America 1982-Chapter 642 - 147: The Bittersweet Microsoft

All the executives at Microsoft watched the launch of AmigaOS with an almost constant expression of wry amusement.

The main reason was that Tommy Hawk’s WinStar Corporation had scheduled AmigaOS’s launch date a week before Microsoft’s originally planned May 22 release of Windows 3.0.

Moreover, that bastard Tommy Hawk played dirty; he got numerous small developers from Stanford University to report to theUnited States Federal Trade Commission (FTC), claiming that Microsoft was trying to bribe competitors to develop software for other operating systems, thus ensuring it wouldn’t fall into an anti-competitive or antitrust investigation, allowing it to dominate the application software market share.

To put it simply, Microsoft, through the industry alliance EFF, was financially supporting several small companies with which it was competitive to develop applications for other operating systems, keeping them afloat but not allowing them to grow. Their existence just happened to enable Microsoft to cope with the FTC’s investigation and show the Federal Government that it was neither monopolizing the market nor promoting monopoly; instead, it was funding healthy industry competition.

But what particularly troubled Microsoft in the report was that the opponent claimed that after the launch of Windows 3.0, software like Word for Windows would be pre-installed, not giving users the chance to choose other software. For other word processing and spreadsheet software developers, such practice represented seriously malicious competition.

Therefore, the Federal Trade Commission was just waiting to scrutinize Microsoft’s launch event. If Word and Excel were indeed pre-installed, they would have all the reason they needed to initiate an investigation methodically.

This was a very uncomfortable choice. If Microsoft removed the newly integrated Word software to avoid investigation, it would inevitably significantly impact Windows 3.0’s sales. The upgrade was primarily for business users to work more conveniently and efficiently. After switching to the new system, whether it’s buying new word processing and spreadsheet software or installing old versions, neither would be as convenient as having them pre-installed.

However, if they kept it, this would amount to handing the industry an opportunity to band together and beat up on Microsoft, making the malicious competition accusations stick. The word processing and spreadsheet software developers would certainly follow the FTC’s lead to trouble Microsoft. Even if the FTC’s investigation could be settled with money, what about those small and large companies biting at Microsoft’s heels? Without a payoff, would they be willing to let go?

The worst part was that Microsoft couldn’t use the same reason to trouble AmigaOS. Although it came with OSS office software pre-installed, it offered the home edition, which had been announced as permanently free many years ago. The more professional enterprise edition still needed to be purchased separately. Tommy had addressed the issue with OSS long before the birth of AmigaOS, and strictly speaking, despite the interface of the OSS home edition and enterprise edition being almost identical, they were two different pieces of software. This made it impossible for Microsoft to legally challenge OSS.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Unix and MAC versions of Word and other software had always been commercial products that required payment. Now, offering them for free on their own Windows system, if not outright malicious, was borderline destructive to industry development, wasn’t it?

If Microsoft now decided to follow Tommy’s lead, it was already too late or perhaps too early. At the moment, Microsoft’s public relations and lobbying were not strong enough, to say the least. They were nowhere near the point where they could cover the sun with one hand in the computer industry. Besides, Tommy’s AmigaOS had the backing of its owner, Stanford University in Silicon Valley. The two entities were mutually dependent on a whole bunch of computer-related patent licenses, making a complete fallout unnecessary.

So, faced with overwhelming news, Microsoft almost gritted its teeth and announced with a forced smile that the rumors spread earlier were false. Microsoft would not engage in bundle sales of free pre-installed software to harm healthy industry development, and welcomed an FTC investigation on this matter.

Everyone had thought that since Tommy had pulled a fast one, AmigaOS must have some remarkable features. But after watching the launch event, why did these Microsoft folks all have a wry smile on their faces?

Attacking Microsoft before the launch only to come up with this?

Even if Tommy didn’t send people to report, Microsoft wasn’t prepared to give AmigaOS a second look because no enterprise users would equip their companies with such a trash operating system.

Bill Gates gently pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and looked toward the Harvard Fox Club brother sitting in the third seat to his right, the current vice president of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, "What do you and your department think of this operating system?"

"Honestly," Steve Ballmer said, his face wearing a dismissive smile, "I find it hard to take seriously an operating system developed by a bunch of gamers led by Tommy Hawk."

This wasn’t blind arrogance. If Steve had been a blindly self-important fool, he wouldn’t have earned Bill’s trust or stood out at Harvard, a university more cutthroat than the White House, joining the prestigious Fox Club in his freshman year, which only accepted six undergraduate members annually.

In fact, his team had already tested both the old and new versions of AmigaOS before the press conference. Even the elite of the Windows development and sales division he managed had thoroughly researched AmigaOS.

"Everyone, including our sales staff, gave the same definitive answer. Give me one good reason to buy this so-called ’gaming system’ that comes with two crappy games built-in? Is that even a computer operating system? If people are satisfied with a UI that lacks a window manager, lacks an application control panel, with just a few random clicks feeling like they’ve mastered computing, well, it could be considered one. But essentially, it’s just a home gaming console, completely unsuitable for serious use," Steve Ballmer shared his collected opinions on AmigaOS:

"I think the operating systems we really need to worry about are England’s Arthur, XTS-400, West Germany’s Communix, France’s SlitazGun, even Japan’s TRON. These European or Asian bastards bought the Unix source code from AT&T and now are trying to set rules with what they’ve purchased."

The various names he mentioned were the codenames of operating systems developed by those countries, which were leveraging national subsidies to push in their local computer markets, intensifying the difficulty of Windows’ penetration. If those operating systems continued to spread, the likely outcome would be a world filled with oddball operating systems, followed by a sit-down to devise some form of interoperable standards, eliminating the chance for a single operating system monopoly or uniformity. That scenario would be unacceptable for both Microsoft and Bill Gates.

Bill Gates stared back at Steve Ballmer after he finished speaking. The eyes behind his glasses were devoid of any emotional fluctuation, as if he were slow to react, oblivious to the fact that Steve had concluded.

Steve Ballmer was used to Bill Gates’ reaction and after a brief pause, continued:

"AmigaOS is a patchwork product formed from half a gaming console program mixed with a MINIX variant. If you think you’ve never heard of MINIX, don’t be surprised. It’s a small, Unix-like operating system that’s mostly been used for computer teaching, so it never really hit the market. WinStar lacks creativity, and AmigaOS doesn’t contribute to the development of computer applications. People were simply charmed by the image that woman painted at the conference—the idea of an online era, booting up computers, browsing news on websites, communicating with others and replacing regular mailboxes with emails for faster message delivery. If some fool believes her nonsense and buys an AmigaOS system along with a computer, he will soon realize how much more he has to spend just to get online. Or, to say it another way, on this Earth, how many public websites can one browse without needing an account and password? Twenty? Thirty? They’ll soon discover that they were swindled. The online era will indeed come, but not yet. What Tommy Hawk is attempting, to skip the unnecessary transition and eagerly serve up the final product, is unrealistic, unless there’s a ground-breaking miracle. Scientific progress is rational; there are no impractical miracles. That’s why I firmly believe AmigaOS will ultimately fail."

This time, Bill Gates had a reaction. He took off his glasses, blinked a few times, and then said, "The future Tommy Hawk painted is captivating, and it’s also the future I see. The future of computers should indeed be like that—turning on our operating software, sitting in front of the computer, and overlooking the entire world."

Once his eyes felt more comfortable, he slowly put his glasses back on, "It’s a pity, though, that Tommy’s vision is a bit ahead of its time. The customer base he wants to bill isn’t yet ready to bear the steep peripheral costs, and the corporate users who can afford to pay wouldn’t be interested in AmigaOS. Take me for example, even if I set aside our differences and look at it purely from a company leader’s perspective, I might keep an AmigaOS system at home, but I would never let my company’s computers use AmigaOS in the office. It’s not because I favor Windows, but because everything shown by AmigaOS so far is of no help for creating profits in large commercial companies. It lacks the professional competitiveness we have."

"That’s just it, unless there’s a ground-breaking miracle, like if these American telecommunication providers collectively dropped their prices to almost nothing," Steve Ballmer said from the side.

Bill Gates slowly stood up, concluding this small internal meeting, "Therefore, our focus remains on England and Japan, ensuring that after the launch of Windows 3.0, we continue expanding our market share in these two countries, regardless of the marketing costs, giving them no chance to consider those messy operating systems of their own nations."