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| Authored by: foulis on Friday, June 15 2012 @ 12:21 PM EDT |
<b>From:</b> Bill Gates<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, September 15, 1999 2:07 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> Steve Ballmer; Jon DeVaan; Rick Belluzzo<br>
<b>Subject:</b> FW: WebTV, Real Networks and Windows
Media</p>
Anthony is right about the history.</p>
WebTV was told that they could ONLY do G2 if they did WMT before or at the same
time. When they were told this was ok they were given no latitude on
it.</p>
The level of customer complaints about G2 is not a big enough to act like it is
a huge P & L - it is a small issue.</p>
They should be forced to delay G2 until they get WMT support done.</p>
The idea that they unilaterally decided to slip WMT contradicts the promise they
made when they were told they could do G2.</p>
The board had to pass a resolution relating to indemnifying a specific employee
for his work on the Real stuff - the deal with Real is a big problem.</p>
We are going to have Real dictating the media formats for the TV and Music world
because of their strength with Liberate and our work is just surrendering
here.</p>
This is a case where the rules were clear - black and white. The business
reasoning behind the rules were clear.</p>
They can download G2 to their customers in the spring release if they can't get
WMT done before then.</p>
----Original Message----<br>
<b>From: Anthony Bay (Exchange)</b><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, September 15, 1999 11:25 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> Jon DeVaan; Bill Gates; Steve Ballmer<br>
<b>Cc:</b> Jim Allchin (Exchange); Bruce Leak; Will Poole; Rick
Belluzzo; Anthony Bay (Exchange)<br>
<b>Subject:</b> RE: WebTV, Real Networks and Windows
Media</p>
this whole episode has been pretty disheartening for me. let me lay out why i
think we should all feel bad about what is happening and should take steps to
fix it. this is a long mail but these are important issues.</p>
1. We are in a platform battle at a corporate level for the next generation of
internet technology; namely rich digital media. Losing this would be worse then
having ceded control of HTML/http to Netscape, as it not only includes format
and protocols but content encryption and there is no least common denominator
that a site can choose; its either/or. Just as the company pulled together to
drive adoption of our own internet technologies, we are (with one exception)
pulling together to do the same for digital media. yes this sometimes makes life
harder all round, but the payoff is huge and frankly the effort required is not
very large. the day is not very far away when rich media becomes a standard part
of both consumer and business user experience.</p>
2. Supporting our own platform doesn't mean not pragmatically also providing
support for competing platform when it makes business sense. users running
Navigator need to get a reasonable experience on msn or using office. playing
MP3 files makes sense when there is lots of mp3 content out there. QT is a
reality on the Mac and needs to be supported by our mac products. No one is
suggesting anyone of our product businesses do something really stupid at the
expense of their business or customers, but we should prioritize Microsoft's
strategic platforms above competitors.</p>
3. Jon and Rick, you may not know the history of this particular WebTV/RN
discussion. When Bruce and Steve Perlman decided early this year that they
wanted to upgrade their Real 3 support to G2 jimall and i opposed it. we all
discussed both sides of this, including the webtv customer sat concerns
mentioned below, with steveb, billg and paulma and the decision from bill was
pretty clear. the first priority was to add support for windows media, after
that it was OK to ALSO upgrade to Real G2. if there was room for only one format
on the device, it should be Windows media. Steve Perlman and Bruce agreed to
this, even though it was not what they wanted to do. Now there seems to be a
convenient memory loss over the whole conversation and agreement. That is BS. we
made a decision and unless there is new data to</p>
<center>1</center></p>
<p align=center>Plaintiff's
Exhibit<br><u>6644</u><br>Comes V. Microsoft</p>
<p align=right>MS-CC-Bu 000000190871<br>HIGHLY
CONFIDENTIAL</p>
<hr>
<br>
rethink we should stick with that decision (and all the new data more firmly
supports WMT viewpoint not WebTV position). i don't understand how WebTV can
just unilaterally decide that this commitment is meaningless.</p>
4. the customer satisfaction issue is a red herring and two-edged
sword.</p>
red herring because there are other ways to solve it. for example, WinCE
handhelds need to be able tp play MP3 files. customers want digital music on
their devices. so we have done WinCE work to put a windows media player on the
device and provider[sic] an integrated sync tool/transcoder for the PC that
moves files from the PC to the CE device, and if they are in MP3 fromat it
simply transcodes them to wma... and saves half the required storage in the
process. customers get digital music on their CE device, Microsoft gets format
and player adoption. we offered to do something similar for WebTV. i assert that
WebTV customers really aren't so much interested in G2 support as they are
interested in listening to audio content they like. we offered to go to the top
25 sites that webtv customers complain about not being able to hear and help
them also stream in windows media if they already weren't; servers, deployment
help, encoding help, tech support. webtv customers would get their audio and
microsoft would increase its format adoption. WebTV has refused to ever give us
this list even tho they promised to on multiple occasions, nor to seriously
explore whether this could solve the requirement to upgrade to G2.</p>
two-edged sword because we are winning lots of content for windows media
technologies, none of which will be playable on webtv. we have made huge
progress in getting top sites and breadth sites to either stream both formats or
just stream in windows media. a growing percentage of our wins are exclusively
in our formats (majority of the record label promos for example... and #2 radio
holding company Clear channel with 500 stations all going exclusively windows
media being another). we are building a great media portal for msn (msn media
guide aka windowsmedia.com) which is closely integrated with our player and is
already at > 5% reach. in fact, in the recent PC Mag scorecard of
portals, msn's streaming audio and video feature (provided by SMD) rated as one
of only 3 excellent features on msn...AND rated higher than ALL other portal's
streaming media efforts. check out the media guide for the breadth of what is
available already, and our momentum is really picking up speed. NONE of the
content on msn media guide will play on WebTV. are we just going to wait until
customers ask us why we are so stupid before we rank that customer sat issue
high enough?</p>
5. Real Networks is a shitty partner and wants to control branding and user
experience of streaming.. which will result in an ongoing tense situation given
webtv's model of control of the user experience. it was pretty clear from the
WTV/RN negotiation over the current deal that RN will be very difficult to deal
with and will not have best interests of WTV or its users at heart. on the other
hand, using WMT gives webtv complete control over the user experience with no
one to have to argue with over branding, etc. Making RN the default streaming
technology in WebTV only strengthens their position and makes them harder to
deal with in the future.</p>
6. WebTV supporting RN over WMT (which the current path clearly is...lets not BS
ourselves) has a number of ripple effects. it hurts us in PR in a bigger way
than people other than wpoole and i anticipated (it was amazing to watch the
press salivate over this issue and write about its meta meaning for the format
competition). microsoft has been schizophrenic in its relationship with RN and
have confused the market as to how much they are a partner vs a competitor. we
tried to put that behind us when we divested our stock position, but the WebTV
announcement of support caused a whole round of confusion again. I had key
customers and partners call me up (and ask reps in the field) if Microsoft was
abandoning its own media efforts in favor of Real. this will happen again if we
stay on current course and honestly does blunt our momentum. Second and actually
worse is that because Real is the default format in webTV service..all licensees
of TVPAK will end up wanting/requiring Real support. we are starting to see this
happen already, shipping g2 will just cement the decision. that means that we
are helping Real establish itself in the new TV platform and disadvantaging our
own platform. and worse, since they also have deals with liberate and AOL, they
become the defacto winner. encouraging this to happen by favoring Real in WebTV
service is incredibly short sighted.</p>
7. it pains me to say so, but other than WebTV, i am managing to work
collaboratively and effectively and in good faith with all the other parts of
the company; several of whom have their own unique issues just like WebTV. i
described the WinCE work above, on the Mac we are balancing adding WMT support
with also supporting QuickTime. despite the temporary pain, others seem to be
able to sense the importance and work collaboratively towards a common
objective. i have tried hard with WebTV but nothing seems to work.</p>
<u>Recommendation:</u></p>
I know it would be painful, but i believe the marketplace situation has changed
to the point where WebTV could switch to WMT as the default and maintain/improve
customer sat.. if we go out and get the top WTV accessed sites to support WMT if
they aren't already on track to do so. the contract WTV negotiated with Real
gives WTV the flexibility to never ship G2 and only to have to pay a few hundred
K$$ to cover some engineering expense. will and i will step up to help make this
happen by working with key sites that WTV users visit.</p>
<center>2</center>
<p align=right>MS-CC-Bu 000000190872<br>HIGHLY
CONFIDENTIAL</p>
<hr>
<br>
If that isn't the path we take, then WTV should do what it agreed and make WMT
the default but place Real G2 on whatever devices they can (rather than the
reverse which is the current path). or potentially later giving the user a
choice. i know its late in the engineering cycle but this is the path they
should have been on.</p>
The least palatable option is to ship g2 as the default and WMT on a subset of
devices in the november release. this is counter to what was agreed to and
frankly i think its BS, but at least we would have support in newer webtv
devices. we are still giving far too much power and momentum to Real by doing
this, and will be unable to fully leverage the work we are doing with msn for
WebTV (since only a subset of WTV users would be able to listen to content off
of our media portal). so WTV gets no benefit from the work we are doing to build
a great media guide and asset.</p>
However, it is just not OK for WTV to upgrade its entire userbase to G2 and not
add Windows Media until some release next year - schedule TBD. it sends the
wrong message to the world and to WTV customers and to the rest of
Microsoft.</p>
frankly, if WTV stays on its current path i can't justify continuing to invest
much in working together on the promise of some marginal support someday. i
don't see much future in being a second class partner for Bruce, the experience
so far sucks. we just can't afford to be a second class platform in TV space.
once WebTV is prepared to work seriously with us and we can get some return on
our efforts then we can re-engage. it is sad, but to gain platform share in the
TV space it seems I should go focus our efforts now on partners who would value
and prioritize working with us. Liberate. TIVO and ReplayTV are obvious places
to start.</p>
----Original Message----<br>
<b>From:</b> Jon DeVaan<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Monday, September 13, 1999 5:53 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> Bill Gates; Steve Ballmer<br>
<b>Cc:</b> Jim Allchin (Exchange); Bruce Leak; Will Poole; Rick
Belluzzo; Anthony Bay(Exchange)<br>
<b>Subject:</b> RE: WebTV, Real Networks and Windows
Media</p>
For the record, WMT will ship in the spring updates. This was a tough decision
by the team. The constraints are Christmas selling season spikes which require a
certain amount of absolute rock solidness in the operations of any new release
so that the spike can be handled. This isn't a WMT issue, just a hard wall of
time.<br>
G2 is one of the very top customer issues for WebTV. Sadly, WMT is not. The
holiday spike and the real customer driven data are the two major factors that
landed us where we are.</p>
----Original Message----<br>
<b>From:</b> Anthony Bay(Exchange)<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Monday, September 13, 1999 3:48 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> Bill Gates; Steve Ballmer<br>
<b>Cc:</b> Jim Allchin (Exchange); Jon DeVaan; Bruce Leak; Will
Poole; Anthony Bay(Exchange)<br>
<b>Subject:</b> WebTV, Real Networks and Windows Media</p>
I hate to have to do this, but we have reached an impasse with WebTV over the
implementation of support for streaming media formats and your guidance is
needed.</p>
WebTV's current plan is to ship an update this fall that includes updating all
WebTV service clients to RealNetworks G2 but includes no support for Windows
Media. Windows Media support was on the list to ship to a subset of WebTV client
devices, but has recently been cut.</p>
This is specifically counter to the direction from both of you earlier this year
that WebTV could add support for Real Networks only if they first supported
Windows Media. WebTV agreed to this prioritization but hasn't followed thru. I
believe this is the wrong decision for several reasons and ask that you
intervene to change this.<br>
If required, i ask that they slip their release to ensure that it supports
windows media in addition to G2. Ideally windows media would have been the
default (as you both said was the directive) and g2 only on a subset of
platforms, but they chose to go with the opposite approach. At this point,
shipping WMT on the planned devices (everything but the original classic) needs
to be the minimum bar.</p>
In addition to the damage it will do to Microsoft's efforts to establish its own
streaming media platform, shipping only G2 support on WebTV has a good deal of
negative impact on Microsoft customers. We are heavily promoting windows media
formats and are making lots of progress with Internet content providers, many of
whom are betting on Microsoft's platform (Clear Channel Radio network is the
most recent.. migrating 500 stations to exclusively Windows Media). windowsmedia
guide, the radio, music and video channel on msn is becoming one of the largest
media guides on the web. it points traffic exclusively to</p>
<center>3</center>
<p align=right>MS-CC-Bu 000000190873<br>HIGHLY
CONFIDENTIAL</p>
<hr>
<br>
windows media based content. webtv users who use msn will get pointed to content
they can't listen to. That makes no sense.</p>
the result of webtv's decision is that microsoft is giving very mixed messages
to press, analysts and customers. the initial announcement of G2 support was a
significant negative PR hit and literally caused many major customers and ICPs
to ask if we had lost faith in our format and were rebuilding our relationship
with RN. we countered this by saying that WebTV would be supporting both
formats. Having them support only G2 will raise this issue all over
again.</p>
We have bent over backwards to help WebTV incorporate support for windows media.
i don't know what else i can do at this point. I understand WebTV's desire to
upgrade to G2 for customer satisfaction reasons.. although i believe there were
other ways to achieve the same goal. However, I cannot support them shipping G2
support without Windows Media. The rest of Microsoft's product businesses are
supporting our efforts to establish our digital media platform; WebTV service is
the only one who is not. We are investing > $120M a year to establish our
media platform, actions like this are inconsistent with that
objective.</p>
<center>4</center>
<p align=right>MS-CC-Bu 000000190872<br>HIGHLY
CONFIDENTIAL</p>
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| Authored by: kawabago on Saturday, June 16 2012 @ 03:02 PM EDT |
This quote, "In many application categories straightforward
thinking ahead allows you to come up with patentable ideas."
from Bill Gates gave me a 'what?!!!'. Only things that are
not products of straighforward thinking are supposed to be
patentable. Why are technology patents being issued on ideas
that anyone ordinarily skilled in the art would be able to
come up with? How could a patent examiner ever determine what
would be obvious to a programmer solving a particular
problem?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 18 2012 @ 05:34 PM EDT |
http://groklawstatic.ibiblio.org/pdf/Comes-2415.pdf
<p>
PLAINTIFF'S EXHIBIT 2415<br />
Comes v. Microsoft
</p>
<p>
<b>From:</b> John Shewchuk<br />
<b>Sent</b> Thursday, October 05, 1995 2:46 PM<br />
<b>To:</b> bens; bobmu; bradsi; chrisjo; craigfi; donbrad:
jallard; jimall; johnlu; mikecon; paulma; nchl;
thomasre<br />
<b>Cc:</b> patfer<br />
<b>Subject:</b> RE: Webmaster/Server ISV event - day one
</p>
<p>
When I got Gosling and Naughton started on the Java OLE
control for Blackbird, it was a sensitive issue at Sun
—
Gosling was getting it done as a "black" project. So
please don't raise public awareness of the project without
checking
with Naughton.
</p>
<p>
Regarding Java vs OLE controls<br />
=====<br />
Both Gosling and Naughton will admit that Java is a
programming language and that without APIs to call, Java
is kind of
stupid. There is a growing consensus among developers
that have tried HotJava that it has major limitations.
</p>
<p>
The lack of APIs is the reason StarWave is doing the Java
OLE control— so they can get assess to OLE
automation;
especially automation ot Blackbird objects. Gosling
admits that once someone does this it is no longer cross
platform
and it is hard to be safe.
</p>
<p>
Finally, OLE and Java go together nicely. You don't need
to position them as competitive. Java goes up against VB.
We need to get the VB team to respond to Java. Maybe VB
should be cross-plattorm and safe. See the Blackbird rude
Q&A.
</p>
<p>
Regarding overall messages<br />
=====<br />
I think this whole cross-platform issue is going to die
down once we start getting cool OLE controls (or Netscape
add-ins)
that take advantage of DirectX and other Windows 95 APIs.
Cross platform is an important customer message but in the
long run it a bad technical goal because it means lowest
common denominator. So talk the talk, but show customers
and
publishers what they are missing. Leverage our strength in
great Windows 95 capabilities.
</p>
<p>
Netscape add-ins ONLY RUN IN A NETSCAPE BROWSER. You can't
use them in IE, Word, PowerPoint, VB, Delphi,
VC++, Blackbird or anything else. You can't even use them
inside each other. OLE is OPEN. Netscape add-ins lock you
into a Netscape only strategy. This is lame. Java is
probably not much better.
</p>
<p>
Finally, both Java and Netscape add-ins fail to address
design-time operation. This is a huge leverage point for
Microsoft. Senior people that are fully in the Netscape
camp think twice when they see the Macromedia Director
editor
come up inside the Blackbird design environment. They
think about what it will take to get this clone in
Netscape and it is
a pain.
</p>
<p>
Why does this matter??? Because it represents a radically
different model of content creation than Java or Netscape
add-ins suggest. CPs don't want to write code!!! They
want to focus on creating cool content... They want
simple, simple,
simple. Programming is hard. OLE controls are PACKAGED
bundles of capability. OLE makes it easy for hot software
developers to package up a lot of code that the creatives
can use. LibO from CRG can attest to the fact that Bud and
Norm from Macromedia practically fell over themselves to
create Blackbird OLE controls because when they heard that
they could provide their cool runtime to lots of
non-programmers. (It turns out that many Macromedia users
hate the fact
that they have to learn Lingo to do anything cool.)
</p>
<p>
So let's make sure we explain that OLE controls are more
than JUST an add-in strategy- OLE Controls are the start
of a
COMPLETE strategy. Add an open message, VB, Blackbird, IE
with OLE control support, open scripting, and so on, and
then you have story. Let's fight on our own turf —
in other words, focus on the content providers and ISVs
(they are the
enablers for the content providers) and give them what
they want. And let the great applications win over the
viewers.
</p>
<p>
----------<br />
From: Brad Silverberg
</p>
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