Pay no attention to the stuff behind the curtain
MICROSOFT certainly have the power to make you think. Was last week's internet strategy announcement the harbinger of a new age of global computing, in which all the world's processors including yours become a single machine? Of a truly exciting multi-media Web? Of the internet moving into the real, commercial, world? Of Microsoft finally understanding what the internet is about?
It was potentially all the above. But in intention it had nothing to do with the future of human communication or the information revolution, nothing to do with what your work and play will be like in a couple of years, and everything to do with the NASDAQ stock quotes for Microsoft and for Netscape. That is why Microsoft arouses such instinctive hostility and why cynicism is to understanding it as hearing is to music.
But let's concentrate on the side-effects, which are enormous. Bill Gates showed us demonstrations of software which could, if it lives up to the demos, be as different from what you use today as that is from a typewriter. When most people had left for the corporate trough, though, the curtains were pulled back to reveal probably enough computer power to run several Internet Service Providers and a small TV station.
The most revolutionary announcement was the Windows 95 Internet Add-on. This will, among many other things, give users the ability to see a "Web view" of the resources on their own machine (in addition to the Large Icons view, etc). As one cynical newsletter editor put it, "the 'best computer interface in the world' is having to change completely."
The philosophical implication is that your computer will be seamlessly integrated to the Web. As Bill Gates put it: "The page view will be the primary way people look at" their computer's resources. He described it as the first step to "grand unification". He expects companies increasingly to share internal information using what he called an "intranet" of private Web pages.
There is, though, some confusion over what the Web is. The Internet Add-on will also allow Microsoft Exchange to present documents in the platform-independent HTML form; but it will also focus heavily on working with documents in native Microsoft formats, especially Office. Free viewers for Office documents in Windows, Mac and unix will be distributed.
So is the internet still platform-independent, or does Microsoft envision it as an extension of the Windows NT/95 file system -- so that everyone will have to run the latter? The certainly will to take advantage of the promised document-sharing facility, with a mouse pointer for each user on each screen.
Microsoft people referred to HTML as an "ugly" language with a
frequency which cannot have been accidental. This author finds it
logically rather beautiful (see OnLine ?? May),
and would really
rather not look at a Word document in binary form. But writing
Web pages by typing "<HTML> <BODY>..."
into a text editor isn't for everyone. So Microsoft's Internet Studio (formerly
"Blackbird" -- see OnLine 2 Nov) looks interesting. It is
designed to allow point-and-click generation of very, very
impressive Web pages.
The Internet Studio will deal with proprietary extensions of the HTML language to allow inclusion of sounds and moving pictures into Web pages. It, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 2.0 browser, incorporate all the Netscape extensions to HTML 2. Gates also announced licensing agreements with Sun for its Hot Java platform-independent scripting system. MS will also develop a competing internet scripting system based on Visual Basic, and offer this to the World-Wide Web Consortium and to the Internet Engineering Task Force. There are also co-development agreements with Oracle -- recently promoting "network computers", the antithesis of the Microsoft approach (see OnLine ?? November) -- and with Compuserve.
A development which would have made headlines in its own right, but which was rather overshadowed by all this, is a fundamental re-think of the Microsoft Network. Most services will be offered freely to all internet users -- other than "community" fora, the V-chat environment with "avatars" of participants, and exclusively-licensed content like the NBC Sports tie-in. Users will be able to access MSN regardless of which internet service provider they use. Its Unique Selling Proposition -- apart from future exclusive content -- will be "one-click access" from Windows 95.
The Windows NT Web server will be integrated with a Merchant Server offering tracking and secure credit card transactions. The US government has conceded that MC can use highly-secure encryption for credit card details only (it's unclear whether this extends to non-US citizens, or whether anyone thought to ask about us).
All these, and other announcements which there isn't space to describe, comprise an impressive re-think. The products look excellent as demonstrated.
But when one MS VP was asked whether they'd broken the record for "vapourware" announcements on a single day (a dozen by some counts), he grinned broadly and gloated "And we didn't give a single date!" In fact they gave two: Internet Explorer 2.0 is available now, in beta test version. And the server is due to be released as an NT update in the first quarter of 1996. All the other products are promised for unspecified dates next year.
"Vapourware" announcements are, of course, what small companies make to raise development money for nonexistent products -- and what large ones make to deter smaller companies from development.
The biggest headache for competitors like Netscape, though, is that both Internet Explorer and the basic NT server will be available for free, integrated into the systems.
The headache for users is that you will probably need a P6 processor to run a lot of this stuff in reasonable time. Hence all the stuff behind the curtain which, like Dorothy confronted with not-the-Wizard of Oz, we are supposed to ignore. The phrase "bloat-ware" came to several minds -- with the nightmare of a Web browser which decides to take a few minutes to start up Microsoft Office before displaying a small graph.
Microsoft's recognition that it must work with other organisations' standards is welcome. Particularly, it will next year publish its proposal for "Active Virtual Reality Mark-up Language", a specification for presenting three-dimensional imagery through the internet. Gates expects this to allow the development of hardware 3-D graphics accelerator chips next year. These will make it feasible for 3-D user metaphors to be the primary means of accessing internet information within a few years.
But Mr Gates' slogan on standards is "embrace and extend". Others can clone their extensions if they want -- "It's just a matter of how hard it is, and how quick", he said. He expects to issue additions to Internet Explorer every six months for the next few years.
Microsoft is, of course, a business venture. Its sole duty is to its shareholders, and it has probably done rather well by them. Such capitalist venture produces great toys, and some good services -- but especially when there is vigorous competition.
Microsoft's most influential shareholders are those who actually understand what it's up to: its founder and vice-presidents. Last week, the Seattle Times overheard one of the latter -- on paper, a multi-millionaire, so long as Microsoft shares hold up -- asking another how the launch was going. "Netscape is down $30". "Good!" "Not enough", piped up a third. What Microsoft is up to is not especially enriching itself, but gleefully crushing the opposition.
And what's the next opposition? On Thursday, Bill Gates was clear that the most important part of the future is not software, but content. He was irritated by and uninformative on the Guardian's questions about any Microsoft plans as a content provider. Vice- President Steve Ballmer was categorical: "Our core competence is systems. We are not going to get into that." On Friday, the Wall Street Journal claimed a $100 million deal between Microsoft and TV network NBC to develop a cable-TV-cum-Web 24-hour news operation.
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Written:
9 December 1995
An edited and doubtless thus improved version of this article appeared in the Guardian OnLine section.
This version is © copyright 1996 Mike Holderness; moral rights are asserted.
See also:
Windows to become the web?