Microsoft über alles

Have Gates & Co. peaked? 21st reviews tech highs and lows of '98.

By Janelle Brown, Andrew Leonard And Scott Rosenberg

Dec 24, 1998 | In 1998, the public woke up and realized that the affairs of the Internet and the technology industry weren't merely the province of over-educated engineers and social misfits. Instead, they seemed to become the overwhelming force behind the global economy, a powerful influence on the dynamics of U.S. politics and media and an increasingly potent fuel for social change. For good or ill? We could (and did) argue both ways on that one. But no one could still rationally maintain that the Net was just some kind of passing fad like CB radio or some doomed medium like CD-ROM. Everyone could see that what happens online is entwined, inevitably and importantly, with what happens in the "real" world.

Here's how what happened looked to us here at Salon 21st:

- - MICROSOFT AGONISTES

This fall, the courtroom travails of Bill Gates loomed almost as large on the national screen as those of that other Bill -- down to their similarly evasive videotape testimony. But whereas the impeachment saga left a near-universal bad taste in the public mouth, the Justice Department's antitrust suit against Microsoft helped focus the world's attention on some critical questions for the future of the digital age.

Is Microsoft an exemplar of high-tech entrepreneurial smarts for the industry to be proud of -- or is it the ultracompetitive Evil Empire of Silicon Valley nightmares? Should we applaud the company for creating phenomenal wealth or disdain it for producing buggy "bloatware"? Is its 90 percent share of the operating system market an ironclad monopoly -- or just this year's deal of the tech industry's ever-changing cards? These issues really matter, not the endless circular argument about whether a browser is, can or should be a part of an operating system. They're why Bill Gates, even more than Bill Clinton, gets so many Internet users hot under the collar. (S.R.)

- - USE THE SOURCE, LUKE

In January, the term "open source" did not exist. By December there was no avoiding it. From trade magazines to the New York Times, open-source software, also known as free software -- software for which the underlying source code is freely available -- was everywhere. Why did it spread so fast? First, people are passionate about open source -- it's just more fun to be part of a world in which people are encouraged to share and cooperate. Second, the evidence keeps mounting that the open-source development model actually produces better code.

In March, Netscape endorsed the movement and released vast quantities of its Navigator Web browser code to the world. By mid-summer, huge database companies like Oracle and Sybase were porting their software to the Linux operating system -- and Linux creator Linus Torvalds even made the cover of Forbes magazine. IBM started bundling the open-source Apache Web server program with its "e-business" package. But nothing validated the threat that free software/open source poses to the proprietary dinosaurs of the software industry better than Microsoft's own appraisal. On Halloween, Eric Raymond, open source's No. 1 evangelist, published a leaked Microsoft memo detailing how open source challenged the software giant's business. The question for next year is, how will Microsoft react to this threat? Can it figure out how to compete not with a company but with a popular movement? (A.L.)

- - YOU'VE GOT NETSCAPE

Imagine if AOL had bought Netscape two years ago: The wailing and moaning in cyberspace would have rent the heavens. One of the Web's sassy standard bearers gulped up by the bland folks from Reston, Va.? A culture-clash disaster! But in 1998, though the $4 billion stock-swap merger was certainly a big news event, it wasn't the kind of story that sparked much agonized agitation -- except maybe at Microsoft, where the prospect of squaring off against the combined forces of AOL and Netscape might give even Gates pause. AOL already has some 14 million subscribers in tow; the addition of the 20 million pairs of eyeballs that visit Netscape's Netcenter every month gives the online services behemoth some pretty impressive numbers. For the moment, at least, AOL rules the Net. Who'da thunk it? (A.L.)

- - STARRS IN OUR EYES

Thank you, Ken Starr. When the Starr Report was released in September, tens of millions of people went flooding online to read it: After all, how else could you do searches on keywords like "cigar" and "anal"? That one document -- along with the online release of the Lewinsky tapes, the hearing transcripts and other assorted Sexgate documents -- probably introduced more Americans to the power of the Web than anything thus far.

But the release of the Starr Report was only one small part of the boost that the Web has received from the whole impeachment imbroglio. Online news providers saw their numbers explode and their reputation solidified -- 80 percent of the online public say they trust online news as much as network news (and 7 percent trust it more), according to one study. Americans (and Europeans) kept on top of events by checking in to the rapid online updates, and online rogues like Matt Drudge became overnight celebrities. (J.B.)

Next Page: iMacs, MP3, CDA II, spam, Y2K -- did we leave anyone out?

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