The Case For Microsoft

Two weeks ago, in response to the government's proposed regulatory scheme to break up Microsoft, I said that our company could not have created the Windows operating system if we had been prohibited from developing Microsoft Office as well. The symbiotic nature of software development may not be obvious outside the industry, but it is a phenomenon that has produced enormous consumer benefits. Windows and Office--working together and drawing on each other's features and innovations--have improved personal computing for millions.

The benefits of developing operating systems (OSs) and applications software under the same roof will increase as new intelligent devices emerge over the next few years. Take the tablet PC. Today most people carry a paper notebook to meetings and then transcribe their notes to a PC. The tablet PC that we are developing will streamline that process. A small, lightweight, portable device, it will enable you to take notes, dictate, annotate and then seamlessly transfer everything to a PC or any other device. It will make meetings less of a chore.

Under the government's plan, however, Microsoft's tablet PC simply won't happen, because our OS and applications developers will be unable to collaborate. Almost every aspect of the tablet PC's evolution--starting with the design of handwriting-recognition applications--requires real-time collaboration between OS and applications developers. Today that happens spontaneously, just as it does at IBM and Sun Microsystems. Real-time collaboration is the cornerstone of software development.

Just as chassis developments at Lincoln (owned by Ford) are shared with Ford's other car divisions, Microsoft takes the best thinking among its applications software developers and shares it with Windows developers (and vice versa). In doing so, Windows can incorporate innovations that can then be further leveraged by independent developers and even by our competitors.

Just because Ford's Taurus is an American best seller, should the company be barred from sharing its innovative work among its divisions? Should America Online, the No. 1 website, be stopped from sharing technologies developed by Netscape (which AOL owns) or with Time Warner Cable and CNN.com Should Sun, a leading player in high-end e-commerce servers, be stopped from sharing among its OS, applications and hardware?

If consumers' interests are paramount, the answer to each of these questions is clearly no.

Windows never would have gained popularity and reached critical mass without the benefits of innovative, user-friendly technologies developed by our Office team--technologies that often then became part of Windows and further drove innovation across the industry. For example, in 1991 software developers for Microsoft Office introduced a new feature known as a toolbar. We now take toolbars for granted. If you are reading this article online on a Windows PC, the toolbar is the series of icons at the foot of your screen that with one click allows you to switch from your browser to your word processor or your e-mail. Had those toolbars been created elsewhere, they no doubt would have been patented and never incorporated into Windows. Once added to Windows, toolbars became available for use in software programs created by Microsoft and thousands of independent companies. That is the great efficiency of innovation in platform software.