Extending the embrace
Summary Description What if the bubble didn't really burst, asks Simon Vandore.

Introduction
In 1995, Bill Gates announced Microsoft would 'embrace and extend' the Internet. His company proceeded to build the Microsoft Network (MSN), a farcical attempt at outdoing the Web.

Body
I remember journalists returning from Gates' Windows 95 press conference at Darling Harbour, hypnotised by the promises of global multimedia connectedness on a Windows PC. I turned back to my Windows PC, connected to the Internet and cranked up the latest Netscape.
Hundreds of millions of dollars later, having swept up the careers of thousands of talented people and dumped them back on the street, the vision is not reality. It was a mistake. Here I am on the giant ninemsn, but it sure ain't the Microsoft Network announced back then by Bill.
When Gates says something like "embrace and extend", people start to worry. It is code for a hijacking. That's why the industry gets the giggles when he claims that the US Department of Justice will reduce 'innovation' if it splits his empire.
The foundation of the company, MS-DOS was a purchase, not a Microsoft invention. The Excel spreadsheet owes everything to Lotus 1-2-3. There were about 10 years of Mac OS windows before Windows, but Gates just had the audacity to trademark the name! Windows NT Server still can't keep up with the Unixes it was designed to replace. Even Internet Explorer (known elsewhere as Internet Exploiter), based on outdated technology from Spyglass Mosaic, played second fiddle to Netscape until version four.
The Internet became a threat to operating systems and software all at once, panicking the juggernaut. Along with MSN, Microsoft tried proprietary HTML extensions and ActiveX to make Web pages that only functioned in Windows. It warped Java and tried to entice people to JScript and ASP over JavaScript. It embraced every Internet standard and tried to extend it so that people required Windows.
Internet Explorer won the browser war and eventually did a better job with the real standards than Netscape. The Internet resisted everything else that Microsoft threw at it. Even today the FrontPage HTML editor's output is so obnoxious that there are now third-party products written to 'clean up' FrontPage files and turn them into respectable HTML.
Can you imagine how much time, money and talent Microsoft wasted on all this? If any other company had done this, it would have gone down in flames. Lucky for Bill, he can go back to talking about 'great sawftwayre', not 'embarrassing disasters'. Microsoft has remained a stock market darling and the non-IT media even see it as one of the most important players in the Internet industry.
The same mentality brought us the dot com stock boom, generated primarily by investors who had little or no understanding of the Internet. They founded or pumped money into Web ventures with the most ludicrous business plans -- even those with no actual product or service -- without any comprehension of where those companies stood in the grand scheme of things. Meanwhile, the Microsoft share price went through the roof, even though many investors didn't understand what Microsoft actually does for a living.
OK, so there was a crash and Gates lost one-third of his on-paper value. People are saying the bubble has burst. I disagree. I think the mentality is still out there and there are many Web companies which have no right to exist. They make no money and are based on anticipation of 'the future', which will not unfold in their image.
Microsoft won a pyrrhic victory and will likely be divided. That's now a side issue. Yes, the Internet and the Web are as wonderful as advertised, so don't let it shake your confidence in the technology. But like Bill, there are still a lot of people out there who have got it wrong. In the long run they will fall. Hard.
SOUNDING BOARD: What has Microsoft ever done for us? Have your say!
Vandore is published every Friday on Newswire. You can contact Simon Vandore at svandore@acptech.net.