We always hear about this so-called classic example of how Microsoft made a huge change and embraced the internet back in 1994, but did they really? What did they do? They created Internet Explorer, destroyed Netscape, and that's about it. And Internet Explorer is really just another desktop application.

In fact, Microsoft let IE languish for years precisely because they explicitly do NOT embrace the internet. They know that the internet is a platform in direct competition with Windows. They saw that. They "embraced and extended and extinguished" the web browser in order to prevent it from becoming a new platform.

Microsoft did not change direction for the internet, they are the same company pre and post internet and this example should stricken from the literature once and for all.

oh, microsoft very much did change direction for the internet. i'm sure the company's first response, right down to the core of its being, was to try to ignore the internet out of existence. "so people want to get online now? fine, let them sign up for msn." i'm sure that's what billg wanted to do as well, in his heart of hearts. but he was smart enough to know that it was a battle that microsoft was going to lose, monopoly power or no.

who remembers trying to get on the internet with win3.1? it was abysmal. it had either horrible tcp/ip support or none at all, i can't remember which. everybody i knew bought trumpet winsock. all microsoft would have had to do, to follow its usual modus operandi, would be to go on pretending that the internet didn't matter. but then win95 came out, and it's tcp/ip support was outstanding. it was actually easier to set up than the unixes of the day. and its various office apps gained the ability to export to html, amongst other internet-friendly advances.

yes, internet explorer is stagnant now, because it no longer serves any purpose for ms to improve it. netscape is already dead, after all.

What you describe is Microsoft doing the absolute least they could do to accommodate their users who wanted to get online. Things like making the technology a little easier or having Word export to HTML -- I don't consider this "embracing the internet". I don't see how these can be considered as changing the direction of the company. The direction of Microsoft was not changed at all. Their cash cows were the Windows OS and the Office Application Suite before the internet got big, and those products were still the main focus and direction of Microsoft afterward.

40% of the Web sites on the Internet run on Microsoft's IIS, according to Netcraft...

This takes me back. My roommates and I spent a year in college trying to get a browser to work on Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. We failed. I had to wait until Windows 95 came out the next year to get on the damn Web.

How many times does the word "internet" appear in the book, "The Road Ahead" in 1994?

Zero.

Kinda ironic, huh?