Redmond8217;s makeover

Keeping Bill Gates productive, and in the backgroundThere can be only one knee-jerk reaction to the makeover at Microsoft: Steve Ballmer h...

Keeping Bill Gates productive, and in the backgroundThere can be only one knee-jerk reaction to the makeover at Microsoft: Steve Ballmer has been kicked upstairs to shield his chief from further public embarrassment in the courts. In hearings last year, Bill Gates cut a sorry figure on TV, trying to tell an increasingly incredulous public that Microsoft had always acted in the interest of the consumer. Meanwhile, the state was producing damning evidence to prove that the corporation planned to muscle its way to ownership of the Internet.

In November, the courts ruled that the Redmond firm should be split into three corporate entities which would keep each other in check and preempt monopolistic practices. Steve Ballmer will now be the public face of Microsoft in the period in which it may be drawn and quartered, rather messily, in the US national interest.

With Bill Gates back in the programming department, Microsoft would also be in a position to go ahead with the change of focus it hasbeen planning for years, from operating systems to Internet services.

To recap, the court hearings supported by e-mail logs of correspondence between Microsoft officials have shown that the company had always been prepared to twist arms to increase its earnings. Having consolidated its hold on the PC market with its operating systems, it was now preparing to take over the Internet. It did this by integrating its Internet Explorer browser with its operating systems.

Whoever bought a Windows PC would have to buy Explorer. Whoever used Explorer would allow Microsoft to control their browsing behaviour to some extent, which meant that Microsoft could channel Web traffic to particular sites and thereby become a giant in the online content business. It was no coincidence that in the same period, Microsoft launched a Web portal at msn.com which included Hotmail and publications like Sidewalk.

When Internet Explorer is launched, it automatically takes users to msn.com. Clearly, it was to be an unassailableonline content brand, as unassailable as Windows is in the PC market. However, with the restructuring of Gates8217; job profile, Microsoft is still moving in the same general direction. Having lost all hope of a monopoly in the content market, it will now concentrate on the systems on which content resides and by which it is transmitted.

There is enormous scope for innovation in this sector, because the Internet is still in the process of evolution. The chances are that to the users of ten years later, our Internet revolution will appear to be no more dramatic than the Gutenberg revolution. As the man-machine interface is slowly eroded, and as access all the time becomes as basic a service as access to a telephone all the time, companies in this sector will find unlimited opportunities.

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However, Microsoft should really get out of the habit of bundling packages and denying consumers the right to choose. It grew into a major brand by bundling the MS-DOS operating system with IBM computers. At that time, ithelped kick off the PC boom. The second attempt that of bundling its browser with its operating system has been denounced as a monopolistic practice. Further attempts will certainly not be tolerated by the market.