Period 1
3/25/18
Microsoft's rise to power
Today in the Silicon Valley, we know Microsoft as a monstrosity of tech power, run by one of the wealthiest men in the whole world. However, Microsoft was not always like this, and like everything else it had to have started somewhere. When the internet first started it was thought to be like a mysterious web that only the "nerdy" people knew how to use and seemed useless to everyone else. However, it began to make its way into offices of corporations and into the warehouses of companies. Once it began to expand even more, towards the everyday person, there was an opportunity for someone to create a way for the internet to be more user-friendly to those who weren't so tech savvy. This is where Bill Gates began his company, at its beginning, Microsoft focused on just creating a software that had the ability to surf the web and made it easier for people. However as the internet became a bigger and bigger sensation, Microsoft's market expanded. Microsoft created an entire home system that was downloaded not only the internet onto a users computer but an entirely new world. They introduced numerous different aspects of the internet to people that had never seen it before, such as a search engine, online dating, a mailbox, etc. As Microsoft became a larger and larger company it also made more and more competitors. A company known as Netscape created a web browser engine that made it easier for those who had not used the internet before to use the internet. In order to put Netscape out of business, Microsoft just implemented their whole idea into Microsoft's home browser. Although this ultimately put Netscape out of business, it also put Bill Gates in a court lawsuit against NetScapes CEO, James Barksdale who claimed that Microsoft use illegal actions to take away their competition like Netscape. Microsoft and Apple were the two major companies that competed with one another during the rise of the internet and we still see this same competition today. 
I would also like to draw a connection between the early stages of the internet (the years leading to Microsoft's lawsuit for being a monopoly) and the Gilded Age. Entrepreneurs like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan all were reasons for massive industrial growth in America, putting the nation ahead of Europe, just as America lead the world in technology in the 80s and 90s. Moreover, all of these executives, Bill Gates included, bought out competition, but were busted by the government after amassing too much power. It seems to be a trend in America, or maybe any capitalist country, that, upon a new industry being discovered, there is an initial scramble for dominance. Then, one company, such as Standard Oil or Microsoft, emerges dominant and continues to grow until it is stopped by either consumers (i.e. its product becomes obsolete, as in the case of IBM), or the government steps in to allow capitalism to continue functioning.
ReplyDeleteI forgot! Source: "Sinews of Democracy" class doc worksheet
DeleteNice post Gavin. I liked how you further expanded on a topic we went over in class, Microsoft's rise to power. This age of technology was fueled by .com companies and the internet, and I became interested in how the internet actually started. Through some research, I found out that the first workable prototype of the internet was an attempt to allow multiple computers to communicate on a single network, and that it was funded by the US Department of Defense.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.history.com/news/ask-history/who-invented-the-internet
I think this was a really interesting post Gavin. It is interesting to see how Microsoft took advantage of the new technologies of the time in order to allow them to rise to power. Bill Gates was clearly a very smart strategist who saw opportunities all around him. I think that the fact that Microsoft was one of the first companies to fully take advantage of this also made them more susceptible to getting sued. They were able to own a large amount of the tech space and therefore were more likely to be accused of being a monopoly, which is what happened. They were accused of being a monopoly and stopping users from downloading competing software on their devices.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/04/business/us-vs-microsoft-overview-us-judge-says-microsoft-violated-antitrust-laws-with.html