Programming Windows: The Internet Tidal Wave (Premium)

Bill Gates may have missed the Internet threat. But he can’t say he wasn’t warned.

In late 1993, Rob Glaser sounded the first alarm within Microsoft, noting that Bill Gates’ desire to build a proprietary online service was akin to “building the last minicomputer.” Instead, he said, Microsoft should embrace the Internet, which he called a “paradigm shift.” Gates ignored his advice.

In January 1994, a Microsoft engineer named James Allard sounded a second alarm within the company about the Internet. In a memo titled “The Next Killer Application on the Internet” and delivered to the upper echelon of Microsoft’s leadership, Allard argued that Windows should become the “next-generation Internet tool of the future.”

“We are years behind many of our competitors on the Internet,” Allard explained. “[But] our agility and creativity will allow us to catch up quickly … We must deliver Internet-ready systems to customers in 1994. The biggest challenge in meeting this goal will be the extensive interoperability testing necessary to successfully establish Windows as an Internet-ready system … The best way to establish respect in the Internet community is to become more active in it … Weaving the Internet into our networking marketing messages will establish a more visible presence and get us up on the Internet ‘wave’.”

Allard called for a three-pronged attack on the Internet. After establishing base Internet connectivity capabilities in both Windows 4.0/95 (“Chicago”) and Windows NT 3.5 (“Daytona”), Microsoft should, among other things, move Marvel (what would become the Microsoft Network) to the Internet and then evolve Windows to the point where it becomes “the next killer application for the Internet” (emphasis Allard’s).

What’s interesting is that Allard wasn’t pushing for a Microsoft web browser, though the memo explained to the company’s executives how Mosaic had turned the Internet into a friendlier place for end-users. Instead, he wanted to see Microsoft replace Internet DNS with the directory services infrastructure that was planned for Cairo, with information browsed using “Explorer,” the same user interface that Microsoft planned to use for Marvel. Basically, he saw Microsoft moving the Internet from being based on Unix to being based on Windows.

While most of the recipients of the Allard memo were top-level Microsoft executives---Paul Maritz, Jim Allchin, Brad Silverberg, Dave Cutler, and so on---one, Steven Sinofsky, was not. Sinofsky was instead Bill Gates’ technical assistant, and he was CC’d on the memo instead of Gates.

He needed no convincing. Indeed, Sinofsky had already tried to inspire Gates to embrace the Internet and the web in late 1993, thanks to Glaser’s warning, to little avail. But in a well-timed coincidence, Sinofsky visited Cornell, his alma mater, in February 1994, saw how students were using the Internet, and wrote a new memo of ...