After Julien joined Microsoft the other day, I thought it was time I read some of the books on Microsoft I had on a shelf at home. Indeed, I bought Hard Drive back in about 1994 and had never opened it.
As you know, I enjoy reading biographies of executives in the business world (Lou Gerstner's book has been reviewed on this blog, but those of Jack Welch, Carlos Ghosn, etc).
This book about Bill Gates is a good read, as it describes the youth of BillG and the process that got him into creating the world's #1 software house. A few words characterize the man and - I would argue - his sidekicks such as billionnaires Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer: passion, passion, passion.
Indeed, the book's title is very well chosen: when the team at Microosft sets a target on something, they'll try and try and try and try over and over and over again until :
1. they get it right
2. they drive competition out of the picture.
Microsoft started with the Basic Language. Then they used DOS to grow, but also to take over Digital Research and it's CP/M operating system. In the following years, the same strategy was applied:
- MS Word took over WordPerfect
- MS Excel took over both VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3
- MS Outlook took over Lotus Notes
- MS SQL and MS Access took over Ashton-Tate's dBase and I suppose Sybase
- MS Internet Explorer and IIS took over Netscape
- MS Visual [languages] took over Borland
- MS Windows took over Apple's MacOS interface in the business world
- MS Windows NT took over OS/2 (co-developed with IBM...)
- etc.
This clear early start shows you what future plans MS might have to drive out competition
- MSN Search is going after Google Search...
- MSN Virtual Earth is going after Google's Earth
- MS Windows Vista is going after Apple's OSX
- MSN Hotmail (new version?) will go after Google's gmail
etc.
Well, I'm now into part 2 of the story, with another book: Showstopper, the story of how WindowsNT was built. And I suppose I'll need the go after Microsoft Rebooted to fully understand how Microsoft embraced the Internet revolution.
Then I wonder whether I'll need to read the 2 books by Gates that I also own (yep, I do have a lot of unread books at home that I buy at airports, but that I eventually do read).
