All the three companies above have in their own way revolutionized the world of computers. There are more similarities between these software giants than what meets the eye.
Microsoft with its windows series of products has dominated worlds PC market for nearly two decades now. Virtually a whopping 95% of worlds PCs run on Microsoft OS. As you must have heard in the spider man movies, with great power comes great responsibility. But often power is misused. There are many instances of Microsoft bullying in world of software. Microsoft introduced its flagship product MS Office for its windows OS in 1989. At that time the dominant office suite included WordPerfect (Novell) and Lotus 123(IBM). As you might have guessed after introduction of MS Office both the applications were gone from the PC market in a few years. How did Microsoft achieve this within a short period??? Later anti trust litigations against Microsoft accused MS using what one calls as “UNDOCUMENTED API CALLS” in its Office products. While Novell and IBM where made to work with APIs provided by Microsoft to develop their office applications. MS was accused of hiding those system call interfaces which would perform the task faster and efficiently than documented API calls given to Novell and IBM thus giving unfair advantage to its products then its rivals. Another instance of dirty business tactics happened when internet revolution was burgeoning. As you might all know Netscape navigator was a very successful browser used during the mid 1990s. As usual Microsoft never likes people running non Microsoft products on Microsoft OS. It decided to ship its own browser the Internet Explorer (IE) along with its windows’98. IE was there right on the users desktop as users default browser, MS made IE free. No marks for guessing what happened in a few years time. Netscape went along the way WordPerfect and Lotus 123 did, into the software ruins. Instead of using giving the users the choice it just thrusted IE in the hands of users (IE did win the browser war cause it was as good as Netscape, So most users didn’t feel the need to switch over). The majority of criticism of MS has been for its business tactics, often described with the motto "EMBRACE, EXTEND AND EXTINGUISH". Microsoft initially embraces a competing standard or product, then extends it to produce their own incompatible version of the software or standard, which in time extinguishes competition that does not or cannot use Microsoft's new version. These and other tactics have led to various companies and governments filing lawsuits against Microsoft. In fact in 2002 Microsoft lost a lawsuit against it (for abusing its monopoly in PC OS to make users use its own product), the judge ordered the Microsoft to be split into two separate companies (People will remember what happened to BELL Corp in telecom sector when it had monopoly of the phone market, it was split into 7 companies to encourage competition). But the shrewd businessman Gates was, a handsome donation to George W Bush’s election Campaign ensured, MS escaped with appeal by just paying a huge compensation to Sun Microsystems and other Companies. Gates ensured his goose which laid the Golden Egg remained intact, the split was averted.
