American History 1988
Chapter 395 - 384: Striking Everywhere

Chapter 395: Chapter 384: Striking Everywhere

Compaq quickly compromised; they didn’t even last the 60 days Microsoft had given them.

The time was just over two weeks, after a meeting with their internal senior executives.

Compaq’s CEO, Eckhard Pfeiffer, sent a reply to Microsoft and quickly, on all computers newly manufactured in May, Microsoft’s Navigator browser was added back.

This matter was no secret within the industry; many of their peers strongly sensed it.

Microsoft was deliberately choosing to punish Compaq, to warn other computer manufacturers.

Setting other things aside, this was also Microsoft’s public statement to those business partners who did not act entirely as it demanded.

It wanted to make it clear to them the consequences of disobedience; there may be countless computer manufacturers, but there’s only one operating system.

Fearing retribution from Microsoft, most computer company executives declined to discuss these matters with news organizations.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s executives never apologized for their actions, nor did they make any attempt to conceal them.

Of course, Microsoft was even less likely to return the strategic benefits they had gained through these maneuvers.

Even though industry executives were reluctant to talk about it, there were still media that exposed it.

On the first day of May, the Yahoo portal website’s homepage published suspicions of Microsoft’s alleged monopolistic practices.

This news sparked some heated discussions among the general public, who were surprised that the world’s largest software company—Microsoft—would use such unconventional competitive measures behind the scenes.

As expected, Microsoft immediately denied it and demanded that Yahoo immediately retract the false news.

However, Yahoo didn’t give a damn about it. You think you got something, sue me.

Even the reporters from the Yahoo news editorial department were secretly hoping that Microsoft would actually send a legal letter.

They were in need of a big story to enhance Yahoo’s influence in the news media industry.

Having just gone public, Yahoo was destined to spark a new revolution.

They hoped to secure the top spot in internet media, and in terms of timeliness, Yahoo was much faster than traditional print media.

However, Microsoft just blustered a few words and didn’t actually plan to have a real confrontation with Yahoo.

Seattle was now distracted by other matters and had no time to engage in a war of words with Yahoo.

Despite the buzz outside, it was strange that the industry kept silent about it, offering no comments on the news.

Part of the reason was that Yahoo reported the news without providing any evidence.

The other part of the reason was that everyone was waiting; they knew this matter was far from over.

Even Netscape just mocked a few times and then made no further statements.

After all, the current restriction from Microsoft for computer manufacturers was just to pre-install the Navigator browser.

As for Netscape’s Explorer browser, Seattle had not taken any further action.

Dean had not been idle during this time either.

The report on Yahoo was on his instigation; only to protect potential allies, Microsoft’s threat letter was not published.

Although such news was discussed for a few days after everyone read it, it soon passed.

But at least Yahoo sent a signal to the public that Microsoft would stop at nothing when it came down to it.

Meanwhile, inside Bit Company, Dean approved Thomas’s plan to establish the Toktok information portal website.

Don’t get it wrong; the portal website’s core wasn’t a search engine—it was news-oriented.

With tens of millions of Toktok users, it would have been such a waste not to explore its potential.

It wouldn’t be too much when users logged into their Toktok account to get a news popup, right?

Instant messaging, community ecology, games had all been done; adding news content wouldn’t hurt.

It’s all free anyway; you might as well have a shot whether there are dates or not.

Mainly, Thomas was ambitiously looking to enter the media industry, with tens of millions of active users boosting his confidence to unprecedented levels.

Ultimately, Yahoo’s IPO set an example for all internet companies that a free information era was the future of the internet.

In setting up the Toktok News Editorial Department, Dean did not participate.

He was too busy making calls to Washington; Hillary and the others were very concerned about the situation at Netscape.

Dean needed to explain some matters to them in advance; after all, this wasn’t just his business.

And as Microsoft made a series of moves, the market share of the Navigator browser finally increased to around 12%.

Clearly, solving problems at the source could noticeably improve Microsoft’s situation in the browser market.

Tasting success, Gates was already pondering the next round of plans.

For example, applying pressure on ISP operators, Microsoft once again started an intense telephone bombardment.

However, what puzzled Gates was that these ISP operators neither flatly refused Microsoft nor gave any positive response.

They always dragged their feet, putting Microsoft off with claims of internal discussions, stalling the various benefits promised by Microsoft.

It was... as if they had all agreed together, and Gates just couldn’t figure it out.

"I got it, Bob, good job. Stick to the previous plan and continue to stall them, every day gained is a day earned,"

Dean gave a few more instructions before sighing and hanging up the phone.

The call had just come from Netcom’s Bob, who reported that Microsoft was offering him benefits and had even added more generous conditions.

Unfortunately, what Gates didn’t know was that Dean’s investment company held over 30% of Netcom’s shares.

He was the real power behind Netcom, and if one wanted the largest ISP in California to switch to using Microsoft’s browser, they needed to call him.

Look at how Gates handled this, Dean shook his head, not impressed at all.

In fact, not only Netcom, Dean held significant shares in 90% of America’s ISPs.

Four years ago, he had put forth a real US Dollar amount of twenty million to support the development of private networking.

At that time, the internet was just budding and AOL, with a market value over ten billion US Dollars, was valued at only a few tens of millions.

So why was Netscape’s Navigator able to dominate the browser market continuously? And why couldn’t Microsoft break through with the ISP operators?

The reason lies here, with Dean having nearly made the ISP market impenetrable.

Of course, he didn’t do this without paying a price, such as the cross-shareholding with Netscape and AOL was a form of interest exchange.

Also, there were some smaller ISP operators where Dean knew that they had almost no future, but he still increased his funding.

Even if this money was destined to go down the drain, he had to do it; losing money was also a form of business.

However, with Microsoft aggressively expanding, there was still some good news.

Palm’s first-generation PDA had sold 300,000 units, and it had only been a little over two months since its launch.

Tsk, if one side is dark, the other shines.

Now Palm could announce without hesitation that they were the most popular, highest-selling, and most owned hand-held computer manufacturer in the market.

This figure was enough to attract some developers to create third-party applications for the Palm OS platform.

It’s worth mentioning that the $399 backlit version, which came later, contributed to nearly a third of the total sales.

A large portion of the orders came from government personnel in public institutions; Palm’s email synchronization feature was simply their favorite.

There was no need for briefcases anymore; carrying a Palm was like having the whole world in the palm of your hand.

They could check emails they had missed reading yesterday at the meeting and respond to important messages on the spot.

Just connect it to a computer afterward and click sync, and everything would be sorted out.

Also, thanks to this feature, Palm snatched the market originally belonging to GridPad.

Ironic, as Hawkins and his colleagues were originally employees of the Grid company.

But no one could blame others for this; Grid company had not been progressive, and their GridPad had been treading water for years.

That Palm could replace it upon its revolutionary debut was hardly surprising.

After congratulating Hawkins and his team over the phone, Dean was back on the road to Seattle.

This wasn’t to confront Gates mano-a-mano, nor was it about an issue with Amazon.

Dean was planning a visit to a former senior executive of Microsoft, more precisely, to exchange experiences with each other, or perhaps to talk business.

This executive’s name was Robert Glaser, who after leaving Microsoft had founded Real Networks in 1994.

On one hand, they developed a universal audio and video player for internet services, and on the other hand, provided services to media companies, like setting up NBC’s programs on the internet.

Yes, it was a streaming media company, and its player was cross-platform.

Real Player supported all existing audio and video compression formats and could play while downloading.

This was a bit of dark tech as most other players required the download to finish before playback.

Apart from that, it could adjust the audio and video quality based on internet speed.

The faster the internet speed, the higher the quality.

With such an intelligent design, one could boldly say that Real Player could knock out 99% of the players on the market.

This included Microsoft’s Media Player, which was being pushed in the Windows 95 system.

Interestingly, the founder of Real Networks came from Microsoft.

Because he understood the shortcomings of his former products, Robert Glaser could design an even superior Real Player.

Real Networks was very successful in its early days, launching its 1.0 player the same year it was founded and broadcasting NBA basketball games online.

But the hallmark event was in September ’95 in Seattle, when they live-streamed the baseball game between the Mariners and the New York Yankees.

It was the first live sports broadcast on the internet, not only making a name for Real Networks but also generating a profit of 1.8 million US Dollars.

Afterward, with the rapid development of the internet, Real Player reached a status that could contend with Media Player in just over half a year.

However, because they rose too quickly, Real Networks had caught the attention of Microsoft.

Since their press conference in Seattle at the end of the previous year, Microsoft had set its own internet strategy.

One part was the browser, another was MSN, and streaming media players were also part of it.

Now looking over its strategic plan, Microsoft suddenly found that it was facing challenges everywhere.

Its browser was being beaten by Netscape, and MSN was no match for AOL in the short term.

Media Player, thought to be a sure winner, was caught off-guard by Real Networks.

So while concurrently competing with Netscape, Microsoft was also planning to take care of Real Networks.

Then Dean arrived, and any company facing Microsoft’s monopolistic competition was his potential ally.

Whether the business deal would happen was another matter, but collecting some evidence was always possible.