Where would we be without Microsoft?

A common question, often asked by the computer-illiterate, is "without Bill Gates and his company and those that work for him where would we the computer user be...today Where would we be without Microsoft?". The answer is clear: "Probably in a better place."

Microsoft has never been an innovator. Every one of their products is a blatant imitation of somebody else's product. For example, MS-DOS, their original operating system, was a blatant imitation of Digital Research's CP/M operating system. Windows was a blatant imitation of the Macintosh. The object-oriented features of Windows 95 were a blatant imitation of OS/2 Warp. And the list goes on.

During Microsoft's entire history there has always been somebody who has better technology than Microsoft. For example, during the decade of the 80's Digital Research consistently produced better products than Microsoft. Their operating systems were faster, more reliable, and had more functionality. Unfortunately, they found out the hard way that being best is not good enough -- it also helps to be first to market. And Microsoft has never been worried about putting out buggy or incomplete products in order to beat the competition to market. Thus by the time Gary Kildall's company did it right, Microsoft had already locked in all the customers, and especially the biggest customer: IBM. The part that always upset Gary Kildall was that they did it with a blatant imitation of his CP/M program... if they'd innovated instead of stealing his ideas, he wouldn't have minded so much.

By the time Gary sold out to Novell and retired to Austin, OS/2 had already proven that it was a more reliable and better product than Windows. However: Windows had already been released. So sorry.

Similarly, let's take office suites. Microsoft blew Lotus and WordPerfect out of the water by releasing Office 95 on the same day they released Windows 95. Lotus and WordPerfect did not get access to the Windows API's until it was too late to release at the same time as Office 95. Both the Lotus and Corel office suites are perfectly capable office suites. But: because they are both an OS company and an applications company, Microsoft could use that to insure they were the first 32-bit office suite to run under Windows 95. It doesn't matter that others may have had better products -- Microsoft got there first.

The plain fact of the matter is that Microsoft is a business, not a charity. They create software to sell it, not to make the world a better place. Their products are created because there is a market for them. If Microsoft did not create the products, somebody else would. That is the nature of free enterprise: if there is a market, somebody will start a business and create the product to satisfy that market.

So where would the world be without Microsoft? Probably in the same place -- except probably with Digital Research being the company that won the IBM contract with CP/M-86. Apple would have still invented the Macintosh, somebody would have still seen a market for a GUI on top of DOS and invented Windows (in fact, DesqView or GEM could have evolved into a Windows-like OS over time), Wordperfect or Lotus would have the best selling office suite, and Gary Kildall's latest creation, Visual PL/M, would be the talk of the town. Far fetched? Not really. That's how free enterprise works -- if there is a market, companies will arise to fill it.