[11881] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Information and Liberty
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Frezza (via RadioMail))
Fri Apr 22 18:34:20 1994
Date: Fri, 22 Apr 1994 07:05:03 PDT
From: Bill Frezza (via RadioMail) <frezza@radiomail.net>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
To: love@essential.org
Jamie,
You state:
<Bill, you seemed pretty sure that the information revolution will blow
away all these large corporations. Would you explain the success of
microsoft to me? -jamie>
Come on, that's an easy one.
Largeness per se is not the thing that will be blown away. It's largeness
based on old forms of organization, old market models, and old symbiotic
relationships with the coercive power of governments (relationships, by
the way, that you are feebly trying
to perpetuate).
Microsoft is still a young, vibrant, entreprenuerial organization in a
brand new industry. It is, in fact, just getting ready to enter its
mid-life. And yes, it will have a mid-life crisis. I believe that
their dominance of the industry is assured for the next 5 years or so
but I wouldn't want to bet on whether they will still be a major factor 10
or 15 years from now. Much depends on what new businesses they get into.
This is always a very tricky proposition because creating new
business requires destroying old ones so it is, therefore, best accomplished
by someone with nothing to lose.
Now Intel - they are headed for trouble. They have this finely tuned
machine totally dependent on a rigid view of computing. Their management
structure shows no flexibility whatsoever. Come a discontinuity in
the market and they are toast, just like DEC.
Frankly, this is not really my area of expertise. If you really want to
learn more about business models talk to Mark Stahlman at New Media
(stahlman@radiomail.net). He foretold of the apocolypse at IBM and I believe
is now trying to help bring them back (good luck on that hopeless cause).
Cheers,
Bill
