Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from Stuff
Speaker 1: dot Com. Everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and and we're going to do another one of our
Speaker 1: episodes where we start to focus on a company. This
Speaker 1: will be at least a two partner because the company
Speaker 1: has been around well since the mid seventies, so they're
Speaker 1: kind of important. Yeah, it made some big contributions to
Speaker 1: the world of tech as it turns out. We're talking
Speaker 1: of course about Microsoft and UM. To really look at
Speaker 1: the origins of Microsoft, we're gonna go back quite a bit,
Speaker 1: back to nineteen fifty five when on October a certain
Speaker 1: Bill Gates was born to a wealthy family in Washington, UM.
Speaker 1: He came from a not so humble background. He actually
Speaker 1: was born into a very well to do family, UM,
Speaker 1: and that gave him certain advantages. He was able to
Speaker 1: take advantage of a pretty pretty interesting education. He went
Speaker 1: to Lakeside, which was a private school, and that's where
Speaker 1: he met Paul Allen, who would also be become important
Speaker 1: to this company. Yea Paul Allen who was two years
Speaker 1: older than Bill Gates. So it was interesting that these
Speaker 1: two struck up a friendship. They were separated by a
Speaker 1: couple of years in age and in grade, but both
Speaker 1: of them became fascinated with a machine at the school.
Speaker 1: It's a teletype machine. And you may, oh, my, Drew,
Speaker 1: geese have forgotten what these machines are like. Things changing,
Speaker 1: so scory and everyone quick to forget. But teletype machine. Yeah. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it was using telephone lines and you could send information
Speaker 1: across and it would type out the information. And they
Speaker 1: began to um kind of figure out ways of playing
Speaker 1: with it and learning how it worked and manipulating it. Supposedly,
Speaker 1: according to Wire, the pair exhausted the school's annual budget
Speaker 1: for time on this computer within a matter of weeks,
Speaker 1: and they soon started to um work with a with
Speaker 1: a local computer contract center to um find software bugs
Speaker 1: in exchange for extra time on the computers. Interesting, so
Speaker 1: they like the computers so much that they would work
Speaker 1: in orders for them to be able to continue to them.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy two, according to the BBC, Gates used
Speaker 1: the teletype machine to manipulate school schedules for a purpose
Speaker 1: that I find incredibly creepy. It was to to try
Speaker 1: to find the get the right girls a k a.
Speaker 1: The girls that he thought were kind of pretty into
Speaker 1: his classes with him. Yeah. Essentially, you know, he was
Speaker 1: just anyone who had who was wanting certain classes. He
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure that that the right mix of
Speaker 1: people were in the classes. He was in the right
Speaker 1: makes of people, being all the cute girls social engineer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: little creepy, little creepy. However, in ninety three, he yeah,
Speaker 1: he graduated, graduated, began to attend Harvard, and that's where
Speaker 1: he met someone else who would become really important in
Speaker 1: the Microsoft story, Mr Steve Balmer. They lived down the
Speaker 1: hall from each other in the same dormitory. Right, So
Speaker 1: then we move over into nineteen seventy four, moving right along,
Speaker 1: and uh, that's when the magazine Popular Electronics published its
Speaker 1: article about the Altair hundred. It was called the world's
Speaker 1: first micro computer kit to rival commercial models. Um, and
Speaker 1: yeah it was. It was talking about the Altaire and
Speaker 1: Intel's U four zeroes Ero four chip. And yeah, this
Speaker 1: was this was the dawning of the personal computer age.
Speaker 1: The Altair was, of course a kit that you could
Speaker 1: order and then build your own computer. Now, this was
Speaker 1: incredibly early on, so micro computers at this point were
Speaker 1: pretty primitive and there there wasn't a whole lot of
Speaker 1: software that you can run on them, because, uh, up
Speaker 1: until this point, computers were really pretty much only in
Speaker 1: research facilities, in in large companies that needed databases. They weren't. Again,
Speaker 1: you kind of had to rent time on them if
Speaker 1: you're going to really use them on a personal level,
Speaker 1: all right, and there wasn't much to do on a
Speaker 1: personal level. I mean, these were really machines meant to
Speaker 1: do calculations. There just weren't. I mean, it was not
Speaker 1: like it's not like there's a lot of word processing
Speaker 1: software even let alone games. Although of course anytime you
Speaker 1: have a machine and you've got people and they are
Speaker 1: smart and they are board, they will make games. Are
Speaker 1: They're small things that are easy, too easy to program.
Speaker 1: So right, So but the al tear comes out, and uh,
Speaker 1: the company that made the al Tear mits m I
Speaker 1: t S, invited readers to submit programming languages for the computer.
Speaker 1: Now in early nine as in like the day or
Speaker 1: two days after this this issue had hit the supposedly, um,
Speaker 1: I think Paul Allen came like came like running down
Speaker 1: the hall and was like, well check this out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he had he had the copy of the magazine, and
Speaker 1: he said, let's do this, let's build a computer language
Speaker 1: for the al tear, and we can we can be
Speaker 1: the ones to to make history. And they, from at
Speaker 1: least one account, the account that I read in the BBC,
Speaker 1: they apparently told myths that they in fact had the
Speaker 1: programming language before they had you know, built it. But not.
Speaker 1: It's not to say that they didn't have the skills.
Speaker 1: They certainly did. They just they just didn't have the
Speaker 1: work done yet. But they pretty much committed themselves to it.
Speaker 1: And then over the course of several hours, maybe a
Speaker 1: couple of days, they built their computer language, which was
Speaker 1: a variant of the Basic computer language, which has been
Speaker 1: invented in the sixties, but this was the first one
Speaker 1: for this particular chip set. Yes, they had actually been
Speaker 1: playing with Basic way back in high school together, right,
Speaker 1: So now they created a simulator of the al tear
Speaker 1: on another machine, the deck PDP ten they had one.
Speaker 1: They ended up creating an emulator for the al tear
Speaker 1: so that they could actually test this programming language because
Speaker 1: otherwise they have no way of knowing if it would
Speaker 1: work or not. They didn't have access to an al tear,
Speaker 1: so uh. They then submit this programming language to MITS
Speaker 1: and uh, and it's met with some approval, so much
Speaker 1: so that Paul Allen was made the VP and director
Speaker 1: of software for the company. So I would say that
Speaker 1: that was a rousing success. Yeah, yeah and uh. Also Bill,
Speaker 1: Bill Gates and Paul Allen both moved to UM to
Speaker 1: its headquarters in Albuquerque. Ye Albuquerque, which just makes me
Speaker 1: think of weird all Yankovic. But anyway, or bugs Bunny
Speaker 1: should have taken that left in Albuquerque. But so on.
Speaker 1: On November twenty nine, Bill Gates sends a letter to
Speaker 1: Paul Allen, and the letter contains a certain name in it.
Speaker 1: It is micro dash Soft, which is the earliest known
Speaker 1: written reference of the company name. Although they had been
Speaker 1: talking about this for a while beforehand, according to most interviews,
Speaker 1: but this was the first time, the first the earliest
Speaker 1: written reference anyone has found. They had also tossed around
Speaker 1: something like Gates and Allen, Inc. Or something like that.
Speaker 1: Exciting stuff, you know. So they came up with this idea,
Speaker 1: and by the end of the year, the partnership that
Speaker 1: would eventually become Microsoft had earned sixteen thousand and five
Speaker 1: dollars in revenue and had a grand total of three employees. Uh.
Speaker 1: When you get to the next year nine, this is
Speaker 1: a huge year in personal computers, a huge year that
Speaker 1: people probably at the time could not have predicted would
Speaker 1: turn out to be so instrumental in shaping what the
Speaker 1: future of personal computing would be. This is the same
Speaker 1: year that two other individuals, uh some some rather prankster
Speaker 1: ish types, the Steve Steve Jobs and Steve West. They
Speaker 1: they had decided to uh work together to build their
Speaker 1: own personal computer. Now keep in mind, Gates and Allen
Speaker 1: aren't building computers. They're building not not even not even
Speaker 1: operating systems, right, not even Yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: before personal computers really had what we would call an
Speaker 1: operating system. This is when you would put a uh
Speaker 1: some you would hook it up to some form of media,
Speaker 1: and then you would use a a ligne command to
Speaker 1: run a program. But that's about it. There's it's it's
Speaker 1: not so advanced as to call it an operating system.
Speaker 1: So Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are designing their own computer,
Speaker 1: which the first one was called the Apple One, which
Speaker 1: didn't you know, they only made a few hundred of them,
Speaker 1: as I recall, and the original price was six hundred
Speaker 1: sixty six dollars and sixty six cents for the Apple one.
Speaker 1: But they were they got to meet with Bill Gates
Speaker 1: and Paul Allen. In fact, uh uh they were chatting
Speaker 1: early at the Palo Alto Homebrew Computer Club about the
Speaker 1: possibility of using programming languages. So and even at the
Speaker 1: earliest days, Microsoft and Apple had a relationship. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a formal relationship by that point, but they knew each other.
Speaker 1: You know, people knew one another in these communities that
Speaker 1: this homebrew club was. That was a big organization. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe not big, but but certainly a lot of people
Speaker 1: who had become key players in the industry over the years.
Speaker 1: Uh started out started out there, and for for a
Speaker 1: large part it was it was hobbyists at the time,
Speaker 1: but uh folks, folks like h like like Steve and
Speaker 1: Bill where um much more business minded, I think than
Speaker 1: than most other kids hanging out. Yeah. Yeah, they definitely
Speaker 1: had a bigger picture in mind than just hey, this
Speaker 1: is this is this is really this is a really
Speaker 1: cool device. I want to see what else I can
Speaker 1: do with it. Some some people were more than content
Speaker 1: to just keep it a hobby, but others were seeing
Speaker 1: the potential for this to be a game changer to
Speaker 1: be in its own industry. Well. In March of ninet,
Speaker 1: Bill Gates delivered the opening address at the first annual
Speaker 1: World I'll Tear Computer Convention, which as far as I know,
Speaker 1: is no longer happening. I've never been. Don't think that
Speaker 1: I would wonder what it would look like if you
Speaker 1: were to attend a World Altare computer convention in Paul
Speaker 1: Allen resigned from midst that year in my ts that
Speaker 1: year to work full time on the Microsoft project, and
Speaker 1: on November twenty six, nineteen seventy six, Allen and Gates
Speaker 1: trademarked the term Microsoft. They had since lost the hyphen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now it's just Microsoft, no hyphen, just one word. That's same.
Speaker 1: Around that same time, Bill Gates officially drops out of Harvard.
Speaker 1: He had been uh, he took a break for a
Speaker 1: little while, then he went back, and at this point
Speaker 1: he had decided that he wanted to concentrate Microsoft um.
Speaker 1: Gates also writes an open letter to hobbyists where he
Speaker 1: addresses the issue of software piracy. Now keep in mind,
Speaker 1: this is the earliest days of personal computing, and already
Speaker 1: there was this this interesting, interesting dichotomy. Okay, you had
Speaker 1: people who wanted to have software freely available, which would
Speaker 1: then encourage more people to get into the hobby and
Speaker 1: more innovation. And then you had the people who are
Speaker 1: developing software who are saying, in order for me, don't
Speaker 1: let us make money, then we can't continue making cool
Speaker 1: stuff for you to play with. So yeah, there's no
Speaker 1: incentive for me to put in work if I'm not
Speaker 1: getting any reward from it. I mean, I love this
Speaker 1: as much as you guys do, but a guy has
Speaker 1: got to eat. I dropped out of Harvard, so uh
Speaker 1: so he wrote this open letter to to address these
Speaker 1: problems of software piracy, which is it's kind of funny
Speaker 1: because when you think about it, you know, we were
Speaker 1: more than three decades later, and we still have the
Speaker 1: same issues. It's now just on a larger scale scale.
Speaker 1: Exactly that next year nine, Bill Gates becomes the president
Speaker 1: and Paul Allen the vice president of Microsoft is now
Speaker 1: an official company and before they were considered to be
Speaker 1: general partners in this, and this was the first time
Speaker 1: that that they delineated their their responsibilities within the come
Speaker 1: right and Gates at this point owned more of Microsoft
Speaker 1: than Alan. Actually that's true all the way through the history.
Speaker 1: So Gates had a greater part of the ownership of
Speaker 1: the company, and they begin with a license deal to Apple.
Speaker 1: They were the ones who provided the Apple version of Basic,
Speaker 1: called Microsoft apple Soft Basic. So that's interesting to me
Speaker 1: too that the programming language for the Apple two computer
Speaker 1: was in fact developed by Microsoft, because a lot of
Speaker 1: people think then Microsoft and Apple have always had a
Speaker 1: very contentious, yea acrimonious relationship, like they were constantly butting heads,
Speaker 1: and that's not really true. In fact, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of times throughout for a long time they were
Speaker 1: they were really trying to help each other out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were working together because when you think about it,
Speaker 1: they're in two they were in two different businesses. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you had Apple that was developing all of their
Speaker 1: own hardware and software and Microsoft was just software. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't like they were wret competition with one another.
Speaker 1: Especially in those early days. They were all looking at
Speaker 1: a burgeoning industry and saying, how can we make this grow? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and everyone was trying to make money. By working together,
Speaker 1: you can make more money yea. Um speaking about money. Uh.
Speaker 1: In eight uh, Microsoft sales of Basic eighty eight alone
Speaker 1: exceeded one million dollars, so incredible. The company itself has
Speaker 1: been around essentially two years. Depending upon how you wanted
Speaker 1: to find the actual company, you could say as many
Speaker 1: as three, but it really that that first year it
Speaker 1: was really a partnership and not an official company at all.
Speaker 1: So they've already hit one million in revenue and sales.
Speaker 1: This is this is phenomenal. They also developed a programming
Speaker 1: language for another early personal computer that has there are
Speaker 1: people who love this machine. One of the Commodore is right, yep,
Speaker 1: the Commodore Personal Electronic Transactor or PET, the Commodore PET.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they developed the basic programming language for that
Speaker 1: as well. The next year, nineteen seventy nine, that's when
Speaker 1: they made their big move literally from from Albuquerque back
Speaker 1: up to Washington State. Yep. Now they weren't they weren't
Speaker 1: in their current headquarters yet. That's they hadn't quite moved
Speaker 1: that far. They went into Bellevue, which was actually not
Speaker 1: very far from where Paul Allen and Bill Gates grew up,
Speaker 1: and they formed the consumer Products division of Microsoft. This
Speaker 1: was an idea to development market retail products and to
Speaker 1: provide support for customers, and they actually started to develop
Speaker 1: their own in house game. All right, Microsoft Adventure came
Speaker 1: out of that. Yeah, people who remember Adventure remember it fondly.
Speaker 1: It was I mean, by any measure of today's standards,
Speaker 1: it's an incredibly primitive game. But at the time it
Speaker 1: was one of those things that people just fell in
Speaker 1: love with, but that they they invested in this, they
Speaker 1: tried to develop it, and ultimately they decided that it
Speaker 1: wasn't really performing up to their expectations, so they eventually
Speaker 1: folded it back into the overall company. Right right, During
Speaker 1: that year, they grew from thirteen to twenty eight employees.
Speaker 1: So then and Basic was was doing really well. It
Speaker 1: was kind of on the verge of becoming the standard
Speaker 1: language for for micro computers. Right. I think it's funny
Speaker 1: thirteen to twenty eight employees. You could say within that
Speaker 1: year they more than double size from thirteen to eight. Uh,
Speaker 1: humble beginnings. Now, if you move up to the next year,
Speaker 1: to nineteen eighty, that's when Bill Gates makes a very
Speaker 1: famous hire. He hires his old buddy from Harvard, Steve Balmer,
Speaker 1: and Steve Balmber becomes Microsoft's first business manager. Steve Balmer
Speaker 1: was the salesman. He was the guy who was known
Speaker 1: as he He just he understands the sales aspect. He
Speaker 1: could build these relationships between different companies. He can develop
Speaker 1: them because you know, most of Microsoft's business was really
Speaker 1: in partnering with their companies, not so much uh directing
Speaker 1: business directly at the consumer, right right, Yes, since as
Speaker 1: we said, they were just creating software at the time.
Speaker 1: It was you know, all convincing other people to uh yeah,
Speaker 1: let them develop programming languages for their platforms. Things like
Speaker 1: you know, the stuff that you would see that Microsoft
Speaker 1: had a hand in. Where that was the stuff that
Speaker 1: would come when you bought the computer you were buying,
Speaker 1: Like when you bought an Apple too and you started
Speaker 1: programming stuff, you were using the Microsoft programming language. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't like you bought a computer and then you
Speaker 1: ran out to grab the Microsoft copy of whatever software
Speaker 1: it was. It was all packaged together. So the business
Speaker 1: relationships were key in those early years with Microsoft. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: speaking of those business relationships, in July, they entered an
Speaker 1: agreement for the upcoming IBM PC. The code name of
Speaker 1: this project was Chess. Yeah. IBM has a history with
Speaker 1: Chess uh, they would actually at this point it would
Speaker 1: be a future with chess because IBM Suh IBM would
Speaker 1: famously u show that a computer chess champion could defeat
Speaker 1: the human grand chess champion. But at any rate, Yes,
Speaker 1: this this this code name project was for the developing
Speaker 1: software and operating system information for an upcoming personal computer
Speaker 1: developed by IBM and and and again Microsoft at the
Speaker 1: time was not was not creating operating systems. This was
Speaker 1: really kind of one of the first that was out there. Um,
Speaker 1: they a Gates and Bomber wound up buying something called
Speaker 1: QUDS Quick and Dirty operating System for about fifty grand, right,
Speaker 1: and they wound up a repackaging it or recoding recoding.
Speaker 1: They essentially used that as think of it as using
Speaker 1: that as the foundation to build their own operating system
Speaker 1: on top of So we don't mean to say that
Speaker 1: they just took They just weren't bought one thing and
Speaker 1: then repackaged it and then sold it. They definitely did.
Speaker 1: Microsoft did change that, but that was the basis of
Speaker 1: that operating system. Just as you would say that there
Speaker 1: are lots of different Linux distributions out there that take
Speaker 1: the basic Linux and then create something on top of
Speaker 1: it that makes it makes it more usable for a
Speaker 1: certain part of the audience, right right, But they renamed
Speaker 1: it disc operating System and licensed it to IBM for
Speaker 1: eight grand um, which which sounds like a small amount,
Speaker 1: and it was even at the time a relatively small amount,
Speaker 1: but um. But they also had an agreement to earn
Speaker 1: on top of any any PC sales that the system
Speaker 1: went on too. In addition to that, they were even
Speaker 1: more savvy because they retained the licensing rights so that
Speaker 1: they could license that same operating system to other manufacturers. Now,
Speaker 1: for those who aren't aware, when the IBM compatible computers
Speaker 1: started coming out, that these were machines that were built
Speaker 1: by other companies besides IBM that could run the same
Speaker 1: sort of software because they were using a very similar
Speaker 1: or identical chip set to the IBM PC. So that
Speaker 1: meant that Microsoft, because they retained this licensing agreement that
Speaker 1: they could license other manufacturers, could provide the operating system.
Speaker 1: So that meant that suddenly you had all these different
Speaker 1: machines from different manufacturers that could do essentially the same
Speaker 1: thing as the IBM PC, but because they were offered
Speaker 1: by someone else and they were using perhaps different materials,
Speaker 1: sometimes the price would be significantly lower. This is what
Speaker 1: would eventually one of the factors I should say that
Speaker 1: would eventually lead IBM to pull out of the consumer
Speaker 1: PC market, because once this train got set in motion,
Speaker 1: it really was hard to derail it. It meant that
Speaker 1: IBM had to compete essentially against itself. They had invented
Speaker 1: the approach that they wanted to take, and then everyone
Speaker 1: else could just copy it. Um Apple, by the way,
Speaker 1: had a very similar situation for a while after Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs was politely asked to leave or he left on
Speaker 1: his own, depending upon whom you ask uh, and then
Speaker 1: Apple did a very similar thing where they actually licensed
Speaker 1: out the Apple designed to other manufacturers. When Jobs came back,
Speaker 1: he put a stop to that. Technically, I think it
Speaker 1: had already kind of stopped before he came back, but
Speaker 1: he definitely um So anyway, this was one of those
Speaker 1: things where it was a great move for Microsoft. Maybe
Speaker 1: not such a great move for IBM PC, but it
Speaker 1: meant that Microsoft had guaranteed yet more revenue down the
Speaker 1: line by licensing this operating system to other manufacturers. They
Speaker 1: also started to develop their own hardware in the form
Speaker 1: of special microprocessors, circuit boards that could allow the computer
Speaker 1: computers that have are based around one particular design to
Speaker 1: run programs that were built for other types of computers. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, it's kind of like an emulator. So
Speaker 1: you know, like if you had an Apple To computer
Speaker 1: and I had an IBM computer and I had this
Speaker 1: program I wanted you to be able to use, you
Speaker 1: couldn't use it on your Apple TO. The architecture is
Speaker 1: totally different. It just wouldn't work. So what Microsoft was
Speaker 1: starting to do was build up microchips or or actually
Speaker 1: circuit boards that you could insert into a computer, put
Speaker 1: it in one of the computer's expansion slots. Yeah, and so, uh,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like it was a magic pill that would
Speaker 1: work on every computer. They had only a few specific
Speaker 1: ones that would allow one type of computer to run
Speaker 1: one type of other software. So, but it was an
Speaker 1: interesting move that they were getting into hardware. This was
Speaker 1: their first time of really doing that. Otherwise they were
Speaker 1: just concentrating on code. Now. Um, then that's when we
Speaker 1: actually get launch of ms DOS Microsoft disc Operating System. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that's introduced on the IBM PC. UM and that's
Speaker 1: also when Microsoft got a visit from a certain Mr.
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs, and he Steve Jobs, arrived at Microsoft to
Speaker 1: give them an early look at what would be the
Speaker 1: Macintosh computer. This is one The Macintosh computer does not
Speaker 1: come out until nineteen four, so this is several years
Speaker 1: in advance of the debut of this computer. And it
Speaker 1: just shows really that the development cycle for these kinds
Speaker 1: of devices can take several years sure, and also just
Speaker 1: shows the strength of the relationship at that stage in
Speaker 1: the game. But you know, it's you know, being being
Speaker 1: willing to show something that secretive at that point, and uh,
Speaker 1: it was. It was kind of fun I think, um uh.
Speaker 1: People were referring it to it as a wonderful machine
Speaker 1: and eventually there would be a funny little acronym about that.
Speaker 1: But I'll get to that in a little bit later.
Speaker 1: So that same year Microsoft incorporated, but was still a
Speaker 1: privately held company. They did not have an initial public
Speaker 1: offering yet, and Gates was became the president and chairman
Speaker 1: and Alan became the executive vice president. And by the
Speaker 1: end of the year, the revenues hit sixteen million dollars
Speaker 1: and they had a hundred and twenty eight employees. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a great number for a computer programmer, A
Speaker 1: hundred twenty eight, because it's falling into the pattern there.
Speaker 1: Um In the Microsoft developed something internally called the Microsoft
Speaker 1: Local Area Network or MILAN, and that was to connect
Speaker 1: all their in house development computers together. So this was
Speaker 1: essentially a very early computer network that Microsoft was using.
Speaker 1: There had been other computer networks before this one, obviously,
Speaker 1: I mean our ponnet existed at this time, and that
Speaker 1: was a network of networks that was the predecessor to
Speaker 1: the Internet. But this is an early implementation of computer networks.
Speaker 1: And uh and at that time, a man named James
Speaker 1: Town became the president and CEO of Microsoft. Bill Bill
Speaker 1: Gates hired him to kind of take over the operational
Speaker 1: duties exactly. Yeah. And this is something that we would
Speaker 1: see throughout Microsoft's history as well, is that Bill Gates
Speaker 1: really wanted to concentrate on developing business, to develop actual product.
Speaker 1: And as he became more and more of a personality
Speaker 1: um within I mean not just within the company, but
Speaker 1: but in terms of of marketing power, you know that
Speaker 1: the day to day stuff has never really interested him
Speaker 1: I think as much as right, and and it just
Speaker 1: meant that it took away time from the stuff you
Speaker 1: really like to do, like to work on projects and
Speaker 1: to uh to lead teams to develop new products. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, we understand why he was why he was
Speaker 1: doing this, but it was kind of an interesting move
Speaker 1: that he he hires someone else from outside the company
Speaker 1: to become the president CEOO right right. That was also
Speaker 1: the year that work on Windows originally began under the
Speaker 1: code name Interface Manager. Yeah. So, uh, that might also
Speaker 1: surprise you because everyone remembers that when the Macintosh debut
Speaker 1: in four that that the graphics user interface was such
Speaker 1: a huge leap from the old days. Now, granted again
Speaker 1: again they had seen that this early, these early prototypes
Speaker 1: of the mac and also remember that the graphics user
Speaker 1: interface wasn't that new. As it turns out, Xerox had
Speaker 1: been working on that for several years. Precisely to the
Speaker 1: average computer or the potential computer customer, it was revolutionary.
Speaker 1: So two comes and goes, we get up to three.
Speaker 1: That's when they actually announced that they're working on the
Speaker 1: graphics user interface. Uh. At that same year, Paul Allen
Speaker 1: is diagnosed with Hodgkins disease, so he ends up stepping
Speaker 1: back from working full time at Microsoft. Simultaneously, Jamestown resigned
Speaker 1: as the CEO. Yeah, and uh, and so a new
Speaker 1: president and CEO comes on for Microsoft. His name is
Speaker 1: John Shirley, and he came from the Tandy Corporation. I
Speaker 1: remember Tandy Computers me too. I I read that and
Speaker 1: I was like, Tandy, It's been so long since I've
Speaker 1: seen that name that it was kind of brought back memories. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's when Bill Gates became the He was essentially
Speaker 1: the chairman of the board and the and and an
Speaker 1: executive vice president, which is an interesting common nation. And uh.
Speaker 1: And that's the same year that Microsoft word for MS
Speaker 1: DOS one point oh launched. So we get our first
Speaker 1: example of Microsoft's land breaking amazing word processor that I
Speaker 1: could not stand for the longest time, which is what
Speaker 1: I'm looking at my show notes on right now. Now.
Speaker 1: I love it. Well, I mean not not not for
Speaker 1: MS DOS one point, you know. No, we we've actually
Speaker 1: upgraded from MS DOS one point. In the office. We
Speaker 1: now are on Windows three point one. Uh. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a joke. We get that next year around around
Speaker 1: three By the way, they were just lots of software
Speaker 1: agreements going on with Apple. Um, they were they were
Speaker 1: both kind of just just really continuing that relationship and
Speaker 1: helping each other out, which again is funny considering the
Speaker 1: way the Night four iconic commercial comes into play. Well.
Speaker 1: Also in n three the company hit fifty million dollars
Speaker 1: in revenues employees at that point, phenomenal growth within the company.
Speaker 1: That's when the Macintosh launches, and of course the famous
Speaker 1: commercial was very much UM trying to to get that
Speaker 1: Orwellian feeling, the idea of Uh, the IBM computer is
Speaker 1: very very uniform and design and there's no personality there
Speaker 1: and it's supposed to strip away anything that's fun or that.
Speaker 1: The Macintosh was this creative powerhouse that yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: for the individual who has exactly it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: For the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers and me. Uh,
Speaker 1: this was not necessarily a shot across the bow at Microsoft.
Speaker 1: This was a shot at IBM. Again, one of those
Speaker 1: things where we think back and like, but didn't Apple
Speaker 1: hate Microsoft because of that? You know, think about that commercial.
Speaker 1: That commercial was really aimed at the way IBM was
Speaker 1: doing business, not at or the way IBM was was portrayed.
Speaker 1: You know that, and that this is that's a business
Speaker 1: computer that's where business you know, this is something that's
Speaker 1: for the creative individual. Um. So it really wasn't a
Speaker 1: shot at Microsoft. Uh. And then that's you know, Microsoft
Speaker 1: actually ended up taking a big role in developing software
Speaker 1: for the Macintosh program. A lot of those early programs
Speaker 1: on the Mac came from Microsoft. And the program that
Speaker 1: Microsoft engaged in for developing software for the Macintosh was
Speaker 1: called sand This is that cute acronym. I was talking
Speaker 1: about Steve's amazing new device. Yeah. So, I mean everyone
Speaker 1: at Microsoft thought that Steve jobs and and the work
Speaker 1: that he was doing over an Apple was pretty cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah. One of the software projects was Microsoft Excel,
Speaker 1: which was the spreadsheet program that later would come to
Speaker 1: the PC. It actually hit the Mac first, or the Macintosh,
Speaker 1: I should say it shouldn't call it a Mac because
Speaker 1: it's different type of computer, right right. They started actually
Speaker 1: all the way back in two m in on an
Speaker 1: agreement with Apple to create that spreadsheet program that would
Speaker 1: become Excel eventually business graphics and also a database structure.
Speaker 1: So the relationships tight right now. And uh and and
Speaker 1: they were not allowed that they the terms of the
Speaker 1: agreement where to um reserve it for Apple for a
Speaker 1: year before Microsoft could use it themselves. All right, So
Speaker 1: we're picking back up and we're in nine now, that's
Speaker 1: the year that Microsoft Windows ships on Nove So this is, uh,
Speaker 1: this is really a graphical extension of MS DOSS. It's
Speaker 1: not really a full graphics user interface operating system in
Speaker 1: its own right. It's more like something that gets kind
Speaker 1: of piggybacked onto the MS DOSS operating system. So it's
Speaker 1: a little different from the future versions of Windows. Really,
Speaker 1: you have to get to two Windows three point one
Speaker 1: before we start seeing a Windows operating system that looks
Speaker 1: familiar to someone who who uses it today, right, right.
Speaker 1: This was a very very basic first attempt there, but
Speaker 1: it was successful and the company revenues hit about a
Speaker 1: hundred and forty million dollars. They had up to uh,
Speaker 1: what was en employees, so just under a thousand. At
Speaker 1: this point, Bill Gates was becoming a very public figure
Speaker 1: at the time. He was he was being shown on
Speaker 1: the cover of all kinds of magazines, UM and uh
Speaker 1: marketing campaigns, calling calling Microsoft, you know, like trying to
Speaker 1: be the IBM of software and getting getting the concept
Speaker 1: of a computer on every desk and in every home
Speaker 1: we're starting to come out. Yeah, it's funny too, because
Speaker 1: if you start looking back at some of the predictions
Speaker 1: that people, even people like Bill Gates had about how
Speaker 1: many computers would be in the home within X number
Speaker 1: of years, the amazing thing was their predictions at the
Speaker 1: time seemed as ambitious. Everyone was thinking, that is just
Speaker 1: it's insane, who would who would need that? And then
Speaker 1: ten years down the road, you'd realize that they were
Speaker 1: being incredibly conservative. That you know, people weren't taking into
Speaker 1: account things like Moore's law, which states that not only
Speaker 1: are computers getting more powerful over time because we're able
Speaker 1: to fit more dis elements upon one square inch of silicon,
Speaker 1: but also that the price goes down because the manufacturing
Speaker 1: processes get more efficient and we end up learning better
Speaker 1: ways to build computers. So with prices going down and
Speaker 1: the complexity coming down because people are figuring out better
Speaker 1: ways of designing operating systems, it was pretty natural for
Speaker 1: people to want to adopt computers. I mean, a lot
Speaker 1: of these were things that people kind of wanted, but
Speaker 1: they were a little intimidated by, especially in the early days,
Speaker 1: because they didn't have that hobbyist mentality. Sure, sure, and
Speaker 1: so it wasn't until these uh the these these gooey systems,
Speaker 1: they have system graphic interface, I have no problem with.
Speaker 1: So with with all of this money that they were
Speaker 1: making and with this this kind of outrageous number of employees,
Speaker 1: they relocated to Redmond, which was just outside Seattle, and
Speaker 1: this is in fact where Microsoft makes its headquarters today.
Speaker 1: They do, of course have corporate locations in other parts
Speaker 1: of the world, but that's their home bases. And red
Speaker 1: from from did not mentioned that we had moved on
Speaker 1: time waits for no man or Microsoft marches on. Yes
Speaker 1: it does. And uh so. Microsoft then also that year
Speaker 1: held its initial public offering, the I p O. Now, this,
Speaker 1: of course is when a private company becomes a publicly
Speaker 1: traded company, and so ownership is then spread out through shares.
Speaker 1: You can buy shares in the company and that represents
Speaker 1: a certain percentage of ownership of that company. It opened
Speaker 1: at one dollar per share and by the end of
Speaker 1: that day the stock price was at twenty eight dollars
Speaker 1: per share, So it showed a high level of confidence
Speaker 1: in the company and not bad at all. And they
Speaker 1: raised about sixty one million dollars, which at the time
Speaker 1: was the most money any tech company had raised in
Speaker 1: an I p O. Uh. Since then, of course, that
Speaker 1: that's changed when even when you factor in things like inflation,
Speaker 1: it's still not hasn't held up. But at the time
Speaker 1: it was incredibly impressive. Now, that year they also introduced
Speaker 1: Microsoft Works, which had based sick word processing, spreadsheet database,
Speaker 1: and other functions all kind of wrapped up together, and
Speaker 1: they held the first International Conference on CD ROM technology. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I'm pretty sure that I still
Speaker 1: had five and a quarter inch floppies on my Yeah,
Speaker 1: that a three and a half inch disk drive to
Speaker 1: me was the future, let alone a c D. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, what we're talking about here is that a
Speaker 1: lot of the if you aren't familiar with the computers
Speaker 1: from back in the eighties all the way up into
Speaker 1: the early nineties, they used magnetic storage media like discs,
Speaker 1: discs that had uh, these these little they were called
Speaker 1: floppy disks, not necessarily because they were floppy, but that
Speaker 1: was to differentiate from the hard disk that you would
Speaker 1: have part as integrated part of a computer, right right,
Speaker 1: and and and part part of the floppy disks was
Speaker 1: in fact a I mean, the disc itself would usually
Speaker 1: be rigid for um safety purposes. But the film, but
Speaker 1: the film inside was it was a film, a magnetic film, right,
Speaker 1: and so they they the original ones, well, original ones
Speaker 1: came up in like seven inch seven points something inches,
Speaker 1: but approximately as big as my civic, but five and
Speaker 1: a quarter was the standard by the time I was
Speaker 1: getting into computers. That was what the Apple two used,
Speaker 1: and then three and a half inch discs. It's funny
Speaker 1: because as the size of the disc went down, the
Speaker 1: capacity and that was one of those things that as
Speaker 1: a kid before I understood anything about computers, just confused
Speaker 1: the heck out of me, Like, how is it that
Speaker 1: this can hold more chapters of my dad's book than
Speaker 1: this one? Doesn't matter, let's erase it, um, because I
Speaker 1: have saves I want to make. Uh. Well, the CD,
Speaker 1: of course, was going to blow all of that all
Speaker 1: the water. The optical drive had the capacity to hold
Speaker 1: way more information and access it much more quickly than
Speaker 1: magnetic did, but not for a good few years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And this was an early early discussion where Microsoft could
Speaker 1: see that the writing was on the wall and that
Speaker 1: that was going to be an important technology and they
Speaker 1: wanted to get on the forefront of that. Un a
Speaker 1: new marketing manager joins Microsoft, and she would become very
Speaker 1: important in the life of the co founder of the company. Right,
Speaker 1: this is this is Melinda French um and uh, Melinda
Speaker 1: French and Bill Gates and first met at a Microsoft
Speaker 1: press conference event in Manhattan that year and she began
Speaker 1: to work for the company and uh, and we can
Speaker 1: I'm imagining that the little hearts appeared over their heads.
Speaker 1: Shortly thereafter m Microsoft launched Windows two point oh that year,
Speaker 1: and we're still not quite to the level where it's
Speaker 1: a version of Windows that most of us would recognize.
Speaker 1: And they also announced that they would release Windows or
Speaker 1: Microsoft Excel for Windows, so now we would get Excel.
Speaker 1: It would no longer be exclusive to the Macintosh computer.
Speaker 1: It would now also come to any PC that could
Speaker 1: run Windows. And they also bought a company called Forethought Incorporated,
Speaker 1: which developed a presentation software called power Point, so that
Speaker 1: the if you've ever seen a power point presentation, you
Speaker 1: know it's it's designed so that you create slides which
Speaker 1: you can use their print as sheets of paper. You
Speaker 1: could in the old days, print them as slides and
Speaker 1: put them in a slide projector because I used to
Speaker 1: do that I'm old, or you just use them on
Speaker 1: your computer and you project them digitally for you know,
Speaker 1: one of those typical presentations, usually standing up on a
Speaker 1: stage and you have a lectern there and a little
Speaker 1: clicker in your hand, and I've done this way too
Speaker 1: many times. By the way, power Point they actually bought
Speaker 1: the company that developed it, and they saw this as
Speaker 1: an opportunity to kind of bring power Point into the
Speaker 1: suite of productivity software that they had been developing in
Speaker 1: house since their early days. So all that word processing
Speaker 1: and spreadsheet they were saying, you know, this is a
Speaker 1: good business for us to be in. It's it's more
Speaker 1: and more offices in the United States and around the
Speaker 1: world are starting to incorporate computers into their everyday experiences.
Speaker 1: And if we're the ones who are creating the software
Speaker 1: that allows them to get business done, we will do
Speaker 1: crazy amounts of business. And it turned out to be really,
Speaker 1: really true. Um, so they were jumping ahead on that one,
Speaker 1: and they also became that they turned Forethought Incorporated from
Speaker 1: an acquired company into a full division within Microsoft called
Speaker 1: the Graphics Business Unit. That's also when they launched Microsoft Bookshelf,
Speaker 1: which was a cd ROM, which again very early for
Speaker 1: cd ROMs, and the cd ROM had ten reference works
Speaker 1: on the disk, and this was the first real general
Speaker 1: purpose application on cd ROM for PC users. Not that
Speaker 1: many people could really take advantage of it at this time,
Speaker 1: you know, just like any new technology. When CD ROMs
Speaker 1: first hit the scene, it was expensive and it was
Speaker 1: hard to find. I remember that it took me quite
Speaker 1: a while just to get a CD player, much less
Speaker 1: a CD ROM for my computer. So this is definitely
Speaker 1: early days for that. But again, they wanted to be
Speaker 1: on that bleeding edge of this technology. That next year,
Speaker 1: that's when that little love Eve relationship between Apple and
Speaker 1: Microsoft turns a little set work. Yeah, that was when
Speaker 1: Apple filed a lawsuit against Microsoft. Um, they were they
Speaker 1: were basically saying that Windows looked and felt too much
Speaker 1: like um, like Apple's own graphics Centerface. Yeah, and which
Speaker 1: which really kind of Apple had soared stolen from Xerox. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That that that Xerox alto PC that we were talking about,
Speaker 1: um small Talk being the graphics Centerface operating system that
Speaker 1: they were using. Any time. A lot of people credit
Speaker 1: the Macintosh for inventing the graphics user interface and the mouse,
Speaker 1: which both of those actually came out of work at
Speaker 1: Xerox and other research laboratories. But McIntosh was the first computer,
Speaker 1: the personal computer to make it popular. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: the first commercially successful computer that used it. They really
Speaker 1: designed it well. So I mean not to take anything
Speaker 1: away from Apple, because they were able to make something
Speaker 1: that appealed to consumers. Uh. Now they're saying that that
Speaker 1: Microsoft essentially was copying them, and you know, pointing out, Hey,
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs came over and showed you what we were
Speaker 1: working on, and then you suddenly come up with a
Speaker 1: graphics user interface. What's going on? Except they were doing
Speaker 1: it in legally. So it probably wasn't as flippant as that.
Speaker 1: The lawsuit would last six years and eventually the court
Speaker 1: would rule against Apple and say that Microsoft did not
Speaker 1: there wasn't enough evidence that Microsoft had actually copied Apple's approach,
Speaker 1: and so this this would eventually turn out to be
Speaker 1: a fruitless effort on the part of Apple. And it
Speaker 1: was not the only time that Apple and Microsoft would clash, obviously,
Speaker 1: certainly not. Also, Microsoft became the world's largest PC software
Speaker 1: company based on sales, so they were doing pretty good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were not not too shabby. Business is booming. In nine,
Speaker 1: they released Microsoft Office one point oh, both on standard
Speaker 1: discs and on CD rum. Uh so Microsoft Office at
Speaker 1: one point oh. This again is the beginning of the
Speaker 1: productive any software suite that many of us are familiar with.
Speaker 1: I've been using some version of Microsoft Office for what year?
Speaker 1: Is it? Probably fifteen years now? Um? Maybe maybe more
Speaker 1: than that. Actually, way longer than that now that I
Speaker 1: think about it. But it was one lotus for a
Speaker 1: long time. Did I use word perfect as my word
Speaker 1: processing program of choice for ages on purpose? Well, I
Speaker 1: preferred it. I knew that you if you wanted to
Speaker 1: bowl the word, you hit F eight. Um. And and
Speaker 1: so anyway, this the suite would become incredibly important to Microsoft.
Speaker 1: It becomes one of their flagship products. If you think
Speaker 1: about Microsoft as far as the software side, their flagship products,
Speaker 1: I would argue are Windows and Office. Those are the
Speaker 1: two big ones. Lots of other stuff obviously, but those
Speaker 1: are the two I think that are kind of the
Speaker 1: cornerstone for what Microsoft's offtware is all about. Absolutely. And
Speaker 1: also this was this was one of their big moves
Speaker 1: in in in bundling software products together, which would become
Speaker 1: very important and kind of legally contentious Yes later on
Speaker 1: Yes nineteen, Microsoft then ships Windows three point oh. So
Speaker 1: here's the version of Windows that starts to look more
Speaker 1: like the stuff that we're used to. And within two
Speaker 1: weeks of launching Windows three point oh, the company has
Speaker 1: sold a hundred thousand copies. Now, that probably doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like a lot to you, but keep in mind this
Speaker 1: is before computer adoption has really grown that large. Not
Speaker 1: everyone has an IBM compatible computer, uh, and those who
Speaker 1: do not everyone has an IBM compatible computer capable of
Speaker 1: running Windows three point oh. This was one of those
Speaker 1: things that I found, uh initially off putting by graphics
Speaker 1: user interfaces. I was. I was brought up learning DOSS,
Speaker 1: so I used DOSS all the time. I did not
Speaker 1: like the idea of a graphics user interface, not because
Speaker 1: I thought that this was going to be, you know,
Speaker 1: dumbing down my experience, but rather that I thought, why
Speaker 1: would I want to dedicate so many of my computer's
Speaker 1: resources to running an operating system when I'm perfectly capable
Speaker 1: of doing this on my own. Yeah, I just want
Speaker 1: to be able to play my games. But then more
Speaker 1: and more of my games became Windows games, not DOSS games,
Speaker 1: and eventually I was forced to become one of the
Speaker 1: herd of sheep. Now, I say that all mostly in jest.
Speaker 1: At the time, I was very bitter about it. These days,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you were to put me in front
Speaker 1: of a DOS computer now, I'd be lost. Ye. Not
Speaker 1: that I was ever particularly found in DOSS. I I
Speaker 1: never I never really used it myself. I would just
Speaker 1: you would. All you would hear from me, Lauren, from
Speaker 1: my desk is where's the start button? Yeah, that's kind
Speaker 1: of the only thing I would be able to say
Speaker 1: over and over and cry. I'd cry too. Um, But
Speaker 1: at any rate, three point oh launches sell hoppies. Only
Speaker 1: fifteen of households back in even had a computer according
Speaker 1: to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, so not that many
Speaker 1: people have computers, so a hundred thousand copies is a
Speaker 1: significant number. Microsoft decides at that point that they will
Speaker 1: focus exclusively on developing Windows, rather than supporting both Windows
Speaker 1: and further versions of DOSS also known as OS two. Now,
Speaker 1: this is not great news for IBM. They were not
Speaker 1: terribly happy with this. But Microsoft said, you know, we
Speaker 1: see where the future is. The future is going to
Speaker 1: be in this graphic user interface. UM. As more and
Speaker 1: more people adopt these computers, they're going to want something
Speaker 1: that's that's more accessible than a blinking cursor where they
Speaker 1: have to figure out what code they need to type
Speaker 1: in in order to get stuff done. So they said,
Speaker 1: this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna just completely
Speaker 1: focus on developing the Windows opbring system. That same year,
Speaker 1: John Shirley retired as president and CEO and he was
Speaker 1: replaced by Michael R. Hollman. For Yeah, which is interesting, right,
Speaker 1: I mean you're going from Tandy, which was another you
Speaker 1: know that was at least within the industry, to Boeing,
Speaker 1: which you could argue was you know, related to but
Speaker 1: outside the industry of computers. However, of course, keeping in
Speaker 1: mind this is for the person who's doing the administrative,
Speaker 1: the the corporate oversight of the day to day workings
Speaker 1: of a company, not actually talking about share. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: keeping that in mind, it makes more sense. Um. Now
Speaker 1: at that point, uh, it had been fifteen years since
Speaker 1: the company had been founded, So fifteen years after the
Speaker 1: founding of the company, they were in a pretty secure
Speaker 1: place financially. They had had a very successful I p
Speaker 1: O and revenue was at a staggering one point one
Speaker 1: eight billion dollars. They were the first software company to
Speaker 1: get over a billion dollars in revenue a year. This
Speaker 1: was also the year that the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission,
Speaker 1: began kind of poking into um some antitrust kind of
Speaker 1: kind of issues, right, So they didn't they didn't launch
Speaker 1: an official investigation yet. I just thought, Hey, that sounds
Speaker 1: kind of like Microsoft might be muscling out some competition,
Speaker 1: Like you were saying, Lauren, this idea of bundling software.
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes sense from someone who wants to
Speaker 1: have a lot of uh utility in their software and
Speaker 1: have cross utility, right, and especially if you've already I'm
Speaker 1: like many of the programs and the Microsoft Office Suite,
Speaker 1: a lot of the base coding is is the same
Speaker 1: UM and and it's and it's built up, you know,
Speaker 1: just in different ways. Well, especially when you get later
Speaker 1: on into office where you want to do something like
Speaker 1: embed a chart that you create an Excel into a
Speaker 1: power Point spreadsheet, but you don't want to just copy
Speaker 1: and paste a picture and you want it to be functional, yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of like a living chart. So that way, let's
Speaker 1: say that as it gets closer to your time to
Speaker 1: present whatever the presentation is, that your numbers get updated. Well,
Speaker 1: instead of having to go in and UH and copy
Speaker 1: that picture again and then paste it back into a
Speaker 1: new version of the presentation. If if your systems are connected,
Speaker 1: then what you can do is go into the Excel
Speaker 1: sheet where you generated the image in the first place
Speaker 1: and change the numbers there and it updates. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so now great, that is later on. That's not the
Speaker 1: earliest version of Microsoft Office. Yeah. And and in these
Speaker 1: days that the FTC was really looking at, UM, the
Speaker 1: relationship that IBM and Microsoft had and UH and the
Speaker 1: way that DOS was being propagated across all IBM computers
Speaker 1: at the time. Right, It's it's one of these things
Speaker 1: where they start wondering if there's maybe some anti competitive
Speaker 1: practices being put in place, so that would become a
Speaker 1: more important part of Microsoft's history. Shortly thereafter, UH in
Speaker 1: ninety two, that's when Forbes proclaims that Bill Gates is
Speaker 1: the richest man in America for the first time, at
Speaker 1: six point three billion dollars in net worth. UH. Bill
Speaker 1: Gates would end up being richest man in America several
Speaker 1: times UM over the next several years and uh, it
Speaker 1: would flip flop back and forth between other people, and
Speaker 1: eventually he becomes the richest man in the world a
Speaker 1: couple of times too, so pretty phenomenal. Mike Hallman at
Speaker 1: that point leaves Microsoft. Uh you know, remember he had
Speaker 1: just joined as the president back in two he leaves.
Speaker 1: So at that point the company does something interesting. Rather
Speaker 1: than a point a new president, they created what they
Speaker 1: called the Office of the President, which was held by
Speaker 1: three executives. Three executives would be the people manning the
Speaker 1: Office of the President. So it's almost like a triumbrit.
Speaker 1: It's a tribunal. Uh you have what brutus? Uh you
Speaker 1: have uh? Uh no, no, it was so the officer
Speaker 1: of the President was held by three executives. In those
Speaker 1: first three were Steve Balmer, so, uh he had stuck
Speaker 1: with the company all this time and now was the
Speaker 1: worldwide state else in support guy, and that's the part
Speaker 1: that he oversaw. As part of the Office of the President.
Speaker 1: You also had Frank Goddet, who oversaw worldwide operations of
Speaker 1: the company, and Mike Maples who saw oversaw the worldwide
Speaker 1: products for the company. All three of them, as the
Speaker 1: Office of the President reported directly to Bill Gates and
Speaker 1: that same year Microsoft's stock split. And a stock split
Speaker 1: is when the value of a company keeps on growing
Speaker 1: but they want to be able to have It's it's
Speaker 1: kind of complicated, but the idea is that you have
Speaker 1: when you first have the the I p O. You
Speaker 1: have a certain amount of stock, certain number of shares
Speaker 1: that are available, right, and each share is worth a
Speaker 1: certain amount. And when you multiply those two numbers together
Speaker 1: the number of shares times the value of the share,
Speaker 1: that kind of gives you a valuation of the company. Uh.
Speaker 1: If a company's value continues to increase, you may consider
Speaker 1: splitting up that stock so that instead of the stock
Speaker 1: being incredibly expensive, you have decrease the value of individual stocks. However,
Speaker 1: in order to compensate your shareholders, you give them more stock,
Speaker 1: So it could be this would be the first in
Speaker 1: a series of several splits. So essentially, what it means
Speaker 1: is it allows the company to increase in value without
Speaker 1: stock price getting so high that no one wants to
Speaker 1: buy or sell it. Uh, I'm drastically oversimplifying. So all
Speaker 1: of my my business majors out there who are screaming
Speaker 1: at me, maya culpa. But and for those of you
Speaker 1: who aren't the liberal arts majors, I'm sorry. Uh So anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: the stock split showed that this was a company that
Speaker 1: was going to continue to grow in value, or at
Speaker 1: least that was the that was the hope, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, hope that was well placed. And Bill Gates
Speaker 1: that year received an award from the President of the
Speaker 1: United States, George Bush Yes, the first George Bush Yes,
Speaker 1: and that award was the National Medal of Technology for
Speaker 1: Technological Achievement in Technology and Tech. I may added a
Speaker 1: couple of there there were two technologies in the metal
Speaker 1: of Technology for technological Achievement, which I think is already
Speaker 1: so uh you know, it's it's self referential. Uh. In
Speaker 1: n three, they released the Windows in T platform, which
Speaker 1: was an enterprise software. Enterprise of course means companies. When
Speaker 1: you talk about enterprise software, you're talking about software is
Speaker 1: specifically designed for other corporations as opposed to individuals. So
Speaker 1: that's what Windows in T was, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: a client server solution. Um. And then at that that
Speaker 1: same year, IBM saw Microsoft overtake it in corporate value.
Speaker 1: So the company Microsoft becomes more valuable from a sheer
Speaker 1: numbers perspective than IBM. That's amazing. The the huge company
Speaker 1: for which Microsoft got its most of its early revenue
Speaker 1: apart from you know, the early early days with Apple,
Speaker 1: is now worth less than the actual software company. That's
Speaker 1: pretty phenomenal. That was that was on the slightly less
Speaker 1: awesome route. The investigation that the FTC had sort of
Speaker 1: begun got passed over to the Department of Justice, which
Speaker 1: basically meant that it was getting it was getting serious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now now it's gone from I wonder if those people
Speaker 1: are up to no good to those people are probably
Speaker 1: up to no good, and we're going to look into
Speaker 1: it much more seriously. This would not be the only
Speaker 1: time that Microsoft would deal with these sort of things.
Speaker 1: One of the one of the issues you get when
Speaker 1: you get really, really successful in your industry is sometimes
Speaker 1: you might, through your certain practices, discourage other people from
Speaker 1: entering that industry, whether you mean to or not. That
Speaker 1: can be seen as anti competitive, and that can get
Speaker 1: the government governments from around the world really on your case.
Speaker 1: Because again the United States, we're talking about the U
Speaker 1: S specifically here, but they are not the only entity
Speaker 1: that has looked into fire. We will get into that
Speaker 1: a little bit more later on. That's the same year.
Speaker 1: Also three is when company introduced Microsoft in Carter. It's
Speaker 1: a multimedia encyclopedia on CD. Did you ever see the
Speaker 1: Incarda I owned in CARTERA I owned in Carta as well.
Speaker 1: I remember everyone owning card I think there anyone I
Speaker 1: think you were required to own in Carta like there
Speaker 1: were there were a couple. If you owned a computer
Speaker 1: that was running Windows, you are essentially required to own
Speaker 1: in CARTERA and possibly four hundred and seventy three A
Speaker 1: O L discs. I had approximately that many. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I just get sent in the mail all the time.
Speaker 1: I used to make costumes out of them. It was great.
Speaker 1: But it seems, I mean in Carda seems like the
Speaker 1: incredible future to me. That was That was one of
Speaker 1: those early things that I remember, I mean not not
Speaker 1: you know, one of those original things that I remember
Speaker 1: thinking like, like, these computer things are really here and
Speaker 1: they're really doing something interesting. Yeah. That keep in mind
Speaker 1: in Carter this is before we as Plebeian people have
Speaker 1: access to the Internet. We didn't have Wikipedia. There was
Speaker 1: no Worldwide Web at this point, so or at least
Speaker 1: roll by web was so young in n that hardly
Speaker 1: anyone knew about it. Technically, there was a worldwide web
Speaker 1: because Tim berners Lee had actually invented the first web page,
Speaker 1: but everyone had a O L discs And yeah, I
Speaker 1: can remember. I think the first time I saw a
Speaker 1: web page was maybe maybe late ninety three or early
Speaker 1: ninety four. It was when I was in college dating
Speaker 1: myself here. I was in college, and I remember seeing
Speaker 1: someone navigating using something called a web browser to navigate
Speaker 1: a web page, and I took a look at and
Speaker 1: it took a really long time for it to load up,
Speaker 1: and it was pretty primitive graphics, and I thought, I'll
Speaker 1: never take off and I'll just use my tail knit program.
Speaker 1: Speaking of dating yourself, people who were dating at the time,
Speaker 1: I got interesting segue. Bill and Melinda got married. Yep,
Speaker 1: that was there was obviously a very important time for
Speaker 1: for the two of them, and they have created together
Speaker 1: not only an amazing family but also a phenomenal philanthropic
Speaker 1: organization that we'll talk about in our next episode. Before
Speaker 1: we get to that, however, I did want to mention
Speaker 1: that was the year that Microsoft agreed to a federal
Speaker 1: consent decree, which was the outcome of this entire FTC
Speaker 1: Department of Justice investigation at the time. And what they
Speaker 1: were doing was they had been uh entering into these
Speaker 1: license agreements in which in which PC makers had been
Speaker 1: agreeing to pay a licensing fee for DOSS with each
Speaker 1: model of a computer ship, even if that particular computer
Speaker 1: did not contain UM interesting. So that was and and
Speaker 1: and the federal government was like that, that's not cool, guys,
Speaker 1: could you knock that off? So so, so so that was
Speaker 1: and and that was kind of the first thing. And
Speaker 1: this would come back in a minute, um, well, more
Speaker 1: like in several days, because we're going to take a
Speaker 1: break here, ladies and gentlemen. This is gonna be the
Speaker 1: end of part one of the Microsoft story because we
Speaker 1: have so much more to say and we don't want
Speaker 1: to have a two and a half hour long episode
Speaker 1: about it. So we're gonna take a quick break here
Speaker 1: for us and slightly longer one for you. And uh,
Speaker 1: if you guys have any suggestions for things that we
Speaker 1: should cover on future episodes of Tech Stuff, whether it's
Speaker 1: a company, a type of technology, type of software, personality
Speaker 1: in tech, or you just want to hear us take
Speaker 1: yet another film and deconstruct it in our eyes of
Speaker 1: tech and science. Let us know. Write us. Our email
Speaker 1: address is tech stuff at Discovery dot com, or get
Speaker 1: in touch with us on Twitter or Facebook. You can
Speaker 1: find us there with the handle tech stuff. Hs W
Speaker 1: and Lauren and I will talk to you again really soon.
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