Remembering Old Fears of Microsoft

The October 2006 issue of Wired had a good article about Microsoft, its future, and the direction that Ray Ozzie is likely to take them in. There is plenty I could comment on, but I'll just pick on one minor point towards the end that I found striking:

Ten years ago, the world was convinced that Microsoft would use MSN to control the Internet the same way it controlled the desktop: extracting tolls, blocking competitors, regulating which sites surfers could access. Back then, the world worried that Microsoft would take command of the entertainment business by using its cash reserves to buy the best programs and music and using its software in our cable set-top boxes to dictate what we watched. None of those fears came to pass. Instead, Microsoft has been outmaneuvered by faster, hipper competitors, from Apple and Google to Flickr and YouTube.

I remember the many articles and voices trumping up those fears against Microsoft back in the day. Hindsight is of course 20/20, but even back then I knew that this was insanity. There was no way that Microsoft was going to be able to dominate and control the Internet -- let alone television and music -- the way people were claiming it likely would. Having a massive majority of both the desktop and the browser on that desktop (90% or higher at its peak), and having lots of cash, didn't mean that Microsoft would, or even could, control what people created on the Internet, or had access to on the Internet, or had access to on TV or elsewhere. Not even close.

To be sure, Microsoft's browser dominance did mean particular bits of non-standard HTML or style tagging became more prevalent than they would have otherwise, but that is not what the anti-Microsoft people (e.g., almost anyone who used to write their name as "Micro$oft") were fear-mongering about. I was often a Microsoft defender back then (and in some ways, still am), in part because I am against antitrust legislation on philosophical grounds, in part because I use and gain value from many Microsoft products, and in part because the claims of the fearmongers were so insane and overblown.

I'll also note a certain similarity between the claims made back then about Microsoft and our impending doom, and those made by backers of "Net Neutrality" today. The issues are far from identical, but there are some similarities. I predict that -- assuming no laws are passed to protect "Net Neutrality" -- ten years from now I'll be able to reflect back with 20/20 hindsight and again note that the fearmongers were greatly exaggerating the potential power of their perceived foes (the cable and large telecommunications providers). Alas, Microsoft is now one of the fearmongers, something that I find rather sad.