Microsoft Windows, every mention

124 scenes (said by Ben Gilbert) · ← back to Microsoft Windows

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Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Microsoft Windows comes up

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Google Part II: Alphabet (Audio) · Acquired Aug 26, 2025 · 4 mentions

▶ 18:40 Ben Gilbert So to this point, over 90% of Google search queries were done on Windows PCs, and 90% were done in Internet Explorer running on those PCs.
▶ 19:30 Ben Gilbert And web usage isn't bad for Microsoft, but if the platform of the next generation becomes the web, and people are writing web applications instead of Windows applications, that makes Microsoft's platform a lot less valuable versus other…
▶ 48:47 Ben Gilbert The Windows code to have perfect document fidelity to the web, so when you looked on the web and then printed from the web, the document would be laid out pixel for pixel, character for character, exactly how it would look on the printed…
▶ 2:19:20 Ben Gilbert So there's this kind of funky thing where, like, Microsoft built and owned Windows and then dominated the PC era because of that.

Google Part I: Origins of Search. How the Best Business in Human History Happened (Audio) · Acquired Jun 30, 2025 · 1 mention

▶ 2:45:10 Ben Gilbert They even did a deal with Dell directly to make sure that when new PCs shipped with Windows, they shipped with Google toolbar pre-installed

The Steve Ballmer Interview · Acquired Jun 2, 2025 · 14 mentions

▶ 21:36 Ben Gilbert And maybe walk us through a little bit the OS two windows world.
▶ 24:07 Ben Gilbert We really think the future is Windows.
▶ 29:30 Ben Gilbert And so you're sitting there, Windows isn't powerful Windows yet.
▶ 29:33 Ben Gilbert Windows is this fledgling kind of idea.
▶ 29:53 Ben Gilbert You don't really have confidence in Windows yet.
▶ 30:34 Ben Gilbert So who's using Windows and how are you selling to them at this point?
▶ 41:04 Ben Gilbert And that's of Windows, that's of Office, that's of.
▶ 1:02:41 Ben Gilbert You have Windows, this amazing piece of software with this tremendous multi-sided network effect around it.
▶ 1:02:48 Ben Gilbert The logical thing to do is to continue to try and extend it and say, geez, wouldn't it be nice if the next great technology wave was also Windows?
▶ 1:08:02 Ben Gilbert Thank God we have Windows to be able to have some way we can, you know, attack them from the side.
▶ 1:08:07 Ben Gilbert And with Windows integration, maybe that gives us a fighting chance.
▶ 1:21:07 Ben Gilbert It doesn't leverage Microsoft's strength of owning the Windows franchise.
▶ 1:22:17 Ben Gilbert Uh, Windows apps were coming out that would sweep the world and go get a hundred million users because they were great apps.
▶ 2:56:13 Ben Gilbert In fact, when I was at Microsoft, I, you know, I wasn't a podcaster then, but at the time I was such a junior employee, but man, there was a complicated landscape that Steve was navigating between, you know, the product set, between…

Epic Systems (MyChart) · Acquired Apr 21, 2025 · 1 mention

▶ 3:45:20 Ben Gilbert Or Windows, actually.

Meta (Audio) · Acquired Oct 28, 2024 · 1 mention

▶ 2:26:39 Ben Gilbert You know, the same way that Microsoft had user attention with PCs, because they had the install base of Windows.

Microsoft Volume II: The Complete History and Strategy of the Ballmer Years (Audio) · Acquired Jul 22, 2024 · 68 mentions

▶ 31:15 Ben Gilbert You know, how could the next iteration of Windows be extremely internet native in a very embedded way?
▶ 31:36 Ben Gilbert But the big vision was, what if the whole Windows shell is a browser?
▶ 31:42 Ben Gilbert Every visual thing that you interact with in Windows, what if that actually was like an HTML rendered server communicating online thing?
▶ 32:45 Ben Gilbert With Windows.
▶ 32:46 Ben Gilbert Famously, you know, Netscape did not do that, and so IE, Internet Explorer, actually ends up being kind of the only application that used all these Windows components, and once they got going on the browser, they convinced the Windows…
▶ 34:45 Ben Gilbert And the two big takeaways here, at least from this additional version of the story, is one, what they actually wanted to do was make Windows web-enabled in a really deep, integrated way, not just have this one little application called a…
▶ 35:06 Ben Gilbert Windows code implemented in Windows operating system to do these protocols.
▶ 59:48 Ben Gilbert Clearly motivated by the idea that we want our Windows platform to maintain the power it enjoys from its monopoly market share.
▶ 1:00:29 Ben Gilbert And it's important to know, what they're basically asking is, this is not about future versions, you know, we know you're doing some kind of Windows 98 thing, we're saying right now, stop shipping, i.e., bundled into Windows.
▶ 1:01:11 Ben Gilbert So there actually was like, if you think back to that sort of vision of the browser is integrated into the Windows shell, and it sort of happened, a browser was not really, at least Internet Explorer, was not really its own standalone…
▶ 1:01:41 Ben Gilbert So, the federal judge, Thomas Penfield Jackson, orders them to do it anyway, or more specifically, he ordered Microsoft to ship a version of Windows to the PC makers, the OEMs, or original equipment manufacturers, that didn't include IE,…
▶ 1:02:26 Ben Gilbert Thing two is obviously the PC makers don't actually ship this version of Windows, so it never sees the light of day.
▶ 1:03:52 Ben Gilbert Is it okay if they tie Internet Explorer with the shipment of Windows?
▶ 1:04:50 Ben Gilbert You're not open to just this one thing, the tying of Internet Explorer and Windows.
▶ 1:13:06 Ben Gilbert And large body of applications, so apps, makes it prohibitively expensive for a competitor to develop its PC operating system into an acceptable substitute for Windows.
▶ 1:18:14 Ben Gilbert And the whole time, Internet Explorer's shipping with Windows.
▶ 1:19:44 Ben Gilbert Two, Windows had to be interoperable with non-Microsoft software.
▶ 1:36:34 Ben Gilbert So there's Windows, which he calls one business.
▶ 1:36:48 Ben Gilbert So you can think about it as Windows, and he said NT slash back office, but this is the enterprise, an office.
▶ 1:37:29 Ben Gilbert All the way back in 96 said it's the fastest growing business, even faster than Windows or Office.
▶ 1:47:42 Ben Gilbert Inclusive of Windows and Office.
▶ 1:47:45 Ben Gilbert I mean, it's not just, you know, a salesman comes to you and sells you Windows.
▶ 1:48:19 Ben Gilbert There's something pretty convenient that you may have noticed about Windows and Office.
▶ 1:56:01 Ben Gilbert In the nineties, the box software that Microsoft would use to sell Windows
▶ 1:56:07 Ben Gilbert Their gross margin on a copy of Windows was 29%.
▶ 1:58:31 Ben Gilbert What was going on with Windows releases during that time?
▶ 1:58:34 Ben Gilbert And I think through storytelling the Windows releases, we can then understand the state of the company.
▶ 2:00:30 Ben Gilbert The whole thing is built on the NT kernel and it has the friendly, approachable ease of use that you are used to in windows.
▶ 2:01:58 Ben Gilbert So, like I did for every Microsoft Windows release, I went and watched the keynote.
▶ 2:04:00 Ben Gilbert And so from the applications perspective, they're able to ensure that they get great market share since they're always adopting the latest and greatest Windows platform right away.
▶ 2:04:08 Ben Gilbert So Windows success begets Office success.
▶ 2:04:32 Ben Gilbert So when they were making Windows, they basically swore never again.
▶ 2:04:38 Ben Gilbert And so as Windows took off,
▶ 2:04:53 Ben Gilbert Forever, it kind of became gospel at Microsoft, so with Windows goes the company, and so you need to do things to make sure that Windows is gonna continue to succeed, because that is our company's platform and livelihood.
▶ 2:05:42 Ben Gilbert And so there's strong incentives everywhere for Microsoft to ensure that Windows is the standardized platform that everyone wants to have on their PCs because it kind of makes everything else work.
▶ 2:05:56 Ben Gilbert And so, of course, they're gonna release a new version of Office that shows off the latest and greatest of Windows.
▶ 2:08:29 Ben Gilbert Because of that is this unbelievably clever set of APIs that went entirely around Windows.
▶ 2:32:47 Ben Gilbert You have to write a Windows desktop app at this point in history because it's where a bunch of the users are.
▶ 2:33:17 Ben Gilbert And of course, anyone that had big legacy applications for Mac and Windows, so Adobe is a great example of, they're gonna keep that up forever.
▶ 2:33:26 Ben Gilbert But where these new disruptive software players are coming from, they're just not gonna have Windows apps.
▶ 2:54:18 Ben Gilbert If I could take seven billion people in the world and sell them Windows, or I can take seven billion people in the world and have them use my search engine for free and then make the money from the advertisers, I'm gonna make three to five…
▶ 2:54:35 Ben Gilbert So suddenly this kind of becomes existential where the Windows revenue isn't going away, but actually the next generation of
▶ 3:04:07 Ben Gilbert Or they were developing cool new stuff that would then get killed because it's not a part of the Windows machine.
▶ 3:04:22 Ben Gilbert Windows is the center of everything, and if it doesn't make Windows look great or it competes with Windows, that's not what we're doing.
▶ 3:26:42 Ben Gilbert The other thing that's happening around this time is, I've said this a number of times, but Windows, despite having
▶ 3:30:02 Ben Gilbert Windows is Windows.
▶ 3:30:05 Ben Gilbert We need to ship Windows across all devices.
▶ 3:33:23 Ben Gilbert And where we're left is the state of the Windows app developer ecosystem in the 2013, 14 time period is right back where we started.
▶ 3:34:31 Ben Gilbert But other than that, like, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, even through the bad Windows releases.
▶ 3:35:10 Ben Gilbert As the general public is concerned, Steve Ballmer was obsessed with Windows.
▶ 3:41:11 Ben Gilbert Everyone in Windows and Enterprise land, ultimately their KPI is, how many copies of Windows can we sell to end customers and generate the licensing revenue on Windows?
▶ 3:44:24 Ben Gilbert The Windows-centric approach.
▶ 3:54:35 Ben Gilbert I could see if you were an Azure doubter, and you were sitting there at the top of Microsoft enjoying the Windows monopoly, the tremendous business that is Windows and Office, and thinking, why would I do anything to jeopardize this?
▶ 3:54:51 Ben Gilbert I mean, Windows has self-reinforcing network effects everywhere, huge switching costs for the enterprise, super profitable, high margin, one of the greatest businesses of all time.
▶ 3:55:07 Ben Gilbert People can run their own software on my servers, even if it's open source, so it's not feeding into my, you know, Windows-centric ecosystem.
▶ 3:55:16 Ben Gilbert There's a chance they're not paying for Windows licenses.
▶ 4:07:40 Ben Gilbert Bill, Steve, old wars, antitrust, bad releases of Windows.
▶ 4:11:28 Ben Gilbert And I hated Steve's Windows strategy.
▶ 4:11:31 Ben Gilbert And frankly, I didn't like using any Windows products.
▶ 4:13:35 Ben Gilbert Windows isn't getting any more relevant.
▶ 4:13:43 Ben Gilbert But the interesting thing is investors basically didn't think Windows and Office businesses were sticky, and they were only valuing the newer bets, which was super wrong.
▶ 4:13:54 Ben Gilbert Windows and Office have proven to be these ridiculously durable franchises generating more revenue today than ever.
▶ 4:14:02 Ben Gilbert So, I mean, it is ultimately on the CEO to help shareholders understand where the value is, but shareholders obviously did not price in the retention and growth within the existing Windows and Office customers through a new era of…
▶ 4:31:18 Ben Gilbert And so in the IBM days, you know, you had Windows and OS II, and in the internet era, you had, like, the web browser versus all the interactive TV stuff, or Longhorn, which was supposed to be little and iterative, versus Blackcomb, which…
▶ 4:44:16 Ben Gilbert Brad led Windows for a while, notably the development of the Windows 95 product and that team.
▶ 4:44:45 Ben Gilbert Steven Sanofsky, who led Windows in Windows seven and eight, and led Office before that.
▶ 4:45:15 Ben Gilbert She worked closely with Steven in Office and also on Windows.
▶ 4:47:02 Ben Gilbert To Joe Belfiore, who played a large role in Windows and Windows Phone.

Microsoft Volume I: The Complete History and Strategy of founding through Windows 95 (Audio) · Acquired Apr 22, 2024 · 11 mentions

▶ 1:54 Ben Gilbert Making hardware, gaming systems, gaming studios, Windows apps, iPad apps, Mac apps, operating systems, mobile operating systems, MP three players, search engines, cloud computing, services on cloud computing, programming languages,…
▶ 1:46:51 Ben Gilbert But my God, 75,000 dollars to buy DOS to get this whole thing started for, I mean, until Windows 95, all of the Windows operating systems were DOS based.
▶ 2:39:09 Ben Gilbert Apple, I think, was under the impression that it was just for Windows one point oh, but the actual terms of the agreement are this and all future versions of Windows, which comes back to haunt Apple later.
▶ 2:39:56 Ben Gilbert In all of their early marketing, they referred to it as Windows, a graphical operating environment that runs on the Microsoft MS-DOS operating system.
▶ 2:40:06 Ben Gilbert And actually, it was not until Windows 95 that Windows was its own operating system.
▶ 2:40:22 Ben Gilbert Why is Microsoft doing Windows?
▶ 2:40:32 Ben Gilbert And so, David, are you telling me that Windows is the widely agreed upon future of the company, and that's just a straight line?
▶ 2:44:19 Ben Gilbert And so, even though Microsoft's doing all these little hedges, you know, Windows, this tiny little team, that's what, I think it's 30 people or something.
▶ 2:51:47 Ben Gilbert There was a small offsite of the executives, and Bill and Steve basically decided that it was time to bet on Windows.
▶ 2:51:55 Ben Gilbert Windows had always been plan B, and now suddenly it was plan
▶ 2:52:12 Ben Gilbert I mean, the prestigious thing to work on at Microsoft was OS two and eventually Windows NT, but the Windows team in the Windows three era is almost like the Mac team over at Apple.