The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 235 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Rosenthal: Microsoft licensed Spyglass Mosaic code for $2M for Internet Explorer
“They license the source code for Marc Andreessen's original Mosaic browser from... Spyglass software for two million dollars, and that code base becomes the base upon which Microsoft builds Internet Explorer.”
Rosenthal: Ballmer replaced Muglia despite Server & Tools making $12B and growing fast
“Bob was crushing it as Head of server and tools. Revenue was growing, I don't know, 30, 40% a year. It's a twelve billion dollar business. But the reason that Steve made the change was he said, we need a new leader who's going to come in and change this organi…”
Rosenthal: Ballmer-era server products all became multi-billion-dollar revenue businesses
“These are All, every single one of those names I just mentioned become multi-billion dollar revenue enterprise IT server products that are built and sold during the Steve Ballmer era of Microsoft.”
Gilbert: Acquisitions costing only idle cash should be evaluated like venture bets
“When it doesn't cost you focus or your best people or whatever the scarce resources are and it only costs you cash, then you should totally think about it as, am I willing to bet 2.3% of my company or whatever percent of the cash that I'm not getting any credi…”
Microsoft in Late-1990s Was the Peak Consumer Tech Company
“And this moment here, Is just the absolute peak of Microsoft as a consumer technology company. I mean, I think maybe the absolute peak of any consumer technology company ever.”
Apple matched Microsoft's marketing spend for the launch of Excel
“And so I'm not sure this has ever been publicly disclosed before, but Apple spent just as much marketing Excel as Microsoft did. They matched Microsoft's marketing spend with their own campaign for it and split the bill.”
Apple's 1985 intellectual property license covered all future versions of Windows
“Apple does do a deal to license a lot of quote unquote their intellectual property, which of course came from Xerox, to Microsoft. Apple, I think, was under the impression that it was just for Windows one point oh, but the actual terms of the agreement are thi…”
TVI's Microsoft deal produced one of VC history's best returns
“And that resulted in, depending how long TVI held, one of, if not the best venture capital return in history.”
Microsoft used IBM for demand creation and PC clones for value capture
“Microsoft used IBM to generate demand for their software, and then they used every other PC manufacturer to capture the value. That all that demand created.”
New tech generations shift value chain power from hardware to OS
“A new technology generation, when something becomes possible and opens up a new market, It enables a shift in the point of integration in a value chain. The old value chain of IBM, if you shipped the mainframe, you had all the power. But in this new world of P…”
Novo Nordisk's 84% gross margins surpass Microsoft and Google
“Gross margins are better than software. They run about 84%. Lilly is also a very high margin company, running about 80%. For context, Microsoft has a gross margin of 70% and Google is 56%.”
NVIDIA and CUDA constitute a platform on par with Apple and Microsoft
“NVIDIA is a platform, in my mind, no doubt about it. CUDA and NVIDIA and general purpose computing on GPUs is a platform, so whatever, you know, all of the stew of powers that go into making that, that go into making Apple, Microsoft, you know, and the like, G…”
Gilbert: Every tech company failed at in-car differentiation except Tesla
“Every technology company has had their fanciful attempt to try to create a meaningfully differentiated experience in the car, all have failed. You think about Microsoft and the Ford Sync. You think about CarPlay, kind of, maybe a little bit works. And the only…”
Microsoft will never completely take Sony's gaming market share
“I don't think Microsoft is going to like completely take the market from them now or possibly ever.”
Over 90% of Early Google Searches Ran Inside Microsoft Internet Explorer
“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.”
Google+ Was the Company's Equivalent to Microsoft's Disastrous Windows Vista
“This was Google's Windows Longhorn slash Windows Vista. In our Microsoft saga, we talked about how Vista slash Longhorn was the most damaging thing to the company because of the distraction and the siphoning of resources and the best talent away from working o…”
Google's Historically Flawed Strategy Left Cloud Far Behind Amazon and Microsoft
“And Google had the wrong strategy in cloud for many years, and as a result, that's why their cloud business is way behind Amazon and Microsoft.”
Google Dominates Productivity Users While Microsoft Dominates Productivity Revenue
“Google has the vast majority of users and usage of productivity software, and Microsoft still has the vast majority of dollars”
Microsoft's Productivity Segment Generated $120 Billion Versus Google Cloud's $50 Billion
“Microsoft's Productivity and business process segment, which is mostly office. I think LinkedIn is now part of this too. Last year generated over a hundred and twenty billion dollars in revenue. Google reports Workspace as part of the cloud segment. So all of …”
Android Sharing Revenue With OEMs Is History's Clearest Example of Counterpositioning
“I mean, this is the clearest example of counterpositioning, I think, that has ever existed. Oh, hey, my competitors require you to pay them. How about I pay you instead?”
Acquiring DoubleClick Was Worth Every Penny Simply to Block Microsoft
“Worth every penny to Google, even for the sole reason of keeping the premier number one player in the display ad space out of Microsoft's hands.”
Consumer Adoption of Web Applications Eroded Microsoft's Strategic Leverage Over Google
“The faster that we get the internet using public to fall in love with and use web applications, the less and less leverage Microsoft has over us.”
Ballmer: Microsoft initially charged fixed fees before switching to per-unit licensing
“We didn't charge for the operating system on an ongoing basis. We charged for it one time. If you got a new version, we charged another time and we did the same thing for basic and everything else because At the time, you could think we were like a substitute …”
Ballmer: Microsoft and portfolio dividends roughly cover annual philanthropic giving
“Between Microsoft and the other stuff I own, the dividend checks are pretty close to what we give away. So you can look at the appreciation, but you know, we're just above the dividend checks.”
Ballmer: Long executive goodbyes are a mistake and unhelpful
“I also think we screwed that up. You can't have a long goodbye. Long goodbyes are not helpful.”
Ballmer: Microsoft explored acquiring HTC years before buying Nokia
“I'd been trying to buy a hard, I had talked about buying a phone company for years, a number of years before the Nokia deal. I forget what year it was. I flew to Taiwan and we were looking at buying HTC. They were the biggest Windows phone OEM at the time. Nok…”
Ballmer: Enterprise software sales must serve as peace-of-mind insurance policies
“When you sell the enterprise, you have to provide peace of mind, which is kind of like an insurance policy. So buying more than you might be using, or some users are using, it's an insurance policy.”
Ballmer: Nokia partnership failed without acquisition due to marketing funding economics
“The problem with the partnership with Nokia is they didn't have the money to invest in marketing. We did. We did. They didn't have the market to go. They did not have the ability to go deep pockets. We did. But if we didn't have the monetization capability bac…”
Ballmer: Microsoft lacked confidence in controlling the PC ecosystem until the 1990s
“So I would say no sense of confidence about controlling the ecosystem well into the nineties before I think any of that, or at least for me.”
Ballmer: Succession planning requires two different candidates for emergency vs. term completion
“Succession plan has two candidates. It's what happens if you get hit by a bus and what happens if you get served to term, whatever term feels like. And they're different people, right?”
Epic and Microsoft pioneered on-campus recruiting for high-agency roles
“Microsoft was really on the frontier Of hiring smart college grads and empowering them and letting them run free. Epic was doing the same thing, and this was not industry standard.”
Microsoft's $240M Facebook Stake Became Worth $8 Billion Post-IPO
“That two hundred and forty million dollar investment, by the time they start selling it down years after Facebook is public, ends up being worth eight billion dollars.”
Gilbert: Microsoft is the true strategic and operational comparison for Meta
“The real comp for this company is Microsoft. That was actually my next one. They do iterative product development. They put the first version out just to kind of get feedback and see how they need to rev it and get better for the future. The early days are cha…”
Rosenthal: Microsoft invested $240M in Facebook at a $15B valuation
“And the big kicker, Microsoft is going to invest two hundred and forty million dollars in Facebook at a 15 billion dollar valuation.”
Gilbert: Standalone LinkedIn would be worth over $100B today
“I mean, if you look at what a reasonable multiple would be for LinkedIn, if it were an independent company today, It's a big company. Like it would be a hundred and I don't know, over a hundred billion dollar market cap company today.”
Rosenthal: LinkedIn advertising and content generates over $5B annually
“Of which five billion Comes from advertising and content, which for all intents and purposes didn't exist when the acquisition happened. They have built that into a real business.”
Google Sheets Users Are in the Global Minority Compared to Excel
“Excel is still the main way that spreadsheets are done around the world. I bet a lot of listeners use Google Sheets. We do, too. We love it. Also use Excel, but if you do use Google Sheets, you are in the minority.”
Gilbert: Microsoft navigates technological uncertainty by placing multiple exploratory bets
“You're already getting this picture of Microsoft's business strategy, which is until we know exactly what the future looks like, start placing bets that approximate
So that we're sort of in the mix, even though we don't know exactly what the future is.”
Rosenthal: Bulk of Microsoft's Enterprise Juggernaut Was Built Post-DOJ
“And Microsoft, the entire enterprise juggernaut that it builds, the bulk of it really is post DOJ. It is like new business and new markets that they are getting into.”
Gilbert: Initial Azure launch did not threaten Microsoft's Windows-centric model
“In its initial incarnation, Azure did not threaten The Windows-centric approach. If you remember, when Azure launched, it was Windows Azure, and it ran Windows Server, and it was Platform as a Service, and Microsoft in no way changed its tune on open source.”
Rosenthal: Microsoft counter-positioned against AWS by offering hybrid cloud
“Actually, I would say they had some of it in the development of Azure, because they could say to Fortune 500, we will do hybrid cloud with you, and we can be your trusted partner in a way that AWS couldn't.”
Gilbert: Windows 95's true significance was becoming the internet's launchpad
“But in retrospect, the thing that mattered about Windows 95 all these years later is that's the platform that everyone started using the Internet on. And everything that we talked about in the last episode, yeah, it's all important, but it's not nearly as impo…”
Gilbert: Microsoft gross margin on retail boxed Windows was 29% in the 1990s
“In the nineties, the box software that Microsoft would use to sell Windows Their gross margin on a copy of Windows was 29%.”
Gilbert: Google monetizes browser traffic better than Microsoft monetized software licenses
“Eventually, Google comes along and creates a browser. They also don't sell that browser, but they monetize all the traffic coming through that browser, and they do it way better than Microsoft does at monetizing selling licenses.”
Rosenthal: Microsoft lost process power during the Ballmer era
“I think process power, I would argue, they actually lost during this era. I mean, the Blackcomb Longhorn Vista thing illustrates that.”
Internet Explorer grew from 20% share in 1996 to near-total dominance by 2000
“And by the end of that year in 96, Internet Explorer passes 20% market share. 97 it passes 40% market share. 98 it passes 60% market share. And then by the year 2000, Internet Explorer basically has, for all intents and purposes, a hundred percent worldwide Br…”
Rosenthal: Windows 7 succeeded by being a reliable 'Toyota Camry' rather than ambitious
“Windows at this point in time didn't need technical vision. It was trying to be the Dodge Viper. That's what Longhorn was. It needed to be the Toyota Camry. And he comes in, and he makes Windows Seven the Toyota Camry of PC operating systems.”
Gilbert: Guaranteed backward compatibility matters far more to enterprise buyers than innovation
“The key to enterprise is backward compatibility. Saying, look, we don't necessarily need to promise you anything too groundbreaking. We need to meet your needs today and be the most cost efficient, you know, total cost of ownership driven system that meets you…”