in a building in Silicon Valley, surrounded by lead
> shielding to protect them from any contact with Redmond.
>
> I feel safe suggesting this, because they'd never do it. Microsoft's
> biggest weakness is that they still don't realize how much they suck. They
> still think they can write software in house. Maybe they can, by the
> standards of the desktop world. But that world ended a few years ago.
>
> I already know what the reaction to this essay will be. Half the readers
> will say that Microsoft is still an enormously profitable company, and
> that I should be more careful about drawing conclusions based on what a
> few people think in our insular little "Web 2.0" bubble. The other half,
> the younger half, will complain that this is old news.
>
> Notes
>
> [1] It doesn't take a conscious effort to make software incompatible. All
> you have to do is not work too hard at fixing bugs—which, if you're a big
> company, you produce in copious quantities. The situation is exactly
> analogous to the writing of bogus literary theorists. Most don't try to be
> obscure; they just don't make an effort to be clear. It wouldn't pay.
>
> [2] In part because Steve Jobs got pushed out by John Sculley in a way
> that's rare among technology companies. If Apple's board hadn't made that
> blunder, they wouldn't have had to bounce back.
>
> --
> Priceless quotes in m.p.w.vista.general group:
> http://protectfreedom.tripod.com/kick.html
>
> Most recent idiotic quote added to KICK (Klassic Idiotic Caption Kooks):
> "poor little MADAM albright still got your knickers twisted. how are we
> supposed to believe you know anything about computers when you cannot even
> dress your self. oh and pull that skirt down."
>
> "Good poets borrow; great poets steal."
> - T. S. Eliot

Spanky deMonkey wrote:
> Microsoft may be dying a slow death, but I assure you it isn't dead. It
> will be a major player for another 10 years. Guaranteed. Don't believe the
> dribble you read.

Sure. Wanna bet?

Alias
>
>
> "Nina DiBoy" <> wrote in message news:eva5ge$g6v$...
>> http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
>>
>> Microsoft is Dead
>>
>> April 2007
>>
>> A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to a
>> young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo. I said
>> that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft. That
>> was why they'd positioned themselves as a "media company" instead of a
>> technology company. Then I looked at his face and realized he didn't
>> understand. It was as if I'd told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow
>> in the mid 80s. Barry who?
>>
>> Microsoft? He didn't say anything, but I could tell he didn't quite
>> believe anyone would be frightened of them.
>>
>> Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years
>> starting in the late 80s. I can remember when it was IBM before them. I
>> mostly ignored this shadow. I never used Microsoft software, so it only
>> affected me indirectly—for example, in the spam I got from botnets. And
>> because I wasn't paying attention, I didn't notice when the shadow
>> disappeared.
>>
>> But it's gone now. I can sense that. No one is even afraid of Microsoft
>> anymore. They still make a lot of money—so does IBM, for that matter. But
>> they're not dangerous.
>>
>> When did Microsoft die, and of what? I know they seemed dangerous as late
>> as 2001, because I wrote an essay then about how they were less dangerous
>> than they seemed. I'd guess they were dead by 2005. I know when we started
>> Y Combinator we didn't worry about Microsoft as competition for the
>> startups we funded. In fact, we've never even invited them to the demo
>> days we organize for startups to present to investors. We invite Yahooand
>> Google and some other Internet companies, but we've never bothered to
>> invite Microsoft. Nor has anyone there ever even sent us an email. They're
>> in a different world.
>>
>> What killed them? Four things, I think, all of them occurring
>> simultaneously in the mid 2000s.
>>
>> The most obvious is Google. There can only be one big man in town, and
>> they're clearly it. Google is the most dangerous company now by far, in
>> both the good and bad senses of the word. Microsoft can at best limp along
>> afterward.
>>
>> When did Google take the lead? There will be a tendency to push it back to
>> their IPO in August 2004, but they weren't setting the terms of the debate
>> then. I'd say they took the lead in 2005. Gmail was one of the things that
>> put them over the edge. Gmail showed they could do more than search.
>>
>> Gmail also showed how much you could do with web-based software, if you
>> took advantage of what later came to be called "Ajax." And that was the
>> second cause of Microsoft's death: everyone can see the desktop is over.
>> It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the web—not just
>> email, but everything, right up to Photoshop. Even Microsoft sees that
>> now.
>>
>> Ironically, Microsoft unintentionally helped create Ajax. The x in Ajax is
>> from the XMLHttpRequest object, which lets the browser communicate with
>> the server in the background while displaying a page. (Originally the only
>> way to communicate with the server was to ask for a new page.)
>> XMLHttpRequest was created by Microsoft in the late 90s because they
>> needed it for Outlook. What they didn't realize was that it would be
>> useful to a lot of other people too—in fact, to anyone who wanted tomake
>> web apps work like desktop ones.
>>
>> The other critical component of Ajax is Javascript, the programming
>> language that runs in the browser. Microsoft saw the danger of Javascript
>> and tried to keep it broken for as long as they could. [1] But eventually
>> the open source world won, by producing Javascript libraries that grew
>> over the brokenness of Explorer the way a tree grows over barbed wire.
>>
>> The third cause of Microsoft's death was broadband Internet. Anyone who
>> cares can have fast Internet access now. And the bigger the pipe to the
>> server, the less you need the desktop.
>>
>> The last nail in the coffin came, of all places, from Apple. Thanks toOS
>> X, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare in
>> technology. [2] Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I
>> come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y
>> Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at startup
>> school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for
>> grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no
>> longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway.
>>
>> And of course Apple has Microsoft on the run in music too, with TV and
>> phones on the way.
>>
>> I'm glad Microsoft is dead. They were like Nero or Commodus—evil in the
>> way only inherited power can make you. Because remember, the Microsoft
>> monopoly didn't begin with Microsoft. They got it from IBM. The software
>> business was overhung by a monopoly from about the mid-1950s to about
>> 2005. For practically its whole existence, that is. One of the reasons
>> "Web 2.0" has such an air of euphoria about it is the feeling, conscious
>> or not, that this era of monopoly may finally be over.
>>
>> Of course, as a hacker I can't help thinking about how something broken
>> could be fixed. Is there some way Microsoft could come back? In principle,
>> yes. To see how, envision two things: (a) the amount of cash Microsoftnow
>> has on hand, and (b) Larry and Sergey making the rounds of all the search
>> engines ten years ago trying to sell the idea for Google for a million
>> dollars, and being turned down by everyone.
>>
>> The surprising fact is, brilliant hackers—dangerously brilliant
>> hackers—can be had very cheaply, by the standards of a company as rich as
>> Microsoft. So if they wanted to be a contender again, this is how they
>> could do it:
>>
>> 1. Buy all the good "Web 2.0" startups. They could get substantially
>> all of them for less than they'd have to pay for Facebook.
>>
>> 2. Put them all in a building in Silicon Valley, surrounded by lead
>> shielding to protect them from any contact with Redmond.
>>
>> I feel safe suggesting this, because they'd never do it. Microsoft's
>> biggest weakness is that they still don't realize how much they suck. They
>> still think they can write software in house. Maybe they can, by the
>> standards of the desktop world. But that world ended a few years ago.
>>
>> I already know what the reaction to this essay will be. Half the readers
>> will say that Microsoft is still an enormously profitable company, and
>> that I should be more careful about drawing conclusions based on what a
>> few people think in our insular little "Web 2.0" bubble. The other half,
>> the younger half, will complain that this is old news.
>>
>> Notes
>>
>> [1] It doesn't take a conscious effort to make software incompatible. All
>> you have to do is not work too hard at fixing bugs—which, if you're a big
>> company, you produce in copious quantities. The situation is exactly
>> analogous to the writing of bogus literary theorists. Most don't try to be
>> obscure; they just don't make an effort to be clear. It wouldn't pay.
>>
>> [2] In part because Steve Jobs got pushed out by John Sculley in a way
>> that's rare among technology companies. If Apple's board hadn't made that
>> blunder, they wouldn't have had to bounce back.
>>
>> --
>> Priceless quotes in m.p.w.vista.general group:
>> http://protectfreedom.tripod.com/kick.html
>>
>> Most recent idiotic quote added to KICK (Klassic Idiotic Caption Kooks):
>> "poor little MADAM albright still got your knickers twisted. how are we
>> supposed to believe you know anything about computers when you cannot even
>> dress your self. oh and pull that skirt down."
>>
>> "Good poets borrow; great poets steal."
>> - T. S. Eliot
>
>

It will probably take about 10 years for others to get "up to speed" and
then take over Microsoft's dominance in the industry. I am not saying that
they deserve to be a major player, but they are and that is a fact.
MicroSquish is on 90%+ of the desktops out there currently and even though
Linux, Unix, Mac OS are becoming more popular, I think it will take about 10
years before someone else becomes the major player and MicroSquish is
begging for scraps.


"Alias" <> wrote in message
news:evb2j1$6g1$...
Spanky deMonkey wrote:
> Microsoft may be dying a slow death, but I assure you it isn't dead. It
> will be a major player for another 10 years. Guaranteed. Don't believe
> the dribble you read.

Sure. Wanna bet?

Alias
>
>
> "Nina DiBoy" <> wrote in message news:eva5ge$g6v$...
>> http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
>>
>> Microsoft is Dead
>>
>> April 2007
>>
>> A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to a
>> young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo. I said
>> that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft.
>> That was why they'd positioned themselves as a "media company" instead of
>> a technology company. Then I looked at his face and realized he didn't
>> understand. It was as if I'd told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow
>> in the mid 80s. Barry who?
>>
>> Microsoft? He didn't say anything, but I could tell he didn't quite
>> believe anyone would be frightened of them.
>>
>> Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years
>> starting in the late 80s. I can remember when it was IBM before them. I
>> mostly ignored this shadow. I never used Microsoft software, so it only
>> affected me indirectly—for example, in the spam I got from botnets. And
>> because I wasn't paying attention, I didn't notice when the shadow
>> disappeared.
>>
>> But it's gone now. I can sense that. No one is even afraid of Microsoft
>> anymore. They still make a lot of money—so does IBM, for that matter. But
>> they're not dangerous.
>>
>> When did Microsoft die, and of what? I know they seemed dangerous as late
>> as 2001, because I wrote an essay then about how they were less dangerous
>> than they seemed. I'd guess they were dead by 2005. I know when we
>> started Y Combinator we didn't worry about Microsoft as competition for
>> the startups we funded. In fact, we've never even invited them to the
>> demo days we organize for startups to present to investors. We invite
>> Yahoo and Google and some other Internet companies, but we've never
>> bothered to invite Microsoft. Nor has anyone there ever even sent us an
>> email. They're in a different world.
>>
>> What killed them? Four things, I think, all of them occurring
>> simultaneously in the mid 2000s.
>>
>> The most obvious is Google. There can only be one big man in town, and
>> they're clearly it. Google is the most dangerous company now by far, in
>> both the good and bad senses of the word. Microsoft can at best limp
>> along afterward.
>>
>> When did Google take the lead? There will be a tendency to push it back
>> to their IPO in August 2004, but they weren't setting the terms of the
>> debate then. I'd say they took the lead in 2005. Gmail was one of the
>> things that put them over the edge. Gmail showed they could do more than
>> search.
>>
>> Gmail also showed how much you could do with web-based software, if you
>> took advantage of what later came to be called "Ajax." And that was the
>> second cause of Microsoft's death: everyone can see the desktop is over.
>> It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the web—not just
>> email, but everything, right up to Photoshop. Even Microsoft sees that
>> now.
>>
>> Ironically, Microsoft unintentionally helped create Ajax. The x in Ajax
>> is from the XMLHttpRequest object, which lets the browser communicate
>> with the server in the background while displaying a page. (Originally
>> the only way to communicate with the server was to ask for a new page.)
>> XMLHttpRequest was created by Microsoft in the late 90s because they
>> needed it for Outlook. What they didn't realize was that it would be
>> useful to a lot of other people too—in fact, to anyone who wanted to make
>> web apps work like desktop ones.
>>
>> The other critical component of Ajax is Javascript, the programming
>> language that runs in the browser. Microsoft saw the danger of Javascript
>> and tried to keep it broken for as long as they could. [1] But eventually
>> the open source world won, by producing Javascript libraries that grew
>> over the brokenness of Explorer the way a tree grows over barbed wire.
>>
>> The third cause of Microsoft's death was broadband Internet. Anyone who
>> cares can have fast Internet access now. And the bigger the pipe to the
>> server, the less you need the desktop.
>>
>> The last nail in the coffin came, of all places, from Apple. Thanks to OS
>> X, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare in
>> technology. [2] Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when
>> I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund
>> at Y Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at
>> startup school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is
>> for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the
>> desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses
>> Microsoft's anyway.
>>
>> And of course Apple has Microsoft on the run in music too, with TV and
>> phones on the way.
>>
>> I'm glad Microsoft is dead. They were like Nero or Commodus—evil in the
>> way only inherited power can make you. Because remember, the Microsoft
>> monopoly didn't begin with Microsoft. They got it from IBM. The software
>> business was overhung by a monopoly from about the mid-1950s to about
>> 2005. For practically its whole existence, that is. One of the reasons
>> "Web 2.0" has such an air of euphoria about it is the feeling, conscious
>> or not, that this era of monopoly may finally be over.
>>
>> Of course, as a hacker I can't help thinking about how something broken
>> could be fixed. Is there some way Microsoft could come back? In
>> principle, yes. To see how, envision two things: (a) the amount of cash
>> Microsoft now has on hand, and (b) Larry and Sergey making the rounds of
>> all the search engines ten years ago trying to sell the idea for Google
>> for a million dollars, and being turned down by everyone.
>>
>> The surprising fact is, brilliant hackers—dangerously brilliant
>> hackers—can be had very cheaply, by the standards of a company as rich as
>> Microsoft. So if they wanted to be a contender again, this is how they
>> could do it:
>>
>> 1. Buy all the good "Web 2.0" startups. They could get substantially
>> all of them for less than they'd have to pay for Facebook.
>>
>> 2. Put them all in a building in Silicon Valley, surrounded by lead
>> shielding to protect them from any contact with Redmond.
>>
>> I feel safe suggesting this, because they'd never do it. Microsoft's
>> biggest weakness is that they still don't realize how much they suck.
>> They still think they can write software in house. Maybe they can, by the
>> standards of the desktop world. But that world ended a few years ago.
>>
>> I already know what the reaction to this essay will be. Half the readers
>> will say that Microsoft is still an enormously profitable company, and
>> that I should be more careful about drawing conclusions based on what a
>> few people think in our insular little "Web 2.0" bubble. The other half,
>> the younger half, will complain that this is old news.
>>
>> Notes
>>
>> [1] It doesn't take a conscious effort to make software incompatible. All
>> you have to do is not work too hard at fixing bugs—which, if you're a big
>> company, you produce in copious quantities. The situation is exactly
>> analogous to the writing of bogus literary theorists. Most don't try to
>> be obscure; they just don't make an effort to be clear. It wouldn't pay.
>>
>> [2] In part because Steve Jobs got pushed out by John Sculley in a way
>> that's rare among technology companies. If Apple's board hadn't made that
>> blunder, they wouldn't have had to bounce back.
>>
>> --
>> Priceless quotes in m.p.w.vista.general group:
>> http://protectfreedom.tripod.com/kick.html
>>
>> Most recent idiotic quote added to KICK (Klassic Idiotic Caption Kooks):
>> "poor little MADAM albright still got your knickers twisted. how are we
>> supposed to believe you know anything about computers when you cannot
>> even dress your self. oh and pull that skirt down."
>>
>> "Good poets borrow; great poets steal."
>> - T. S. Eliot
>
>

http://www.web20searchengine.com has a huge list
of web 20 applications or you can search for other
apps not in the list, also add your own Web20 site.

On Apr 8, 8:26 am, Nina DiBoy <n...@di.boy> wrote:
> http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
>
> Microsoft is Dead
>
> April 2007
>
> A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to
> a young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo. I
> said that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of
> Microsoft. That was why they'd positioned themselves as a "media
> company" instead of a technology company. Then I looked at his face and
> realized he didn't understand. It was as if I'd told him how much girls
> liked Barry Manilow in the mid 80s. Barry who?
>
> Microsoft? He didn't say anything, but I could tell he didn't quite
> believe anyone would be frightened of them.
>
> Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years
> starting in the late 80s. I can remember when it was IBM before them. I
> mostly ignored this shadow. I never used Microsoft software, so it only
> affected me indirectly-for example, in the spam I got from botnets. And
> because I wasn't paying attention, I didn't notice when the shadow
> disappeared.
>
> But it's gone now. I can sense that. No one is even afraid of Microsoft
> anymore. They still make a lot of money-so does IBM, for that matter.
> But they're not dangerous.
>
> When did Microsoft die, and of what? I know they seemed dangerous as
> late as 2001, because I wrote an essay then about how they were less
> dangerous than they seemed. I'd guess they were dead by 2005. I know
> when we started Y Combinator we didn't worry about Microsoft as
> competition for the startups we funded. In fact, we've never even
> invited them to the demo days we organize for startups to present to
> investors. We invite Yahoo and Google and some other Internet companies,
> but we've never bothered to invite Microsoft. Nor has anyone there ever
> even sent us an email. They're in a different world.
>
> What killed them? Four things, I think, all of them occurring
> simultaneously in the mid 2000s.
>
> The most obvious is Google. There can only be one big man in town, and
> they're clearly it. Google is the most dangerous company now by far, in
> both the good and bad senses of the word. Microsoft can at best limp
> along afterward.
>
> When did Google take the lead? There will be a tendency to push it back
> to their IPO in August 2004, but they weren't setting the terms of the
> debate then. I'd say they took the lead in 2005. Gmail was one of the
> things that put them over the edge. Gmail showed they could do more than
> search.
>
> Gmail also showed how much you could do with web-based software, if you
> took advantage of what later came to be called "Ajax." And that was the
> second cause of Microsoft's death: everyone can see the desktop is over.
> It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the web-not just
> email, but everything, right up to Photoshop. Even Microsoft sees that now.
>
> Ironically, Microsoft unintentionally helped create Ajax. The x in Ajax
> is from the XMLHttpRequest object, which lets the browser communicate
> with the server in the background while displaying a page. (Originally
> the only way to communicate with the server was to ask for a new page.)
> XMLHttpRequest was created by Microsoft in the late 90s because they
> needed it for Outlook. What they didn't realize was that it would be
> useful to a lot of other people too-in fact, to anyone who wanted to
> make web apps work like desktop ones.
>
> The other critical component of Ajax is Javascript, the programming
> language that runs in the browser. Microsoft saw the danger of
> Javascript and tried to keep it broken for as long as they could. [1]
> But eventually the open source world won, by producing Javascript
> libraries that grew over the brokenness of Explorer the way a tree grows
> over barbed wire.
>
> The third cause of Microsoft's death was broadband Internet. Anyone who
> cares can have fast Internet access now. And the bigger the pipe to the
> server, the less you need the desktop.
>
> The last nail in the coffin came, of all places, from Apple. Thanks to
> OS X, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare
> in technology. [2] Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised
> when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we
> fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience
> at startup school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now.
> Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only
> does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses
> Microsoft's anyway.
>
> And of course Apple has Microsoft on the run in music too, with TV and
> phones on the way.
>
> I'm glad Microsoft is dead. They were like Nero or Commodus-evil in the
> way only inherited power can make you. Because remember, the Microsoft
> monopoly didn't begin with Microsoft. They got it from IBM. The software
> business was overhung by a monopoly from about the mid-1950s to about
> 2005. For practically its whole existence, that is. One of the reasons
> "Web 2.0" has such an air of euphoria about it is the feeling, conscious
> or not, that this era of monopoly may finally be over.
>
> Of course, as a hacker I can't help thinking about how something broken
> could be fixed. Is there some way Microsoft could come back? In
> principle, yes. To see how, envision two things: (a) the amount of cash
> Microsoft now has on hand, and (b) Larry and Sergey making the rounds of
> all the search engines ten years ago trying to sell the idea for Google
> for a million dollars, and being turned down by everyone.
>
> The surprising fact is, brilliant hackers-dangerously brilliant
> hackers-can be had very cheaply, by the standards of a company as rich
> as Microsoft. So if they wanted to be a contender again, this is how
> they could do it:
>
> 1. Buy all the good "Web 2.0" startups. They could get substantially
> all of them for less than they'd have to pay for Facebook.
>
> 2. Put them all in a building in Silicon Valley, surrounded by lead
> shielding to protect them from any contact with Redmond.
>
> I feel safe suggesting this, because they'd never do it. Microsoft's
> biggest weakness is that they still don't realize how much they suck.
> They still think they can write software in house. Maybe they can, by
> the standards of the desktop world. But that world ended a few years ago.
>
> I already know what the reaction to this essay will be. Half the readers
> will say that Microsoft is still an enormously profitable company, and
> that I should be more careful about drawing conclusions based on what a
> few people think in our insular little "Web 2.0" bubble. The other half,
> the younger half, will complain that this is old news.
>
> Notes
>
> [1] It doesn't take a conscious effort to make software incompatible.
> All you have to do is not work too hard at fixing bugs-which, if you're
> a big company, you produce in copious quantities. The situation is
> exactly analogous to the writing of bogus literary theorists. Most don't
> try to be obscure; they just don't make an effort to be clear. It
> wouldn't pay.
>
> [2] In part because Steve Jobs got pushed out by John Sculley in a way
> that's rare among technology companies. If Apple's board hadn't made
> that blunder, they wouldn't have had to bounce back.
>
> --
> Priceless quotes in m.p.w.vista.general group:http://protectfreedom.tripod.com/kick.html
>
> Most recent idiotic quote added to KICK (Klassic Idiotic Caption Kooks):
> "poor little MADAM albright still got your knickers twisted. how are we
> supposed to believe you know anything about computers when you cannot
> even dress your self. oh and pull that skirt down."
>
> "Good poets borrow; great poets steal."
> - T. S. Eliot

I remember 20 years ago when IBM and the mainframe was announced "dead".
Also the Cobol programming language.

"Nina DiBoy" <> wrote in message news:eva5ge$g6v$...
> http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
>
> Microsoft is Dead
>
> April 2007
>
> A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to a
> young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo. I said
> that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft. That
> was why they'd positioned themselves as a "media company" instead of a
> technology company. Then I looked at his face and realized he didn't
> understand. It was as if I'd told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow
> in the mid 80s. Barry who?
>
> Microsoft? He didn't say anything, but I could tell he didn't quite
> believe anyone would be frightened of them.
>
> Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years
> starting in the late 80s. I can remember when it was IBM before them. I
> mostly ignored this shadow. I never used Microsoft software, so it only
> affected me indirectly—for example, in the spam I got from botnets. And
> because I wasn't paying attention, I didn't notice when the shadow
> disappeared.
>
> But it's gone now. I can sense that. No one is even afraid of Microsoft
> anymore. They still make a lot of money—so does IBM, for that matter. But
> they're not dangerous.
>
> When did Microsoft die, and of what? I know they seemed dangerous as late
> as 2001, because I wrote an essay then about how they were less dangerous
> than they seemed. I'd guess they were dead by 2005. I know when we started
> Y Combinator we didn't worry about Microsoft as competition for the
> startups we funded. In fact, we've never even invited them to the demo
> days we organize for startups to present to investors. We invite Yahoo and
> Google and some other Internet companies, but we've never bothered to
> invite Microsoft. Nor has anyone there ever even sent us an email. They're
> in a different world.
>
> What killed them? Four things, I think, all of them occurring
> simultaneously in the mid 2000s.
>
> The most obvious is Google. There can only be one big man in town, and
> they're clearly it. Google is the most dangerous company now by far, in
> both the good and bad senses of the word. Microsoft can at best limp along
> afterward.
>
> When did Google take the lead? There will be a tendency to push it back to
> their IPO in August 2004, but they weren't setting the terms of the debate
> then. I'd say they took the lead in 2005. Gmail was one of the things that
> put them over the edge. Gmail showed they could do more than search.
>
> Gmail also showed how much you could do with web-based software, if you
> took advantage of what later came to be called "Ajax." And that was the
> second cause of Microsoft's death: everyone can see the desktop is over.
> It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the web—not just
> email, but everything, right up to Photoshop. Even Microsoft sees that
> now.
>
> Ironically, Microsoft unintentionally helped create Ajax. The x in Ajax is
> from the XMLHttpRequest object, which lets the browser communicate with
> the server in the background while displaying a page. (Originally the only
> way to communicate with the server was to ask for a new page.)
> XMLHttpRequest was created by Microsoft in the late 90s because they
> needed it for Outlook. What they didn't realize was that it would be
> useful to a lot of other people too—in fact, to anyone who wanted to make
> web apps work like desktop ones.
>
> The other critical component of Ajax is Javascript, the programming
> language that runs in the browser. Microsoft saw the danger of Javascript
> and tried to keep it broken for as long as they could. [1] But eventually
> the open source world won, by producing Javascript libraries that grew
> over the brokenness of Explorer the way a tree grows over barbed wire.
>
> The third cause of Microsoft's death was broadband Internet. Anyone who
> cares can have fast Internet access now. And the bigger the pipe to the
> server, the less you need the desktop.
>
> The last nail in the coffin came, of all places, from Apple. Thanks to OS
> X, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare in
> technology. [2] Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I
> come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y
> Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at startup
> school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for
> grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no
> longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway.
>
> And of course Apple has Microsoft on the run in music too, with TV and
> phones on the way.
>
> I'm glad Microsoft is dead. They were like Nero or Commodus—evil in the
> way only inherited power can make you. Because remember, the Microsoft
> monopoly didn't begin with Microsoft. They got it from IBM. The software
> business was overhung by a monopoly from about the mid-1950s to about
> 2005. For practically its whole existence, that is. One of the reasons
> "Web 2.0" has such an air of euphoria about it is the feeling, conscious
> or not, that this era of monopoly may finally be over.
>
> Of course, as a hacker I can't help thinking about how something broken
> could be fixed. Is there some way Microsoft could come back? In principle,
> yes. To see how, envision two things: (a) the amount of cash Microsoft now
> has on hand, and (b) Larry and Sergey making the rounds of all the search
> engines ten years ago trying to sell the idea for Google for a million
> dollars, and being turned down by everyone.
>
> The surprising fact is, brilliant hackers—dangerously brilliant
> hackers—can be had very cheaply, by the standards of a company as rich as
> Microsoft. So if they wanted to be a contender again, this is how they
> could do it:
>
> 1. Buy all the good "Web 2.0" startups. They could get substantially
> all of them for less than they'd have to pay for Facebook.
>
> 2. Put them all in a building in Silicon Valley, surrounded by lead
> shielding to protect them from any contact with Redmond.
>
> I feel safe suggesting this, because they'd never do it. Microsoft's
> biggest weakness is that they still don't realize how much they suck. They
> still think they can write software in house. Maybe they can, by the
> standards of the desktop world. But that world ended a few years ago.
>
> I already know what the reaction to this essay will be. Half the readers
> will say that Microsoft is still an enormously profitable company, and
> that I should be more careful about drawing conclusions based on what a
> few people think in our insular little "Web 2.0" bubble. The other half,
> the younger half, will complain that this is old news.
>
> Notes
>
> [1] It doesn't take a conscious effort to make software incompatible. All
> you have to do is not work too hard at fixing bugs—which, if you're a big
> company, you produce in copious quantities. The situation is exactly
> analogous to the writing of bogus literary theorists. Most don't try to be
> obscure; they just don't make an effort to be clear. It wouldn't pay.
>
> [2] In part because Steve Jobs got pushed out by John Sculley in a way
> that's rare among technology companies. If Apple's board hadn't made that
> blunder, they wouldn't have had to bounce back.
>
> --
> Priceless quotes in m.p.w.vista.general group:
> http://protectfreedom.tripod.com/kick.html
>
> Most recent idiotic quote added to KICK (Klassic Idiotic Caption Kooks):
> "poor little MADAM albright still got your knickers twisted. how are we
> supposed to believe you know anything about computers when you cannot even
> dress your self. oh and pull that skirt down."
>
> "Good poets borrow; great poets steal."
> - T. S. Eliot