Your choice is Microsoft or Microsoft
Posted by marshall Wed, 14 Sep 2005 17:28:00 GMT
This morning I read an interview with Bill Gates. This has got to be one of the scariest things I've read in a long time. From the article:
At any point in our history, we've had competitors who were better at doing something. Novell was the best at file servers. Lotus was the best at spreadsheets. WordPerfect was the best at word processing. Right now...Nokia is way ahead of us in phones; we're closing the gap. Sony is ahead of us in video games. We're just on the verge of something (the Xbox 360) that will help us close the gap there. In Web search, Google is the far-away leader...And Apple in music has done a fantastic job.
Look at the list of competitors -- all in different markets. And the message Gates is giving is, "We're going to kill them all." And when they're done with those, they'll find new markets to conquer. There's no need, market-wise, for Microsoft to compete with Nokia: Sony Ericsson, Palm, and Blackberry all compete in the smartphone space to drive it forward. There's no need for Microsoft to compete with Google: Google has competition from Yahoo and other search/portal sites. The only driving force is greed. Microsoft wants to own every single tech market, just because it can. And that's a terrifying prospect.
The future according to Microsoft: when you talk on the phone, it will be a Microsoft Windows Smartphone. When you drive your car, it will run Microsoft Windows Automotive. When you start your computer, it will run Microsoft Windows Vista. When you watch a DVD, it will use Microsoft Windows Media. When you play a game, it will be on the Microsoft Xbox. When you connect to the internet, it will be through the Microsoft Network. When you open your internet browser, it will be Microsoft Internet Explorer. When you search for something, your search results will come from Microsoft Network Search. When you check your e-mail, it will be with Microsoft Outlook. When you type a document, it will be with Microsoft Office. When you want news, you'll watch Microsoft NBC. When you listen to music, it will be Microsoft Windows Media Audio. When you set up a web site, it will run on Microsoft Internet Information Services, with the Microsoft Active Server Pages .NET runtime, using a Microsoft SQL Server database, and running on a Microsoft Windows Server. And that's just the short list.
These are all different markets -- phones, cars, operating systems, multimedia, game consoles, web search, databases, television, web browsers, and more -- with companies competing in each, but Microsoft wants there to be just one company controlling them all. All of the information you receive will come through Microsoft. And just as they did with Novell, Lotus, and WordPerfect, they will ensure -- through licensing deals, pre-installation, and other monopoly-extending means -- that competitors in every tech space are not given the chance to breathe.
I hope Google wins. I hope Apple wins. I hope Nokia wins. I hope Sony wins. Anyone, really, but Microsoft.
As a side note, here's another fun Gates quote from the article:
Software in general, whether it was from Microsoft or somebody else, was not set up for an environment where all the computers were connected together. So it's not like there was some software that had this security capability and our software did not.
Actually, Bill, the UNIX base that drives Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, FreeBSD, and other operating systems was set up for an environment where all the computers were connected together, from the beginning. Just because you were late to the game doesn't mean "software in general" was.
