Microsoft’s Embrace of Chromium is Historic (Premium)

On December 7, 1995, Microsoft announced a new strategy in which it would "embrace and extend" the Internet in all of its products. Almost exactly 23 years later, on December 6, 2018, Microsoft has finally come full circle, agreeing that what really matters in that the Internet be both open and standards-based.

This is not a capitulation of any kind, though I know that many in the Microsoft user community see it that way. Instead, it is a belated realization and public admission that is previous and proprietary approach was both wrong and wrong-headed. Now, Microsoft will try a gentler and more correct approach. It will just embrace the Internet.

I assume that most are at least somewhat familiar with the infamous "Internet tidal wave" memo that led to Microsoft's major pivot on the eve of Windows 95's launch to adopt and co-opt Internet technologies across its products. But I still view that moment as Microsoft's finest hour, because the company moved as one to address what Bill Gates correctly saw as an emerging threat at a time when it was celebrating its biggest victory. And it did so both quickly and decisively.

(Perhaps a bit too decisively. The actions that Microsoft undertook at that time coincided with the firm cementing its dominance in personal computing and led to damaging antitrust defeats in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere.)

That period of time---say, between 1995 and 2001---is also notable because it was "peak Microsoft" from a market dominance and influence perspective. Microsoft, simply by announcing its intention to do something, could impact other companies' strategies dramatically. And Microsoft, simply by doing something, could formalize that thing and trigger others to follow.

That ended, and abruptly, thanks to both antitrust and the Longhorn disaster, and since then, Microsoft has lost the script. It's still big and powerful, of course, but it no longer has the dominance or influence it once had. This is arguably better for, well everyone. But it has triggered a more reflective Microsoft under Satya Nadella, one that is far more open to working with others than in burying them.

These transitions take time. In the interim, there were misguided attempts to just do things---like Zune, Windows Phone, and Windows 8---simply because it was Microsoft, and Microsoft by doing something could will its way to success. These things happened at a time when old-school executives with a fondness for the past were still running the show, oblivious that the world had moved on.

Today, things are different.

And it is instructive, perhaps, to understand how different. When Bill Gates wrote his "Internet tidal wave" memo in the first half of 1995, the future was all upside for Microsoft. And the notion that some upstart, Netscape, could somehow rise quickly and steal it all away was both alarming and unacceptable.

"I assign the Internet the highest level of importance," Bill Gates noted in the memo, explicitly ...

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