“The Internet Memo”
Friday, June 27th, 2008There’s a scan of a print-out of the famous memo from May 1995 on the BBC site.
It’s a very interesting read and serves not only as a memoir detailing Gates’ thoughts at the time, but also as an accurate and reasonably objective high-level summary of the state of the Internet in the second quarter of 1995 (albeit with a slant towards commercial use and potential).
Gates makes a level-headed assessment of the nature of the burgeoning network and clearly identifies its strengths, rapidly growing importance and potential for the future, as well as the opportunities and threats it poses to Microsoft’s business. His assessment of Microsoft’s key competitors and their positions vis-vis the Internet is, again, a comprehensive snap-shot of the picture at the time.
The memo contains many memorable quotes:
“The HTTP protocols that define HTML Web browsing are extremely simple and have allowed servers to handle incredible traffic reasonably well. All of the predictions about hypertext - made decades ago by pioneers like Ted Nelson - are coming true on the Web.”
“Amazingly, it is easier to find information on the Web than it is to find information on the Microsoft Corporate Network. This inversion, where a public network solves a problem better than a private network, is quite stunning.”
“Browsing the Web, you find almost no Microsoft file formats. After 10 hours of browsing, I had not seen a single Word DOC, AVI file, Windows EXE (other than content viewers), or other Microsoft file formats.”
“One scary possibility being discussed by Internet fans is whether they should get together and create something far less expensive than a PC which is powerful enough for Web browsing.”
“A new competitor ‘born’ on the Internet is Netscape. Their browser is dominant with 70% usage share, allowing them to determine which network extensions will catch on. They are pursuing a multi-platform strategy where they move the key API into the client to commoditize the underlying operating system. They have attracted a number of public network operators to use their platform to offer information and directory services. We have to match and beat their offerings including working the MCI, newspapers, and others who are considering their products.”
“We need to establish distributed OLE as the protocol for Internet programming.”
And there are many more.
As we all know, Microsoft succeeded in initially grafting on and then building in Internet and Web features to its product lines, and they knocked out Netscape in pretty short order, but the fact that I, a one-time heavy user of Microsoft products, accessed this document in PDF format using the Firefox browser, from a relatively easy to use desktop version of Linux, is illustrative of the fact that MS haven’t been able to dominate the Web or desktop computing to the extent that Gates desired at the time of the memo. The “Confidential - Government Exhibit” stamps also attest to the fact that Microsoft hasn’t had everything its own way.
The link is also interesting for showing just how readable printed text remains even when its quality is seriously degraded!