Microsoft Windows, every mention
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Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Microsoft Windows comes up
Meta (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 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
- ▶ 14:34 David Rosenthal In January, 1994, when a young Windows networking engineer named James Allard, or J as he goes by, writes a memo to Bill Gates and to the senior leadership
- ▶ 14:47 David Rosenthal At Microsoft entitled Windows, the next killer application for the internet.
- ▶ 15:26 David Rosenthal Kind of looks like it is going to become an exponential phenomenon, given the rate at which it is growing, and that it represents an enormous opportunity for Microsoft to, quote, embrace and extend the internet into Windows itself.
- ▶ 16:27 David Rosenthal The business model is we sell windows through OEMs and to businesses and the like and to consumers, and we can just bake this into it.
- ▶ 28:33 David Rosenthal Make this a core part of Microsoft and a core part of Windows.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 35:14 David Rosenthal So this brings us now to the launch preparations for Windows.
- ▶ 57:41 David Rosenthal Microsoft application products to the sale of Windows, meaning they can't say like, hey, OEMs or businesses or consumers or whoever.
- ▶ 57:51 David Rosenthal If you're buying Windows, you have to also buy Office or X or whatever else that we're selling in our applications group.
- ▶ 57:58 David Rosenthal But importantly, as part of the consent decree, they remain free and clear, Microsoft does, to integrate additional features into the Windows operating system.
- ▶ 59:34 David Rosenthal And, you know, look, if you ask Bill and Microsoft and Jay Allard all the way back to the original memo, it was absolutely intended to be a core feature of the Windows operating system, having an internet browser as part of it.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 1:00:14 David Rosenthal In October, 1997, the Justice Department files a motion in Federal District Court stating that by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, Microsoft has now violated the 1994 consent decree against product tying.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 1:02:40 David Rosenthal Microsoft appeals Judge Jackson's order, and in early May, 1998, the appellate court rules that Microsoft can continue shipping Windows with IE bundled into it, and also continue to bundle any other features that they want as part of…
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 1:18:05 David Rosenthal Windows, uh, you mean the, uh, marketing update to sell back to school PCs?
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 1:21:14 David Rosenthal It certainly didn't actually impact Internet Explorer or Windows.
- ▶ 1:21:25 David Rosenthal It unifies Windows under the NT architecture.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 1:40:17 David Rosenthal And what's so, like, honestly beautiful about this is they work in concert with Windows and Office on the PC client side.
- ▶ 1:40:29 David Rosenthal So, like, this is the client-server era that Microsoft really dominates here, and Microsoft within enterprises, all these new server products work best with Windows operating system devices, running Microsoft Office applications on them,…
- ▶ 1:41:42 David Rosenthal The very, very, very best example of this that most listeners can probably tangibly relate to as well is Exchange email and calendaring service and Microsoft Outlook and Windows.
- ▶ 1:45:04 David Rosenthal You've got your Windows machines out there.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 1:49:00 David Rosenthal So, like, if you are an employee of a large company at this time, you are using a Windows PC at your office.
- ▶ 1:52:14 David Rosenthal I started mid-summer 2007, and our corporate IT systems, my Windows laptop was so locked down.
- ▶ 1:54:26 David Rosenthal So these three-year agreements that you're talking about, Ben, and that covered Windows, that covered Office, that covered all the products that Microsoft offered except, like, Xbox.
- ▶ 1:55:08 David Rosenthal And the vast, vast majority of the rest of Microsoft revenues, you know, the other 45% of the company was the OEM Windows business.
- ▶ 1:55:19 David Rosenthal So if you look at Microsoft revenue in fiscal 2007, 55% is this new enterprise motion, 30% is the old Windows business, you know, Dell and Lenovo and whoever, like, you know,
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 2:05:26 David Rosenthal It's even more true as Microsoft becomes an enterprise company because Windows is at the heart of the enterprise agreement.
- ▶ 2:05:34 David Rosenthal The whole value prop of all of our server technologies is they work great with your Windows devices on your network.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 2:33:07 David Rosenthal Nobody is writing Vista apps, but the only people left who are writing Windows apps period are enterprise developers writing custom software for enterprises.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 2:44:40 David Rosenthal You needed the equivalent of the Jay Allard Windows
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 3:22:10 David Rosenthal After the Vista disaster, he gets drafted to come over and run Windows.
- ▶ 3:22:29 David Rosenthal So he comes in for Windows seven and he does that for Windows.
- ▶ 3:22:35 David Rosenthal We were talking to him and he had this great analogy of Windows at this point in time didn't need technical vision.
- ▶ 3:22:42 David Rosenthal It was trying to be the Dodge Viper.
- ▶ 3:22:46 David Rosenthal It needed to be the Toyota Camry.
- ▶ 3:23:01 David Rosenthal It's what the consumers who were still using Windows wanted.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 3:30:29 David Rosenthal Yeah, there can only be one Windows, and so
- ▶ 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?
- ▶ 3:41:40 David Rosenthal Yeah, Windows is nowhere in this equation.
- ▶ 3:43:11 David Rosenthal And Steve Bomber supported this whole thing, pushed it all through, despite heavy pressure and incentives from inside the company, from Windows, from partners, from the whole go-to-market motion that he built, you know, Microsoft's…
- ▶ 3:44:24 Ben Gilbert The Windows-centric approach.
- ▶ 3:48:46 David Rosenthal The more personal computing segment, that's Windows and Surface and their hardware efforts, and then the intelligent cloud segment, and that's Azure.
- ▶ 3:49:19 David Rosenthal Windows is declining.
- ▶ 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.
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