Gotta love the MS haters.
I agree that this is a day to remember. You've done well Bill!
Not a matter of being a hater, it's just annoying to see MS getting a lot more recognition for innovation than they deserve. If you look seriously at many of the major technology leaps that have come out of Redmond, they can be attributed to ideas that were initially developed (or at the very least, conceived) elsewhere.
Let's see...
- MS-DOS - purchased (under very dubious circumstances)
- Word/Excel - copied from companies such as MicroPro (WordStar) and Satellite Software International, later WordPerfect Corp, and Lotus (1-2-3)/Software Arts (Visicalc). Developed and released prior to public release of Windows APIs rendering competition nearly impossible, because Microsoft's products were able to be released with new versions of Windows. Competing products were forced to be late to the game. Remember 1-2-3, the premiere spreadsheet application for years? By the time its Windows counterpart was finally released, Excel had taken over the market. Word Perfect? Same story.
- Windows Scripting Host/Windows Messaging - AppleScript/AppleEvents (and before that, shell scripting and Unix IPC -- although one could argue that the very concept of scripting is not innovative, it's simply the evolutionary step in any modern operating system)
- NT - developed (very poorly) by a team of VMS engineers hired away from DEC.
I could go on, but I have to finish my coffee and head to work. I'm not trying to say that Microsoft (and Bill) don't deserve some amount of recognition. I just wish more people were aware of their sordid history.
In any case,
this quote from Dave Winer in the Wall Street Journal last year seems pretty spot on to me:
Microsoft isn't an innovator, and never was. They are always playing catch-up, by design. That's their M.O. They describe their development approach as "chasing tail lights." They aren't interested in markets until they're worth billions, so they let others develop the markets, and have been content to catch-up. This worked well for them in the 80s and through the mid-90s, when they were a more nimble company with stock options that were attractive to bright young people, when Bill G had something to prove, and was current on the latest technology. Maybe it still does work (obviously I have doubts), but it sure isn't innovation, in any usual sense of the word.
FWIW, I was a fan of Microsoft for most of the mid 80's to 90's. Even in my college days where I immersed myself in (and fell in love with) UNIX, I still was doing most of my development on the PC (using Turbo Pascal). Then I picked up a IIci around 1993 and my love for Microsoft diminished until finally being eradicated a few years ago when I realized just how they were stifling competition.
Back to the original intent of this thread however, I do think this is a sad day. Bill Gates started out his career as a ruthless and pompous jerk (and those I know who have had contact with him in those early days have said some less than stellar things about him), but I also believe that he has smoothed out and become a pretty decent guy (I doubt we'll see the same level of philandering from Steve Jobs), and that with the transfer of power from Bill to Steve Ballmer goes the last bit of soul that was left in Microsoft. I personally believe Ballmer to be far more ruthless and pompous than Bill ever was.
