Microsoft’s Murderous Partnerships
I was reading Daniel Eran’s (of RoughlyDrafted) latest article on the history of Microsoft Office and a great point was brought up: despite Microsoft’s bluster about working with others, it routinely stabs its partners in the back when convenient. The general message is this: if Microsoft partners with you or buys your technology, it’s because they want to kill you. There weren’t many examples given in the article, though, so I tried to think of as many as I could. The results were startling.
Seattle Computer Products
IBM was working on the PC, but it needed an operating system. Originally, IBM looked into licensing CP/M from Seattle Computer Products, but it was too expensive. When Microsoft conned IBM into trusting it to provide an operating system for the PC, Bill Gates needed to somehow acquire an operating system they could convince IBM was good enough. He found a CP/M look-alike named QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) sold by the very same Seattle Computer Products. Bill Gates bought it for $25,000 by concealing his relationship with IBM, and licensed it to IBM under the name PC-DOS.[1]
IBM
Microsoft’s PC-DOS license agreement with IBM did not preclude Microsoft from licensing PC-DOS to other companies as well, so that’s what they did, doling out expensive licenses to IBM’s primary competitors and getting rich in the process. Microsoft make a fortune selling out IBM.
Apple
As Daniel Eran explained, Microsoft partnered with Apple in 1981 to deliver office software for the Macintosh, then stole technical secrets from Apple over the next few years in order to build their own knock-off graphical computing environment called Windows 1.0. They then ported all of their Mac software to the PC, essentially giving the keys to the castle to Apple’s then-biggest rival, IBM.
IBM again
Microsoft partnered with IBM again to work on a joint project: a new, next-generation operating system called OS/2. After some public-relations blustering, Microsoft promptly ditched IBM and OS/2, stealing technology from it to incorporate into the still-unusable Windows (now at version 2.0).
All the other computer manufacturers
Aware that the PC clone manufacturers like Packard-Bell and Gateway were at each other’s throats, Microsoft signed exclusive licensing agreements with all of them to provide them with Windows 3.1, which was years ahead of the PC-DOS (now re-branded MS-DOS) it had previously licensed them. Microsoft then used this leverage to bully all of them into bundling its other software by using the threat of revoking their licenses or raising prices to put them at a disadvantage to their competitors.
Mosiac
Netscape was an outgrowth of NCSA Mosiac and was a popular web browser during the mid 90s. Microsoft licensed Mosiac, re-branding it “Internet Explorer 1.0″, and used its leverage with Apple and the PC clone manufacturers as well as its control of Windows to put Internet Explorer everywhere for free. Microsoft also added proprietary extensions to IE, ensuring that websites made for IE wouldn’t render properly on Netscape. Netscape couldn’t compete with the IE juggernaut as more and more web pages were coded for IE, and IE became the dominant web browser.
PlaysForSure
Microsoft licensed its PlaysForSure DRM technology to various partners like Yahoo! for use in their online music stores, which Microsoft hoped would challenge Apple’s iTunes Music Store juggernaut. When it became obvious that this plan was not succeeding, Microsoft built its own media player, the Zune[2]. The Zune uses used a different DRM scheme, making it incompatible with all the songs sold by Microsoft’s music partners. Plays for sure? Really?
Apple again
After pledging to deliver new versions of Microsoft Office through 2010, Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit announced that Office 2008 would ship without compatibility for VBA macros, which many businesses depend on. The lack of macro support effectively kills Mac Office in the enterprise, and forces IT departments that use macros to look into unstable open-source software or move to Windows Office.
That’s a lot of murderousness. You might wonder, “How the heck can Microsoft get away with this!?!” THe answer is that they usually don’t. The majority of the time, they get sued and lose, but their loss amounts to pocket change compared to their profits on the illegal deals themselves. For example, Microsoft paid 1 million to SCP in response to complaints about concealing its relationship with IBM to buy QDOS on the cheap. But in the long run, did it matter? Does anyone remember SCP? Who got the better deal? Microsoft knows this, and they consistently abuse the law because they know their legal losses will easily be eclipsed by the obscene profits they’ll make by avoiding legality.
[1]
I find it terribly disheartening that the majority of the world’s computers at one time ran an operating system originally named “Quick and dirty.”
[2]
Actually, the Zune is just a re-branded Toshiba Gigabeat; Microsoft did next to no hardware engineering of its own on the Zune.