Bill Gates: PC Genius, Internet Fool

Bill Gates: PC Genius, Internet Fool
By JOSH QUITTNER
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1818989,00.html

Bill Gates, who for years was the richest man in the world, is also one of the smartest. But even he couldn't figure out how to beat the Internet-how to transition his grand old monopoly software company, Microsoft, into a business that thrives on the Net. And so he begins his retirement today from Microsoft as the PC era's biggest winner, and the Web era's most spectacular casualty.

It's pretty well known by now that the Internet, for all its world-flattening glory, is a destroyer of businesses without parallel. How many companies roared along for decades, minting money, only to see the Internet eat their business plans? We live in a media age and the media industry is Exhibit 1 in the murder trial. Newspapers, magazines, music, television, movies — all of the traditional models are dead or dying as bloodied moguls everywhere scramble to survive. But the Net has brutalized old-line business across most industries-retail, tele-com, financial services and the technology industry itself, is, ironically, no exception.

Few companies not born on the Web have figured out how to thrive there. (Apple, with its post-PC iPhone could be the shining exception.) As Gates turns his attention full time to philanthropy, I wonder what will be left of the great company he founded, Microsoft, by the time Gates picks up a Nobel Prize for Peace. Clearly, a business with $26 billion in cash reserves isn't exactly at death's door. And Microsoft continues to be enormously profitable, thanks to its operating system monopoly. Thanks, that is, to Gates's genius.

But big, complicated operating systems such as Microsoft's latest, Vista, aren't necessary in the Web Age, where applications are delivered for free and on demand — often without users even being aware of it. The Net is where the money is, and it's the one place that Gates-like so many others-hasn't left his mark.

He saw the Internet missile coming of course. But by the time he sounded the alarm, it may have been too late. (Read his famous "Internet Tidal Wave" memo, sent to the troops May 26, 1995, over a year after the browser company known as Netscape launched.

Gates was always more accustomed to being a disruptor than being disrupted. At the age of 25, he licensed a primitive operating system, PC-DOS, to IBM for $80,000 rather than sell it outright, a move that's usually ranked as one of the Greatest Business Moves of All Time. Gates figured that many PC makers would copy IBM's open architecture, and make their own PCs; they'd need to license an operating system, too. PC-DOS soon became MS-DOS, an operating system for all IBM clones, and Microsoft was on its way to becoming the one thing that billions of PCs around the world would have in common.

From 1980 until 1994, when Mosaic/Netscape emerged, Gates played a scratch game, parlaying his little "Micro- Soft" company into an empire that defined the PC Era. By opening up Windows to third-party developers, he created a platform that made many developers rich, and built out an eco-system that put a desktop in almost every home.

But there is no greater blinder than success, even for a visionary like Bill Gates. By the time he realized the tech world was quickly shifting from PCs to the Network that connected them, his moves were limited. A fiercely competitive man, he reached for the obvious lever, and attempted to tie the late-starter Internet Explorer browser to the monopoly he created, the Windows operating system. The move was mercilessly effective and beat back rival Netscape, which immediately saw its commanding share of the browser market disappear.

It was also illegal. With Netscape crying foul, the Feds successfully pressed an anti-trust suit against Microsoft. The PR damage-Gates acting insolent on the witness stand, showing a convenient a lack of memory about key business decisions-turned out to be short lived and is all but forgotten as Gates remakes himself as a philanthropist. But the court's decree forced the great general to march cautiously into the future. He may have won the Battle of the Browser but he would start to see major casualties in the Internet War.

Gates built or bought all manner of things to conquer the Net, but few managed to be anything more than also-rans in the innovation game. In 1995, he launched a gated online service, MSN; a Web-based email client, Hotmail was purchased in 1997; a search engine, MSN Search, launched in 1998 using a third-party product as its core; a chat client, Messenger was released in 1999; and last year it bought an online advertising platform, aQuantive and became a significant, though minority investor, in social network Facebook.

While Microsoft is exponentially larger than Google — number 44 on the Fortune 500 list versus Google at 150 — Google's web business (advertising mostly) is growing so fast, it's poised to rival Redmond's operating system revenues by 2010. And that's the problem. As more and more of what Windows does moves up into the cloud-into Google's always-on, give-'em-whatever-they-want-for-free servers-what becomes of the company that Gates built?

The smartest move Gates could make right now is to get out of the way. (Steve Ballmer should, too; pursuing Yahoo is a pretty good hint that his master plan for the Web is, like Gates's was, to try to buy Microsoft's way into the game.) There are many smart and talented people inside Microsoft who know what to do. (Blow up Vista and abandon its next iteration, Windows 7, and start from scratch, is but one excellent idea.

That will probably work. And if not? Maybe we'll see Gates return, a Nobel in his pocket, ready to wrestle with the Web once again.

盖茨:PC天才,网络蠢才

　　比尔.盖茨是世界上最富有的人，也是世界上最聪明的人。可即使是他也无法摸清因特网的脉搏--如何将微软这个软件业垄断巨头转型，进而在网络时代继续蓬勃发展。今天，作为PC时代的最大赢家，他光荣引退；另一方面，他也是网络时代的一位大输家。
　　众所周知，网络带着将世界扁平化的光辉，成为史无前例的"企业杀手"。不知有多少生龙活虎几十年的"造钱机器"们眼睁睁看着因特网毁了它们的商业计划。我们生活在一个媒体时代，而媒体行业恰恰是因特网的头号"受害者"。报纸、杂志、音乐、电视、电影--这些传统媒体在网络四处伸展的触角下非死即伤。网络还使各种行业的老式公司面临残酷竞争--零售、电信、金融以及科技产业本身都不能幸免。
　　很少有不是诞生在互联网上的公司能玩转互联网。（苹果公司和它后PC时代产品iPhone算是例外。）盖茨把精力都投入到慈善事业中了，那么我想知道的是：如果有一天盖茨拿到了诺贝尔和平奖，那时的微软会是什么样子呢？显然，一个有着260亿美元现金储备的公司还远没有到末路穷途。而且，由于对操作系统的垄断，微软仍拥有巨大的盈利性。这还是要感谢盖茨的天才。
　　但是，如Vista一般庞大复杂的操作系统在网络时代并非必选。网络时代的程序是免费且可定制的--用户常常甚至注意不到这一点。虽说网络中处处是金，网络也是令盖茨和很多人黯然神伤的领域。
　　盖茨预见到了网络浪潮的来临。但他脑子里敲响警钟的那一刻或许已经太迟。（读读他著名的《因特网浪潮》就可以知道，该文发表于1995年五月26日，网景公司成立一年后。）
　　盖茨是一位习惯于做"辩手"而非"辩题"的人。25岁那年他以8万美元的价格将一个粗糙的操作系统PC-DOS的预装使用权授予IBM，而非把软件直接卖出去。这通常被认为是历史上最伟大的商业交易。盖茨预见到很多PC制造商将模仿IBM的开放式架构，制造自己的个人电脑；他们同样会需要预装操作系统。PC-DOS很快变成了MS-DOS，一个供所有IBM仿制品使用的操作系统。从此，微软公司走上了全球几十亿台PC所必需的一个品牌。
　　从1980到1994年，当"马赛克/网景"浏览器出现的时候，盖茨赌了一把，成功地将他的"微型软件公司"变成了一个定义PC时代的微软帝国。通过将Windows系统开放给第三方软件开发者，他创造了一个使很多开发者致富的平台，创造了一个使"桌面"进入千家万户的"生态系统"。
　　成功常常是成功者最大的桎桍，即使这位成功者是比尔.盖茨。即使认识到了技术热点正迅速由PC转移到将PC连在一起的网络，他的行动也很有限。作为一个有着强烈竞争意识的人，他采取了最有力的手段，试图将后起的IE浏览器与Windows操作系统帝国捆绑。这种做法残忍而有效地打击了网景公司，网景浏览器领先的市场份额迅速消失。
　　这种做法也是不合法的。在网景公司的呼吁下，FBI成功地对微软实施了反垄断起诉。公众形象上的损失持续时间很短--盖茨在证人席上傲慢无礼，并假装忘记决策关键细节的表现在盖茨将自己标榜为慈善家后被遗忘。但是，法庭判决让这位伟大领袖在以后的日子里谨慎从事。浏览器一役虽然获胜，但盖茨开始在网络战争中不断遭遇失败。
　　盖茨创造并买来了各式各样的"武器"来征服网络，但几乎全部在创新游戏中落败。1995年他发布了门户网站MSN；1997年收购了Hotmail；1993年通过收购核心技术发布了MSN搜索服务；1999年发布Messenger聊天软件；去年收购了网络广告商aQuantive并成为Facebook的股东之一。
　　虽然微软比谷歌大的多得多--微软在财富排行榜上处在第44位，而谷歌处在150位，谷歌的网络业务（广告占大多数）却增长的如此迅速以至于到2010年它能与微软的操作系统销售收入抗衡。这是个威胁。随着Windows追赶谷歌的脚步越来越快--追赶谷歌"永远在线"、"免费让客户如愿"的理念，盖茨的公司会变成什么样？
　　盖茨现在最明智的决定就是退出。（鲍尔默也该如此，收购雅虎的做法很好的表现了鲍尔默和盖茨一样想通过收购把微软带入互联网游戏的策略。）微软公司里还有很多才华横溢的聪明人知道该怎样做。（放弃Vista和它的翻版Windows 7，从最基本的事情做起，就是个很不错的主意。）
　　这也许行得通。万一行不通呢？没准我们会看到，盖茨兜里揣着诺贝尔和平奖复出，准备再和网络斗上一斗。