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Kewney at large

As Microsoft artfully avoids the rulebook, Kewney attempts to dodge all the advertising that's hurled at him from the Web.

Exposing Explorer

THE NEW VERSION OF Internet Explorer, now available for testing from Microsoft, was described tersely, and accurately, as 'insane' by a colleague of mine, Peter Jackson, when he returned from a trip to Redmond last month. Looking at it, you have to agree, and it makes you wonder how on earth Microsoft got into the state of mind where it could do something this silly.

I suspect that it's a question of knowing what you do well. What Microsoft thinks it does well is provide excellent, easy-to-use software. This is a comfortable and warm belief to hold, and it makes them all feel that they're doing a good job and contributing to the general welfare.

You can see something along these lines when you watch some actors receive Oscars. They've come to believe, even if they aren't Dustin Hoffman or Patrick Stewart, that they're really great thespians, artists and icons of aesthetics. In fact, a large number of them are part of the great tradition of the theatre: that is, the tradition that in Shakespear's time meant the word 'actor' and the word 'whore' were very similar descriptions of people. Those actors prefer to forget the times that they spent posing nude for the cheap cameras.

In fact, what Microsoft does really well is write the rules of the game before telling the other players what they are. It owns the operating system, and it designs it to suit the needs of its application programmers. And those application programmers get to see the operating system features that they'll be able to make use of in their programs very early, and before rival software writers.

In short, this is something rather close to cheating--or it would be, if this were a game. But it isn't a game, and unless someone creates a law saying that this is illegal, these are legitimate business tactics. But this doesn't feel like the same, warm, good job description that makes you go home at the end of the day feeling proud or happy to tell people at parties what you do. It's something you prefer to forget and pretend it didn't happen.

All this wouldn't really matter though, if it didn't get in the way and stop Microsoft doing what it does well. But I suspect it does.

For years, Bill Gates thrived by the simple expedient of looking at the next biggest company, and going after its market. Anyone whose turnover was 30 per cent to 50 per cent more than Microsoft could expect to soon find a Microsoft product being launched, aimed directly at their biggest selling product. His other strategy was to absorb other people's good ideas. If he couldn't license their software to include in the operating system, he'd just launch a rival product, put it in the box free, and wait until they died. And since Bill owned the operating system, he could use this to increase his ownership of the applications that ran on it.

Looking at Internet Explorer 4.0b, it's clear that he's not trying to take over companies that are 30 per cent bigger, he's trying to 'expand' into smaller markets. Netscape operates in a much smaller market than Microsoft, and the tactics have got confused. Instead of working to incorporate browsers into the platform, he's trying to turn the platform into a browser. And he might end up with nothing more than the market for browsers.

Guy Kewney can be contacted on CompuServe in the PC UKFORUM, or on the Internet as guy@cix.compulink.co.uk.


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