It was 1998 and I was on a training course at IBM learning Java. News had just came in that the US Department of Justice has brought an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft claiming anti-competitive behaviour. The class broke into a little applause as the general consensus was this would be good for choice, for some of the other “interesting” technologies to thrive such as Java (Applets), Real Player, Linux, network computers and what not (Apple was just coming out of the doldrums at that time with the return of Steve Jobs). I began following this line of news very closely.

One of the central tenet of the case was on whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle Internet Explorer with Windows (since this practically killed off Netscape Navigator). Microsoft defended itself vigorously claiming this was merely a result of her innovation, which of led to some major debates between the two sides. The case was “won” by the Justice Department in 2001 as the judge ordered the breakup of Microsoft into two companies. The “joy” was short lived as Microsoft lodged an appeal and the decision got over turned, and case just ran out of steam and an out of court settlement was made (this, conveniently, coincided with George W Bush winning the election and it was alleged he was not keen on the case).

Hind sight is a beautiful thing, and if you have been a personal computer user for the last 10 years, do you see Microsoft as an innovator in the technology space? Consider the following:

A) IE6 came out in August 2001, and it hardly set the pulse racing as it mainly fixed many of the instabilities of IE5.x and had PARTIAL support for web standards (e.g. CSS,  DHTML, XML/DOM, …etc). IE7 was not released for another 5 years and in my opinion, only happened as a result of competition from Firefox. Where is the innovation?

B) In Sept 2002, the first version of Firefox came out (called Phoenix at that time, rising from the ashes of Netscape I guess). It introduced tabbed browsing, themes, pop up blocker, has tiny footprint, was lightening fast, stable and more secure. Subsequent versions then introduced themes, plugins and anti-phishing protection – all of this before Oct 2006. Now that’s innovation. Oh, did I mention it’s support & adherence to web standards were light years ahead as well.

C) Fast forward to today, and whenever I read about there are still tons of people using IE6 it makes me laugh and cry. Laugh at the folly and excuses about not able to upgrade (the IT department said it will break our OS setup), at the fatal nature of browser vulnerabilities that exposes the heart of the Windows, and how her own “innovation” is biting her up the backside big time. Cry at the countless hours that me and my colleagues sweat over fiddling obscure CSS directives just to make a webpage look right, and the non-standard JavaScript that breaks practically every other browser. I have used Firefox since 2002 and never did I have any trouble causing a conflict with IE or Windows after installing it.

D) The iPod is an innovation, Firefox is an innovation, the Palm Treo is an innovation, the Mac is an innovation, the iPhone is an innovation, Playstation is an innovation … can you spot the common theme – none of these came from Microsoft. It is all about embrace and extend!

Just to finish up, can you imagine what it will be like if Microsoft did get broken up into 2 companies (one selling the OS and one selling Office software) back in 2001? I will probably not have the “privilege” in using Windows ME, XP and Vista. I’ll probably be running my favourite Linux and my Mac with the latest Microsoft Office, complete with MS Project and Visio. We wouldn’t have to code websites using proprietary extensions, and programming environments such as Java, PHP, Flash and Ruby will have access to simple yet powerful APIs to manipulate office documents.

Now the thought of that brings a little smile to me when I wind down for the day …. until the next morning when I realize it had all been a dream.