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Re: [OM] ( OM ) OT Search engines

Subject: Re: [OM] ( OM ) OT Search engines
From: Ken Norton <ken@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 19:16:47 -0500
>
> MS has been playing catch-up for years, Brian.  Remember when Bill G
> said (or is alleged to have said) something to the effect that the
> Internet would never catch on?
>


Highly doubtful he would have said that as he really is a master marketeer.
However, several thoughts come to mind:

1. The early days of the Internet was non-commercial.  I distinctly remember
when "dot com" websites were popping up and the attitude problem people who
had the Internet to themselves for so long.  "Dark Side" and not so obscure
references to maternal parents as well as satan himself were not uncommon.
The World Wide Web wasn't going to go anywhere and didn't until there was
sufficient dilution of the self-appointed guardians of the Internet.

2. Pay portal systems, such as AOL was still gaining ground and the business
model appeared strong. Microsoft itself attempted to break into and control
this market with "The Microsoft Network (aka MSN). Prodigy, GEnie,
CompuServe all shared this market. Through acquisitions and mergers, these
companies either lost their way or are now known as something else--like
Yahoo.  Pay portal systems was a business model that was also attempted and
was successful by local access providers. At some point, this model broke
down and everybody had to regroup.  What is interesting is that Yahoo and
Google have successfully been able to almost get this to go full-circle.
(I'm typing this in Gmail).

3. Microsoft had no web browser for quite some time. They were late-comers
to the web-browser market and ended up purchasing much of the technology to
eventually fill-out Explorer enough to be usable.

4. Performance.  The Internet's backbone systems were SLOW until about 1998.
There was a lot of fiber-optic infrastructure that had to be built to
support the Internet as we know it. And even today, there are large portions
of the world that are undersupported.

AG
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