Winner of the 1993 Price Waterhouse Leadership Award for Lifetime Achievement,
Computerworld Smithsonian Awards
Location: Microsoft Corporation, Bellevue, Washington
Interviewer: David Allison (DA)
Division of Computers, Information, & Society
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
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BG: Windows announced in 1983 and didn't ship for a couple of years after that. Windows 1.0 actually used a combination of Window capabilities that had tiling and overlapping. But the tiling, which was used in some Xerox products, we thought was hard for people to understand.
So we went to pure overlapping in Windows 2.0. This is Windows 2.0 [boot up screen] here. You can see we weren't using icons at this point. We were, for the first time, letting you run multiple applications at the same time. We could have developed this thing in such a way that we would just add graphics to a single application. But we decided for the first time to have applications share memory, share the processor, and be able to move data back and forth.
So, Windows was more than just graphics. It was a lot of things all coupled together. We could have gone in little half-steps but we just decided to go all the way there at once. This product, Windows 2.0, certainly did a lot better than Windows 1.0 because there were 386s to run it on and some new applications.
But it was actually the mid 1990 release, version 3.0, that got Windows into the mainstream. It was the popularity of advanced graphics. The 386 started to come down in price, even though it had come out in 1986. It was 1990 before the price difference was so small it was obvious you should just buy 386 machines. This is when the 286 started to go down very, very rapidly.
DA: Bill, you are also getting into networking at this point. How did Microsoft respond to the desire of the marketplace to do more networking?
BG: Well, networking was something everyone had been talking about for a long time. Exchanging data electronically whether it be mail, files, or databases. And Ethernet had been there as a standard. IBM had Token Ring. And the prices of the cards came down. But, actually, the percentages of PCs networked was fairly low. And we saw that as an opportunity.
We did networking software called MS-Net that ran on MS-DOS. But our first powerful networking product was the LAN Manager product that actually required the OS/2 operating system. This put us into direct competition with Novell, who was really the most successful in those early networking days providing their Netware product for file and print sharing.
We positioned our product as running on a general purpose operating system, more flexible, more tied-in with the PC in a very rich way. But they had immense success with the kind of lean performance they had in their product. And, we were a little bit crippled by the slow acceptance of OS/2 that LAN Manager was dependent on, until much later when Windows NT came out.
DA: Bill, you had said earlier that Microsoft was interested very early on in pushing toward the area of multimedia. It began to be realized in full form in the 486 machine. Tell us about your vision for multimedia and how you pushed it at Microsoft.
BG: The CD-ROM was the first consumer device to use digital storage. And so on a single disk to encode high-quality music they had over a thousand times as much capacity as a floppy disk. And that is a pretty dramatic improvement. I mean it allows you to take things that would have been silly on the floppy disk and ship them. In fact, the CD costs only $2.00 or so to press. So, without much increase in cost you've got something far better.
Now, it means that the PC has to have one of these CD-ROM drives in it. And, of course, the media is read-only so that it is not without trade-offs. But, we saw this early, well before the first CD-ROM conference, that this would make the PC an information device. So that kids who wanted an encyclopedia or sports information or medical information would turn to it, which would really broaden the use of the PC.
So, we had a conference and talked about tools and standards. We really got people galvanized around the idea of the CD as a peripheral. Now, it took a long time for the drive prices to come down. And all that time we were working on applications, including things like this movie review guide called Cinemania. We were working on an encyclopedia which we call Encarta, an art gallery product, a Bookshelf product, a great number of these that provides a lot of information.
Just to show you real quickly, if I'm interested in movies, I have Cinemania in the disk here. I can select movies with a certain star in it. I can select the type of movie. Let's say that I just want comedies and Westerns. I can choose that. Let's say that I just want the ones that were nominated for Academy Awards. Here, I see all of those choices. If there is one that I particularly like, like The Graduate, I just move over and click on that. It is now going out to the disk now, finding not only the review from some of the famous review guides, but also, for example, is a picture of Dustin Hoffman. We can go in and look at the Maltin Review and see what he had to say.
If we see, in this Maltin Review, the name of somebody like Anne Bancroft and we want to know about her and what other movies she has done, very straightforward. We could ask to see that list as well as her biography. And, then, if one of those intrigues us, we can go to that. Or, it is very easy to just go back to where we were, the movie, and click on Dustin Hoffman to see the things that he has done. So, the ratings, the information, the ability to know where you can mail order videos, making up a list, it's all right there. And a lot of fun to work with, if you are somebody like myself, who likes movies. So, with thousands of these CDs you'll find things that almost anyone would find a particular interest in.
DA: It seems to me that with the advent of the CD, Microsoft moves yet another stage in its evolution to being not just a company that is dealing with languages and later operating systems, but now with content itself. Did you see that as a new step in your evolution as a corporate direction?
BG: Well, it is certainly an evolution where, when you go from an operating system to a word processor you're already taking that step; the quality of the manual, the tutorial, the spelling dictionary are probably more import or equally important to the code itself.
When you move up to something like Cinemania, now although there is a technical element of the speed and the interface, making sure we've gone out and licensed the right reviews and have the relationship with those people so that every year it gets updated. We get the material very rapidly. It's almost like publishing. It is taking the word software in a very broad way. And it means hiring in lots of graphic artists, lots of people who are very artistic in how they think.
Now, developers are, you know, managing developers and hiring them, there's a lot of the same things about it.. You want to make the jobs really fun jobs. But it does mean that we are bringing together a lot of skills. And it's very much a new frontier, but one that we see as a critical part of our future.
DA: Another part of your future, Bill, that is also on this machine, is Windows NT. Do you want to switch to that and talk a little bit about how that was a new corporate direction.
BG: Throughout the history of the PC, there was always the question of what kind of application could it be trusted for, in terms of speed, capacity, reliability, and richness of the operating system. Good corporations put their databases, their analysis, down onto the PC. And, of course, as the PC has gotten faster and all of these tools have improved, people have been willing to do more and more.
But, the most demanding users, certainly into the early 90's, were using mini computers or workstations, not PCs. Even though they knew that the PC was cheaper, more flexible, better tools out there, they just thought they'd run out of gas. And, a part of that was the speed of the chip. But another part was that Windows and DOS just didn't give them all of the advanced capabilities.
And so we started from scratch with a team headed by Dave Cutler to build a very high-end system that would have the same user interface as Microsoft Windows. And that got named "Windows NT", which is short for Windows New Technology. It is from scratch, 32-bit only, portable to other chips, supports a multiprocessor, and compatible with UNIX. A lot of features. Four million new lines of code.
So, in the late summer if 1993, Microsoft shipped Windows NT, which we are seeing here right now. And that got us into a lot of corporate accounts. It gave us a great server platform. And really became the first platform that you could say, any application, whether it came from a mainframe, mini, Mac, PC, whatever, it could be run on Windows NT. And Windows NT was such a high-volume system that that would be attractive. So, it is the best of the network server world, the workstation world, the PC world, even the large computer world brought out in a product running on PC hardware.
DA: We are going to raise an issue about workgroup computing, if you want to comment on that. We were just interested in how you were positioning Microsoft as a company to respond to the needs of workgroup computing.
BG: Well, that word, "workgroup computing", is the idea of people working together. Now initially that meant building a network so that people could share files or share the printer. Then it came to mean sharing mail messages with each other or sharing a database. But now people are moving on and thinking of workflow and bulletin boards where you have large groups of people sharing complex information. Products like Microsoft Mail or other people's mail packages are also moving up to that. We are building network group capability into the operating system so that the idea of sending messages to other people, in any application. It is built right in. So, we see workgroups as something that is really going to push personal computing to new limits. In a sense, it is the killer application of the 1990s.
Computers and Societal Transformation
DA: Bill, we just spent the last two days looking at pretty phenomenal history that has come from your beginning with a little BASIC tape. We've mostly talked about product development of machines, but at the same time, because of the work that you've done and the work that your company has done, society has transformed. As you look out from the corporate perspective to the world around you, how do you characterize the changes that you've brought into the workplace, into the home. What do you see as the most significant about those changes?
BG: Certainly, the PC has had a major impact. It has brought computing down to a personal level. It's made all types of businesses more efficient and even started to have an impact on education. It has created a great software business, a very innovative and competitive business that is defining new areas.
Now, in terms of the promise of the PC, as you go back to our original vision of a PC on every desk and in every home, that is still not achieved. The PC is today more of a creation tool for documents and spreadsheets. And only as the PC is used more as a communications tool where you find other people with common interests or find products, or find out what is going on through the PC. But certainly will be happening and it really will get out to everyone. So, there is still quite a bit in front of us.
Everyone who has been in this industry has had a chance to participate in something very exciting. It is kind of like early steam engines or factories or something. The timing was right for the people who got to do it. And that is a lucky thing for them. Certainly, Microsoft got to play that role and involved a lot of people, and it's been fun. The impact it's there, but compared to what the potential is, it is still quite modest.
DA: Some people have said, Bill, that a freer flow of information, a greater control of information was instrumental in bringing some of the changes that we saw in the Soviet Union and what we are seeing in China and are seeing in other parts of the world. Do you think that is an overstatement? Or do you think that is a realistic assessment?
BG: Anytime we have new forms of communication it changes behavior whether it is political or business or any type of behavior. Radio and T.V. did that. The PC will be classed as big or bigger an advancement in communications than those devices were. So far it is mostly electronic mail, printing, newsletters. But even at this stage that means that it is so much harder to suppress word getting out about things.
You know printing presses used to be big, expensive, and easy to locate. And now, anytime you let people have PCs you are letting them have a printing press that can do very high-quality work and can send electronic messages around with great ease across national borders and to people all over the world. So, certainly, it is a tool that will change politics amongst other fields.
DA: You mentioned your vision of where the PC will be on every desk and in every home. You clearly have had a vision about the kinds of products that would come out and yet you said a minute ago, "This is just the beginning." What do you see as lying ahead in terms of further unfolding of the vision that you have held onto so continuously over the last 20 years?
BG: Well, the PC will continue to evolve. In fact, you'll think of it simply as a flat screen that will range from a wallet size device to a notebook, to a desktop, to a wall. And besides the size of the screen, the only other characteristic will be whether it is wired to an optic fiber or operating over a wireless connection. And those computers will be everywhere.
You can find other people who have things that are in common. You can post messages. You can watch shows. The flexibility that this will provide is really quite incredible. And already there is the mania in discussing this so called "Information Highway" which is the idea of connecting up these devices not only in business, but in home, and making sure that video feeds work very well across these new networks.
So we've only come a small way. We haven't changed the way that markets are organized. We haven't changed the way people educate themselves, or socialize, or express their political opinions, in nearly the way that we will over the next ten years. And so the software is going to have to lead the way and provide the kind of ease of use, security, and richness that those applications demand.
DA: Talking about some major changes, is there anything that is lying ahead that you find scary as well as exciting?
BG: Well, if you look out far enough the computer will eventually learn to reason in somewhat the same way that humans do, so called "artificial intelligence". If you take that far enough you can imagine an evolution, essentially, moving over to silicon-based life and carbon-based life, playing a much more limited role than it does today [laughs].
Now that is in some ways off in perhaps the progress that there will only come through the cross effect of the sequencing and understanding of human genome and the learning techniques that have evolved for us and then mapping those into a substrate that will have better execution, that is, instead of chemical transmittal, the high-speed electronic implementation of some of those same algorithms.
So, that could be a little scary. In the meantime, which is a very long time, the computer is a great tool and it is a very empowering tool and there is a lot of fun work to be done.
DA: Bill, we've talked about many of the continuities in Microsoft and some changes in Microsoft. Do you think the corporation you have will continue down the path, or do you see some major new branches that you'll be heading towards in the next few years?
BG: Every three years are important in terms of redefining what we do. Any company that stays the same will be passed by very quickly and there are lots of fine examples of that. So, working with content companies, phone companies, cable companies, thinking through even radically more user easy-to-use interface that we've had to date. These are all necessary things. And because we now have a research group, and we are out there working with lots of universities and are able to continue to hire great people, I'm very optimistic about our future. But, it is a future full of change and surprise.
DA: Is there anything else you want to add?
BG: I'd say that my job, throughout all this, has been, I think, the most fun job I can imagine having. And partly the people I've gotten to work with outside the company. Certainly there are great people inside the company. And certainly, for at least a decade or [laughs], that will just continue to be the case.
DA: It has been a terrific pleasure. You've worked very hard and I thank you so much for your help.
BG: Sure. Someday I will be glad I did it.
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David K. Allison, Chairman, Division of Information Technology and Society. National
Museum of American History.
Research specialties: Computer technologies; military technology; social history
of technology.
B.A. (1973) St. John's College; Ph.D. (1980) Princeton University.
09/27/1994 Final Edit Kris Kaeding
06/28/1995 Webification by David Allison and Mikel Maron
Copyright 1994