Microsoft Kills Off Two Products Bill Gates Thought Would Be Enhanced By The Internet

from the so-much-for-that-plan dept

Dave Winer points to an email Bill Gates sent him nearly fifteen years ago, where Gates insisted that the internet would enhance, rather than harm, the market for two specific Microsoft products:

The Internet is a great phenomena. I don't see how the emergence of more information content on a network can be a bad thing for the personal computer industry. Will it cause less personal computers to sell? I think quite the opposite. Less copies of Flight Simulator or Encarta?

Winer notes this in relation to the news that Microsoft has decided to shut down Encarta, its "encyclopedia" product that was originally on CD-ROM and was supposed to take on Britannica, before it (and, to some extent -- though it's disputed -- Britannica) got steamrolled by Wikipedia online.

However, it's also worth noting that this seems to have happened just months after Microsoft also shuttered the group that makes Flight Simulator. Given that these were the two specific products that Gates called out in his email, it seems amusing that both are being killed by Microsoft months apart from each other.

Of course, both Encarta and Flight Simulator could have done better online, but neither did very much to really adapt to what the internet allowed. Both could have been much more in an online world, but failed to live up to their potential.

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Bill Gates' New Career? Patent Troll For Nathan Myhrvold?

from the kinder-capitalism? dept

Plenty of folks have been wondering just what Bill Gates is up to now that he's left his full-time position at Microsoft. Longtime rabble-rouser theodp has alerted us to one thing that Bill Gates is spending at least some of his time on: a bunch of patent applications for a company named "Searete LLC" -- including this one for rewarding influencers and another for a method to inject fluids into animals.

So, what's Searete? Well, it appears (warning: pdf file) that it's one of the many ultra secret shell front companies for Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures, a company that unabashedly plans to be a huge patent tollbooth on just about any kind of innovation. We've already noted that he's been setting up shell companies as part of the operation's secrecy.

In some articles about Myhrvold's methods, it talks about how he hosts these big dinners, where he invites a bunch of big thinkers to sit around and talk, has some lawyers sit off to the side writing down everything they say, and then turns the discussions into patents. My guess is that these Bill Gates Searete patents fall into that camp (some of the other big names on some of the patents are folks like Danny Hillis and Craig Mundie, and we're waiting for Seinfeld's name to show up on a patent for computers that are moist and chewy like cake). Still, it makes you wonder why Bill Gates is letting Nathan Myhrvold lock up his ideas as part of his patent extortion scheme.

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It Appears People Liked The Seinfeld Ads A Lot More Than The 'I'm A PC' Ads

from the great-moments-in-advertising dept

We were among those who were quite surprised that Microsoft gave into the online criticism of its "buddy" ads starring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. As we noted, the ads were getting a ton of people talking, and set up plenty of opportunities to later plug Microsoft products. But, initially, they were just entertaining (if slightly awkward) content that did a good job bringing in viewers. Instead, Microsoft replaced it with the somewhat boring "I'm A PC" spots, that directly respond to Apple's "PC vs. Mac" ads. While the original critics claimed that these new ads were a lot more effective, I'd disagree. They're somewhat boring and what you'd expect. They're easy to tune out. And it appears that lots of people agree. A quick analysis has shown that the Gates-Seinfeld ads received many, many, many more online views than the new campaign. Obviously, that's not the only metric to use in measuring success, but it certainly suggests that Microsoft may have overreacted in pulling the plug so quickly.

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Microsoft Gives In To Online Critics: Fires Seinfeld

from the what's-the-deal-with-that? dept

I recognize that I was in the minority of folks who actually thought the Microsoft Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld ads were good and entertaining, but I'm still quite surprised to see Valleywag report that Microsoft is ending the Seinfeld ads, despite plans for a huge $300 million ad campaign around them. Microsoft is trying to claim that this is all according to plan, but that seems difficult to believe -- especially since the "narrative" of the ads had only just begun. It looks like Microsoft basically caved to all the online critics, which makes no sense to me. Even if some people didn't get the ads, people were talking about them. Caving, rather than going through with the rest of the planned ads and laying out the message that they had planned to lay out, just makes the company look foolish. The first two ad segments clearly set the framework for numerous commercials that Microsoft could use to both humanize itself and inform people about what Microsoft was doing -- and now it's basically a dead end. Yes, there were some very vocal critics of the ads, but bowing to their pressure sends exactly the wrong message.

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So Much Hate For Microsoft's Seinfeld/Gates Buddy Ad

from the what's-wrong-with-it? dept

I wasn't going to comment on Microsoft's new ad campaign featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates buddying around, but the response among the press and bloggers is almost universally negative -- often in extreme ways, and I don't get why there's such a virulent negative reaction. Just a few examples:

• Tip for MS: Fire the Advertising Agency
• MSFT Ad is to PC/Mac Campaign as Zune is to iPod
• Bill Gates, Jerry Seinfeld ad airs - Apple has nothing to worry about
• Internet disses new Microsoft commercial
• New Microsoft Seinfeld-Gates ad campaign starts with a dud
• What's the deal with this commercial? No, seriously.
• Microsoft Commercial Is Anything But Funny
• Microsoft Seinfeld Ad Not Exactly a Hit
• Bill Gates + Jerry Seinfeld = What?!!???
• Seinfeld-Gates TV commercial -- vague, baffling and unfunny
• Seinfeld Vista ad is out, and it's bizarre
• First Microsoft/Seinfeld Ad Bombs
• Seinfeld & Gates: Was this ad supposed to be funny?
• First Gates-Seinfeld ad leaves us scratching our heads

And that's just a quick sampling that I grabbed in a few seconds. It goes on and on from there. To be honest, I'm not sure I get this massive negative reaction. The ad itself is a little silly and barely mentions Microsoft at all, but isn't that bad at all. And, to be perfectly frank, you have to think that Microsoft is thrilled with the reaction. It's gotten a ton more people talking about the campaign than any normal ad program, and it actually does a bit to humanize Bill Gates. And, it fits in with what we've been discussing about how advertising needs to be content first and advertising later.

Also, I'm a bit surprised that none of the commentators seem to be comparing this to the very similar efforts that American Express did four years ago also with Jerry Seinfeld. They created a series of "shorts" somewhat similar to the Seinfeld/Gates episode, and people enjoyed them. Is it just because it involves Microsoft that people react so negatively? Already Microsoft has been able to draw people into the storyline (even if negatively), and it can now use future episodes to continue to entertain and educate. That seems like a good thing, not something to be so widely trashed.

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You Thought You Hated Windows? Check Out What Bill Gates Had To Say

from the classic dept

This one is getting passed around pretty quickly, but as he retires from Microsoft, we couldn't resist highlighting this fantastic internal email from Bill Gates complaining about the usability of some Windows features. It's old -- from 2003 -- but it's difficult to read it and not identify with some of the complaints. It reads like thousands of angry ticked off blog posts from folks who run into ridiculous situations with Windows. The only difference, of course, is that this one comes from Bill Gates. Some excerpts (though, you should read the whole thing):

So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes.

Doesn't Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?

Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.

This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg.

So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn't use it for anything else during this time.

What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.

Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night -- why should I reboot at that time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.

So I got back up and running and went to Windows Update again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.

So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.

....

At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.

So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like "Open" or "Save". No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.

The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.

So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.

It is not there.

What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

When asked about the email, Gates claims he sends similar notes nearly every day, as that's his job. If that were the case, though, wouldn't you have expected Windows to actually get better?

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Bill Gates Claims Open Source Means Nobody Can Improve Software

from the say-what-now? dept

Wired is running an interesting article about Bill Gates' thoughts on the pharmaceutical industry, which he's increasingly focused on as he transitions out of Microsoft and into his foundation. He clearly understands the basic problem, though I think he has the wrong solution in brushing off the idea that "open sourcing" medicine is a huge opportunity. As for why... well, I'll be discussing that in a future post. Instead, for this post, I wanted to focus on a rather bizarre statement out of Gates (all the way at the end of the article) in discussing why he dislikes open source software. His complaint is that open source creates a license "so that nobody can ever improve the software." It's hard to figure out how to respond to that statement since it's the exact opposite of how open source software works. The exact point is that anyone can improve the software. It's proprietary software like Microsoft's that's limited such that only Microsoft is allowed to improve it. It's no secret that Gates isn't a fan of open source software, but it still seems odd that he would make a statement that is so obviously false, both in theory and in practice. Perhaps old FUD habits die hard, but one would hope that as he enters "retirement" he'll have a more open mind on such things.

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Bill Gates Still Believes Speech Will Replace Keyboards

from the the-product-of-the-future... dept

Bill Gates has been an incredibly successful businessman, but that doesn't mean he's particularly good at predicting the future of technology. Remember his claim that spam would be gone within 2 years... which he made in 2004? However, if there's one prognostication that Gates just can't let go of, it's his belief that speech recognition will replace keyboards as the preferred input device for computers. He's been saying it for years and years and years, without much to show for it. I had thought (hoped?) that he'd realized maybe he was wrong on this one, but apparently not. In a recent speech, he's insisting that speech recognition (and touch screens) will start to surpass keyboards as the input method of choice for many people. I was going to go back and put together a list of the times he had predicted that in the past, but it appears that Matthew Paul Thomas already did that a few years ago. Note that his earliest predictions (starting in 1997) were that speech would surpass keyboards within a decade. This quote is from October 1997:

"In this 10-year time frame, I believe that we'll not only be using the keyboard and the mouse to interact, but during that time we will have perfected speech recognition and speech output well enough that those will become a standard part of the interface."

If you go to Matthew's site, you'll find a lot more like that, continuing on through the years, with some different prediction time frames. This isn't to say that speech recognition hasn't gotten a lot better, and isn't used in many more ways today than it was in the past -- but it's not come anywhere close to replacing a keyboard for a variety of good reasons that have much less to do with technology than with how people work. Imagine just how noisy your typical office would be if you had to speak to your computer rather than type? Typing isn't used just because it's efficient, but because it lets people work without disturbing others, and without letting everyone else know every little thing that you're doing. Yes, speech recognition technology is getting much better and it's useful in some situations, but it's certainly not the perfect interface for an awful lot of what people do on a computer.

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Bill Gates Joins The Growing Social Network Exodus

from the nothing-lasts-forever dept

Extrapolation of what's happening "now" is one of the most dangerous things in trying to predict the future. If something is growing quickly today, it doesn't mean that will last. Take social networks for example. Historically, they have a pretty standard pattern. There's a huge rush of growth, as people think it's new and neat, and they sign up all their friends. Then there's a flat period where people are still using it, but some begin to question why. Then people start to realize that, beyond reconnecting with some old friends and acquaintances, there really isn't that much to do there -- and that realization may come even sooner if they're getting bombarded with advertisements. It happened way back in the '90s with Six Degrees. It happened with Friendster in the first half of the decade. Yet, some people and companies believed that MySpace and Facebook would be different. Certainly, both companies recognized this problem to some extent, and have worked to add more things that you can "do" on their sites. Both still get a ton of traffic and usage and aren't going anywhere soon. However, there are some worrying signs. Google recently noted that the ads it's put on MySpace don't perform very well (which is something of a problem, since Google has guaranteed at least $900 million in ad revenue to MySpace). And, now, reports are coming out that users are, on average, spending noticeably less time on both MySpace and Facebook, with some leaving it behind. And, what better way to amusingly drive that point home, than to point out that even Bill Gates has killed his Facebook page just a few months after Microsoft dumped $240 million into the company?

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Bill Gates Isn't Calling For Kinder Capitalism -- He's Calling For Better Understanding Of Capitalism

from the it's-not-all-about-greed dept

Many people seem to think that capitalism is only about money. It leads to bizarre and incorrect claims suggesting that behavior that doesn't maximize dollars isn't "rational," as neoclassical economists would suggest. But, that's generally a misunderstanding of economics -- where it isn't money that's the driving force but the utility or the benefit that a person receives from any given action. Quite often, that benefit is in the form of money, but it certainly doesn't mean that it always needs to be. As we all know (but sometimes need to be reminded about), money does not equal happiness (utility). So, while it's a good thing to hear Bill Gates is giving a talk in Davos about embracing capitalist principles in urging companies to take up issues dealing with the world's poor, it's hardly a "different" capitalism or a "kinder" capitalism, as implied by the Wall Street Journal. It's actually just a more accurate understanding of capitalism -- where it's about decisions based on actual benefits, which include both monetary and non-monetary benefits.

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Bill Gates Damns Zune With Faint Praise

from the the-anti-Jobs dept

By now, most people are aware of the "reality distortion field" that surrounds Steve Jobs. Folks attending his keynotes or product launches talk about how it's almost a religious experience, where he really does make you feel like the latest iPod nano is the greatest device ever invented. It's no secret that Bill Gates has a rather different personality -- but it's still quite bizarre to see the level of faint praise Gates gives the Zune as its second generation launches:

"For something we pulled together in six months, we are very pleased with the satisfaction we got.... It was just so-so on the software side. I'm sure a year from now we'll do even better."

He does insist that the satisfaction was "superhigh," but satisfaction and passion are two very different beasts. Of course, this fits right in with how Microsoft has attacked this problem from the beginning: designing the product by committee, rather than coming up with something that they can be passionate about. When even your CEO can't show much passion about your products (especially when those products are up against Steve Jobs' latest products), you've got a problem.

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