Dave hardy wrote:
>
> Email post of the week; nice work, Mr. Bennett.
Agreed.
> They built a software industry where anyone who was not Microsoft
> could only survive by working with technologies that were not
> controlled by Microsoft. To me it always seemed that you've have to
> be out of your mind to attempt to build a software business on the
> Microsoft platform using the Microsoft development tools.
Even that wasn't always enough. Jim Clark, early 1998:
"When I left Silicon Graphics I had a net worth of $16 million
and I invested $5 million to start Netscape. Microsoft has
practically killed Netscape. I'll never invest in another
thing to compete with them. I'll never touch another market
that has anything to do with Microsoft's path. And if I'd
known four years ago what I know now --that Microsoft would
destroy us and that the government wouldn't do anything about
it for three fucking years-- I wouldn't have started Netscape
in the first place."
(Ahhh. Now we see. CONTROL of innovation...)
> Look, by 1997 Microsoft was holding conferences with Venture
> Capital firms and providing a spin which basically said "If you back a
> company that is not towing the line with these technologies, you will
> loose."
Here's a citation, attributed to John Doerr:
"They heard from John Doerr about Microsoft's recent habit
of gathering together the Valley's venture capitalists and
offering 'helpful' guidance and suggestions about which
technologies were advisable to invest in and which might
be best left to Redmond. 'My firm's policy is never to
back a venture that competes directly with Microsoft',
Doerr said. 'Only damned fools stand in the way of oncoming
trains.'"
Both sets of quotations from "Pride before the FALL; The
Trials of Bill Gates and the End of the Microsoft Era", by
John Heilemann, ISBN 0-06-662117-8, which I heartily
recommend.
-Bill
--
"We have to make a management decision"
Jerry Mason, Morton Thiokol, Inc.
27 January 1986
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