Internet Services Crucial, Microsoft Memos (obtained by NYT) Say

Internet Services Crucial, Microsoft Memos Say
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: November 9, 2005


SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 8 - Microsoft must fundamentally alter its business or face being at a significant competitive disadvantage to a growing array of companies offering Internet services, according to memorandums written by two of the company's top executives.

Last week, Microsoft, the largest software maker, announced that it would offer two new Internet services - Windows Live and Office Live - in response to companies including Apple, Google, Salesforce.com and Yahoo that have created new businesses based on direct Internet connections with users.

In separate memos distributed internally to senior executives on Oct. 30, Microsoft's chairman, Bill Gates, and a chief technology officer, Ray Ozzie, warned that the new "Internet services" era could be significantly disruptive for the company.

The memos were obtained on Tuesday afternoon by The New York Times. A Microsoft spokesman confirmed their authenticity, but would not comment on their substance.

They point to a variety of threats to Microsoft's Windows and Office franchises, from advertising-supported Internet businesses like those being pursued by Google and Yahoo to, as Mr. Gates notes, a new "grass-roots adoption and popularization model" that has made it easier for start-up companies to reach large audiences at low cost....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/09/technology/09soft.html

What do you suppose the odds are that MS moles are deep into the Apple Corps to pillage the Next Brilliant Advance. As usual.

This is the first time I've heard that claim. Do you have a source?

.... Microsoft has not innovated one single major advance in PC computing, EVER.

They "bought" DOS from Gary, copied GUI from Apple/PARC, co-opted office networking from Novell, came to the internet party very late and had to buy a browser, I could go on and on.

Nobody who has the slightest grasp of how we got where we are in PC computing would give MS any credit at all. Their talent is ruthless business practices, monopoly power, stuff like that. Their ability to create quality products is and always has been non-existent.

...they "bought" DOS from a company called Seattle Computer Products. Gary's Kildall's firm owned CP/M, which at the time was a competing, and far more popular operating system. QDOS was based on CP/M, but it was different enough that it was legally considered a different product.

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa033099.htm

Gates' real "master stroke" was to convince IBM to allow him to sell QDOS (now MSDOS) to other vendors other than IBM. He made far more money on these copies than those that were included with IBM machines. It also allowed MSDOS to be the only widely distributed OS besides Apple's.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

... and that is not the only time Gates screwed IBM, he did it with the OS/2/Windows development also.

Will get even Bill Gates. I could give a shit about what his religious leanings are.

and the sooner, the better for all.

He had to break his files up into 5 meg chunks, but using POP3 he damn sure did it - even made a scratch disk out an account too.