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Re:Microsoft to Cut Jobs, Take $7.6B Nokia Writedown by thaumasiotes on Thursday July 09, 2015 @01:56PM (#9859559)
> network effects (speaking in a business sense) were far weaker due to the fact that PCs weren't able to communicate

But Excel's huge win was developing the ability to save a spreadsheet in Lotus format so your coworkers could open it.

Re:Microsoft to Cut Jobs, Take $7.6B Nokia Writedown by exelius on Friday July 10, 2015 @11:30AM (#9864477)
Yeah, I'm not saying network effects were non-existent... but it's hard to change your document format and lock your competitors out if every software update has to be shipped physically on a floppy disk. The world is different now; platform network effects are much stronger because the platforms can adapt themselves on the fly to competitive pressures.