If you’ve been meaning to get caught up on the whole Microsoft/Web services/Web2 threat meme, then read this Cnet piece on Gates’ recent memo to employees (Winer has full text there of it and Ozzie’s as well), which I very much doubt was intended solely as an internal rumination, on the threats tendered by web based services. (By the way, the plasma like Cnet interface to related stories – I’ve used part of it as the art at left – is cool, if only we had blog plasma…)
Microsoft truly does face the second coming of the Web, and this time it’s not conveniently packaged as one killable company a la Netscape (Google notwithstanding).
John:
Ray Ozzie’s comments at least make it clear that someone at Microsoft gets what the company is up against. Whether he can manage to turn the giant ship around quickly enough remains to be seen.
Mathew
AJAX – DHTML – The Internet Tidal Wave
It is fascinating how since being Coined in Feb 2005 the term AJAX has now become a Standard.
DHTML may have been first used by Netscape, since the LAYER tag was availble in 1997 in Netscape 4
In terms of the Internet Tidal Wave – discovering it in DEC 1995 is SHAMEFUL – what he meant probably is the WEB tidal Wave – The Internet had already been around for Decades.
But the concept of SERVICES should have been explored Years ago – just seeing how HOTMAIL had taken off should have been a hint.
For many years have been doing group projects with others around the world via the Hotmail Rich Text Format and Save Draft options.
Was at the original event 5 years ago when Bill PERSONALLY announced the .NET launch. It really could have been explained much better.
BTW:
It is brilliant how Gates learns from the mistakes and failures of other giants who came before
remember WANG and WordStar
Wonder how different fate would have been if Gary Kildall had been the chosen one.
For what it’s worth, I had completely written off Mr. Softie when Netscape started to market commerce server.
A few years later I was loving asp over servlets.
The obvious reason for these memos can be seen here.
I wonder when they put in their offer to buy 37signals or Salesforce.com.
“The next sea change is upon us.”
Of course Microsoft will adapt and survive, much like IBM and Xerox have done. Western Union went from being the grandest communication company in human history to running cash errands, it adapted and survived…
The Internet began in ~1969 but didn’t become a tidal wave until the mid 90’s.
Gary Kildall is the Nikola Tesla of personal computing.
Oppps… make that:
Gary Kildall is the Nikola Tesla of personal computing operating systems.
Steve Jobs is the Nikola Tesla of personal computing.
“DHTML may have been first used by Netscape, since the LAYER tag was availble in 1997 in Netscape 4”
Yes it is … the first was Netscape!
Microsoft has now released the Windows Live Mail beta to compete with Gmail. It also uses Ajax to create the user interface and claims to speed up the process. We’ll have to see how it goes.
>>It is brilliant how Gates learns from the mistakes and failures of other giants who came before
you really think he learn out of his mistakes ? Im scared….the Gates empire first try to get your money.If this dont work they try it in the same way like the others…
Now Microsoft trying to build an axe of evil between them, ebay and yahoo ….
For what it’s worth, I had completely written off Mr. Softie when Netscape started to market commerce server.
Gates is going down he stopped projecting XP Version why???
Because he has more important projects where it is to make money believe me
>>Because he has more important projects where it is to make money believe me
No , hes pushing Vista because of more control about the users , especially software pirates
The Google/YouTube acquisition rumors developed quickly over the last few days. After our initial post discussing the rumor, the WSJ (behind a paywall) and the NY Times quickly followed up with their own articles. Neither publication contacted me, and I have no idea who their sources are.
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Netscape is the best !!