Behold, here comes Microsoft

[Linux Mafia]

If you create a mildly successful program on Windows, Microsoft will
attempt
to kill you.

"At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the
room hitting a table in his office," Lucovosky recounted, adding that
Ballmer then launched into a tirade about Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I
will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google."

Becoming a programmer for Windows
is like becoming a dentist for a Tyrannosaurus Rex

By: Wil Shipley, President, Omni Development, Inc. May 5, 1998
http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/Editorial/wjs_Windows.html

Over the last year and a half since I was transplanted into the Mac
community, I've occasionally heard Mac developers on various forums
cry
out, "Why don't I just become a developer for Windows?" This is in
response
to various perceived injuries perpetrated by Apple, including
possibly
dropping QuickDraw GX, changing the Mac UI, embracing Unix, and
increasing
the price of some developer support options.

Usually, I assume this is a rhetorical question, like a pouty
teenager asking,
"Well, why don't I just go jump off a bridge, then?" But, I feel that
too many
innocent observers may have heard this question too often, and asked,
with all
sincerity, "Why don't all programmers use Windows? The Windows market
is
bigger, after all."

Lots of small programmers have a vision that working with Microsoft
is like
being one of those little toothbrush birds for crocodiles -- sure,
the
crocodile is the one eating the zebras and gazelles, but there's
plenty of
crumbs left in the cracks between his teeth. The crocodiles don't
hurt the
birds, as they appreciate clean teeth, and the tiny birds can live
very
well off the morsels that the 20-foot crocodile deems not worth
bothering
with, so everybody wins.

The problem with this analogy is toothbrush birds never grow up to be
crocodiles -- they spend their whole lives just living off the gunk
in
crocodile's teeth. Most people don't set out to create a tiny
company;
they want to create the next killer app, and become, if not the next
Microsoft, maybe the next Adobe, or the next MacroMedia. Nobody wants
to
stay a tiny bird forever, but that means giving up the gunk and going
for the big game.

A better simile is that becoming a programmer for Windows is like
becoming a
dentist for a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Sure, the market is big (lots of
seats,
lots of teeth), but both Microsoft and the king of dinos are vicious
carnivores, and both will snap their jaws shut as soon as share their
leavings with you. Rexes don't distinguish between symbiotic birds
and
predators -- it's all meat to them.

Microsoft is deathly afraid that now they are a huge company they
won't have
creative ideas. This is a good fear, because it's true: How much has
Word
changed in the last 8 years? How much has Excel changed? I'm not
talking about
adding a feature here and a feature there; I'm talking about really
changing
the way people use software.

Microsoft doesn't know how to innovate any more. The problem is that
when
Microsoft looks at new ideas, they don't evaluate whether the idea
will
move the industry forward; they ask, "how will it help us sell more
copies
of Windows?" (This is an actual quotation of Bill Gates in The
Seattle Weekly,
April 30, 1998).

So, their business model has come to this: Wait for young companies
to create
new products, and, if the product starts to be successful, crush the
company
and take its market. Some examples, by no means complete:

In 1995, Netscape pioneered Web browsers, but Microsoft simply bought
some
code, hired a bunch of programmers to duplicate Netscape's work, and
now
gives away Internet Explorer. They paid Apple millions to bundle
Internet
Explorer instead of Netscape with Mac OS, and Microsoft is planning
to
bundle IE with Win98. Microsoft even claimed (in a letter sent to
Wall
Street analysts last week) that it'll severely impact the economy if
they
can't include a Web browser in Win98, even though the economy ran
just fine
before 1995, when Netscape brought the first commercial Web browsers
to market.

The code Microsoft licensed was from Spyglass, who had written a Web
client.
Microsoft only gave them a couple hundred thousand dollars up front,
but
promised a percentage of sales to Spyglass. Well, since Microsoft
gives away
Internet Explorer, they didn't pay Spyglass anything. Spyglass sued.
According
to PC Week (April 20, 1998), Spyglass had to abandon that market and
moved
into embedded applications, which Microsoft moved into as well. So,
Spyglass
switched to making "integrated offerings for Microsoft products" in
order
to, in the words of Spyglass VP Mike Tyrell, "not be 'Microsofted'
again".

In 1996, Netscape decided the money was really in servers, and
started selling
their first commercial Web server. In response, Microsoft wrote their
Internet
server and bundled it, free, with Windows NT.

In 1994, Microsoft started to license compression technology from a
company
called Stac, which invented the original disk-doubler. But, after
Microsoft
had looked at Stac's source code, Microsoft said, "Nah, we're going
to
write our own and crush you. Thanks anyway." Stac sued Microsoft, but
Microsoft counter-sued Stac, and Microsoft got an injunction against
Stac
preventing them from shipping their disk doubler until the suit was
resolved. Then, since they had tied up Stac's revenue source,
Microsoft
just sat back and waited for Stac to run out of money as the legal
system
slowly cranked away. If you can't guess who won, check out the
DoubleSpace
utility that ships with Win95.

Perhaps the best example of Microsoft's voraciousness is their
dealings with
Intuit, creators of Quicken, which was at one point the best-selling
PC
software of all time. Microsoft first came out with Money, to compete
with
Quicken. Nobody wanted Money. So Microsoft reduced the price --
offering
'special deals' on Money for as low as $10. (This is a practice
called
'dumping', and it's supposedly illegal in America -- it's what we
accused
Japanese semiconductor makers of doing with memory chips, years back
when
we put a huge tariff on such imports.)

Even at the low, low price, nobody bought Money. So, Microsoft made
an offer
to buy Intuit, which the government, in their very first stirring
against
Microsoft's monopoly, blocked. Microsoft then started teaming up with
banks,
paying them to advertise that transactions could be directly
downloaded
into Microsoft Money, conveniently overlooking the fact that the file
format
was the Quicken format, and therefore Quicken would work just as
well.
Finally, Microsoft started giving away Money with subscriptions to
MSDN.

Do I have to go on? Microsoft wants total domination of the software
market.
If you create a mildly successful program on Windows, Microsoft will
attempt
to kill you. They've already got a stomach full of the severed heads
of
other innovators just like you.

Yes, the Mac market is smaller. But it's been a long time since Apple
had the
kind of clout to say offhandedly, "We can't decide whether to become
your
customer or to put you out of business," as a Microsoft executive
said to
a friend of Robert X. Cringely.

It comes down to a choice: Do you want to support Microsoft, the
monopoly
whose only goal is to increase their market share; or do you want to
support
Apple, the company that is trying to move technology forward?

Put this way, it sounds like a moral dilemma, and many people believe
companies should be amoral and market-driven. But, in truth, it's not
a moral
dilemma; it's a question of whether you want to help make Microsoft
stronger
(so they'll be that much more powerful when they decide to crush
you), or you
want to fight them now.

The beauty is that it's actually easier to succeed when fighting than
when
giving in. My company made millions just servicing the NeXTStep
market, which
was a tiny fraction of the industry even when compared to the Mac
market. It
was easier to advertise in a small market, easier to reach customers,
and
NeXT, like Apple today, was eager to help us rather than crush us.
Writing
code for Yellow Box is ten times easier than writing Windows code.
Three
programmers at Omni have written a Web browser that has the features
of
Netscape, IE, and more, which runs on Rhapsody, NT, 95, and (soon)
Mac OS.

Microsoft isn't invincible. They won't be around forever. Dinosaurs
are
huge and hidebound, and some global change always comes along for
which they
aren't prepared. We little birds just have to stay out of their
mouths in
the meantime.