Programming Windows: Internet Strategy Workshop (Premium)

Bill Gates had finally gotten the message: The Internet wasn’t just important; it was the future of Microsoft. To rally the troops, he penned an epic memo, The Internet Tidal Wave, which would forever change the software giant’s focus and strategy. The changes would be vast, and they would occur at every level, and within every product that the company produced. As such, it would have a dramatic impact on both the software that Microsoft made and on the software development tools that it provided to outside programmers. The world would never be the same.

It would also not change overnight. First, Microsoft needed to launch Windows 95, a product that would come to represent both the apex of the software giant’s popularity and the end of an era, the beginning of the slow slide to follow. We’ll examine Windows 95 and its successors separately. For now, let’s look at how Microsoft shifted to make real Bill Gates’ new strategy. And how the firm announced the changes it was implementing to the world later that year.

To the outside world, nothing had changed: Windows 95 was barreling towards an August launch, and Microsoft appeared to be hedging its bets by releasing its own web browser, called Internet Explorer and a proprietary online service called the Microsoft Network (MSN). Windows 95 would also launch alongside a major new version of Microsoft’s office productivity suite, called Office 95, that had a more modern user interface and worked natively in Windows 95’s 32-bit operating environment. There was also an add-on package of utilities called Plus! 95, whose contents had been created too late to include in the OS.

Delivering Windows 95 was a monumental enough challenge, and there was certainly a lot of hype around its pending launch. Indeed, Microsoft spent $12 million just licensing the Rolling Stones song Start Me Up because the Start button and menu were major new additions to the Windows 95 user interface. But behind the scenes, the firm was also examining how it could move quickly past this release and embrace Internet technologies everywhere.

In November, Microsoft returned to the negotiating table with Spyglass, the firm that it had earlier worked with to license the Mosaic code for its Internet Explorer web browser. That original deal was only for Windows 95 and NT, and Gates belatedly agreed with James Allard and others that Microsoft needed to make versions for Windows 3.1---which was the most popular OS in the world, with over 100 million users---and the Mac as well.

Spyglass had been hoodwinked into a flat fee in the original deal. But this time around, Microsoft was forced to pay a licensing fee for each copy of IE sold for the new platforms. That said, Microsoft demanded that Spyglass was likewise prevented from revealing the $1 fee per copy; Microsoft didn’t want it getting out that it had ever agreed to licensing fees.

As pressing, Microsoft needed to license Java, the Sun Microsystems p...