Since nobody had an Internet connection in those days, it was literally impossible to get the data back to Microsoft without the user's involvement.
If 1993 Microsoft could have collected this data automatically, they certainly would have.
What makes you think that "nobody" had an internet connection in "those days?" We weren't riding around on the backs of dinosaurs and cooking up bronto-burgers on the weekends.
Winsock came out in June of 1992, right in the middle of the Windows 3.x life cycle.
I do remember using Winsock on Windows 3.1 to grab Usenet updates on expensive dial-up. The batch Internet :)
So how would they have retrieved this data?
He mentions that Microsoft had a program where they partnered with large enterprises to collect usage data from corporate desktops. But those computers were on a network even if though often not on the Internet yet.
Stats that would show Doom towering over Windows 3.1 must have been collected manually, maybe by sending people a floppy that contained a program to collect the data, and asking them to mail it back in. "Insert floppy, then type A:\SPY.EXE in your DOS prompt" ...
I kinda wish they'd dabble back into this area. The Portal games are some of the most interesting, atmospheric, and well-humoured games I've ever played. And it seems that after Portal 2 they got so hooked into VR that all they've really made is a bunch of VR demos.
But whatever, the Steam Deck seems like it has the potential to really revolutionize a new space in PC gaming, so maybe it's better they stay focused on one thing at a time than half-assedly do a bunch of things like Microsoft or Google.
Are you sure? After the multimedia PC, and later videoCD's and DivX it wasn't an heresy any more.
In the 1998 the cost of the DVD setup was quite pricey: about $500-800 (ie ~$1000 in current money). In the next years the price dropped quite significantly ($200 in 2001, $100 in 2002), but your run of the mill PC wasn't suited as a home theatre system (no HDMI yet, duh! Only S-Video on some systems) and most people didn't even had the PC in the house, for many the niche of a home entertainment system was filled by PlayStation 2 which costed only $300 (+$100-150 compared to a DVD player) in 2001 and it was hooked to the TV.
So the idea of actually watching the films on the PC wasn't quite popular... except for the quoted DivX ;-) 3.11 codec. Which came to existence in the 1999 and was used only for... un-official releases. By the 2001 there was tons and tons of films available in DivX, but by that time it was definitely not '90s.
So I would agree with GP - nobody watched videos on PCs in '90.
No, VideoCD and RealMedia doesn't count. It was more a self-inflicted BDSM session than enjoying the video.
The appeal from that side wasn't "here's PC video on your 27" big-screen TV", it was "here's a 4-inch video window on your 17" monitor, so you can consume video content while doing other stuff."
Yeah, well, early 00's were kinda like 90's. And, yes the PS2 was the cheapest DVD player ever. Still, I'd consider DivX the bridge between mid 90's multimedia PC concept and the modern MP4 and later MKV players.
Wikipedia says it originally came with Windows 3.0 back in 1990.
The story goes that Newell was doing analytics for Microsoft by running software that scanned and reported what people had installed on their PCs -- this was back in the Windows 3.x days when Microsoft sought consent from the user before doing this kind of thing. Microsoft wanted to know how many PCs had Windows running on them. Gabe's market research found that a great many PCs did have Windows -- Windows was the second most installed software on the PCs surveyed.
Number one was Doom.
After that, Gaben started thinking maybe gaming was a better play.