Beating competion in business is very important for every businessowner
worldstop companies are doing this with a style especial APPLE .
Hi Myself Rahul Chakrapani today we are gonna talk about how Microsoft is killing other brands
with their incredible strategies.How they managed to beat big companies in the past ?
Microsofts history of killing other brands
Microsofts marketing case study will start from the date On 18th of May in 1998,
the US Department of Justice and the Attorney General’s of 20 US states sued Microsoft
for being a monopoly and illegally killing its competition in the computer market.
And what followed next was one of the most historic cases in tech history, which lasted for two decades.
fast forward to 23 years later, even today,Microsoft is still killing its competition right in front of our eyes,
and thismove could result in yet another historic lawsuit against Microsoft.
The question is, how did Microsoft kill its competition?
What exactly was their business strategy that turned Microsoft into such a powerful company?
And most importantly,
what are the lessons that we need to learn from this iconic case study?
Evalution of Microsoft and Bill Gates
The Justice Department has charged Microsoft with engaging in anticompetitive and
exclusionary practices designed to maintain its monopoly.
Microsoft in secret finished up ’95 and released it, and then provided no documentation.
Bill Gates once said about beating completion :
Forcing Microsoft to include Netscape’s competing software in our operating system is like
requiring Coca-Cola to include three cans of Pepsi in every six-pack it sells.
Computer Revulution
This is a story that dates back to 1994 America when the computer revolution was just catching fire.
This was a time when multinational corporates had accepted that the computer was a powerful tool.
and they already started having hundreds of computers in the offices, which was being used by the employees.
these computers had already skyrocketed the productivity of these companies.
So practically, the computer has already become an integral part of the American business ecosystem.
And long story short, here are the most important events that happened in the computer revolution of America.
Bill gates to Billionnaire
On the 12th of August 1981, IBM introduced its personal computer with Microsoft’s 16-bit operating system,
which was MS-DOS 1.0, and this made Microsoft a tonne of revenue through Licensing.
By 1985, Microsoft was already clocking in a revenue of 140 million dollars.
Then on the 13th Of March 1986, Microsoft Stock goes public breaking all records and
turning Bill Gates into the youngest billionaire ever, by 1987.
Then in August 1989, Microsoft introduces the earliest version of Office suite applications,
which then became the industry standard for businesses all across America.
Followed by that, in May 1990, Microsoft launched Windows 3.0,
which was a big leap into the graphical user interface.
this is what made computers accessible to the common man,
which was back then used only by the techies through code.
And as soon as this happened, the usage of computers exploded in the United States of America.
this is what made Microsoft the most powerful and the most dominating force in the computer world,
with Windows 3.0, selling at the rate of 1 million copies per month in 1993.
And nearly 90% of all PCs in the world ran on Microsoft operating system.
Netscape vs Microsoft Competion
this is when another dimension of the computer industry opened up and that was the internet.
Therefore, in the early 1990s, we saw the rise of the internet browser market.
And one of the most revolutionary browsers at that time was a browser called Netscape Navigator, which was launched in 1994.
Netscape at that time was loaded with features that were far ahead of its competition,
They had the future of document streaming, which allowed users to view the documents while it was being downloaded.
They have the feature of multiple downloads simultaneously. And they also supported JPEG image format.
And this product was so revolutionary that even with a $49 subscription cost,
they were able to capture up to 80% of the browser market share.
Now the point to be noted over here is that, just like today,
without the internet, your computer is mostly useless.
Back then in 1995, people started using computers just to use web browsers to connect to the internet.
And the operating system was just a bridge that connected the users to the web browsers.
So practically, browsers were becoming more important than the operating system itself.
And building upon this phenomenal success.
Netscape went public on December 5th, 1995.
And within a day, the company had hit a market cap of $2.2 billion.
And just when they thought of becoming another legendary internet company,
something happened in the same year that marked
the beginning of Netscape’s fall and within the next six years,
the same billion-dollar company was almost reduced to nothing.
The question is, how is it even possible that such a big and innovative company went down so quickly?
Well, the answer to this question lies in an accurate phrase coming from the Department
of Justice itself, which summarises how Microsoft kills its competition.
And it says,
embrace, extend and exterminate.
To tell you about it.
In 1994, Microsoft realized that they were too late to the internet boom, and
the browsers are becoming more important than the operating system.
So in August 1995, when Microsoft launched Windows 95,
they also included their own web browser called the Internet Explorer,
and they made it the default browser for every PC sold.
So when you start your computer, you could see the Internet Explorer right on your home screen.
On top of that, Microsoft directly attack the most important features of Netscape by launching something called Activity controls.
And this update made it impossible to easily download files on the internet, especially Microsoft Office files.
And this was a direct attack on Netscape prime features.
And because 90% of the computers used MS Office,
it became more and more difficult for them to use Netscape and other browsers.
And then, Microsoft also removed the Internet Explorer from the add and remove the tab,
Because of which neither the consumers nor the manufacturers could delete the Internet Explorer from the computers,
and cherry on the cake, they made it available for free of cost.
So this is how they first embraced the concept of internet browsers.
Then they extended their products with features that do not support the competing products.
And lastly, Microsoft used its dominance over the platform to promote its own product over its competition,
eventually, to exterminate the need to use rival products.
And not so surprisingly, this led to the downfall of Netscape Navigator.
And by 2000, Internet Explorer had a 95% market share, making it the most dominating web browser in the market.
And this is how Microsoft established an industry standard,
which meant that if you wanted to make a living from software development,
you had to make sure that your product worked in Internet Explorer.
But if Microsoft things were making a lot of money,
maybe the story could be over for you.
MSN MESSENGER vs AOL MESSENGER
Similarly, Microsoft’s instant messaging platform,
MSN Messenger also tried to kill one of the
The most popular instant messaging platform during that time, that was AOL,
which was made by a company called America Online.
And this was obviously installed on your PC by default.
And then they extended the standard with proprietary Microsoft add ons,
which added new features, but broke the compatibility with AOL software.
And then they gained dominance by providing MSN Messenger for free.
What is happening with zoom.?
the story will start with their new product called Microsoft Teams
How many of you installed Microsoft Teams deliberately in their own computers ?
Or did it just get installed in your PC with the updates, and as usual,
it automatically got installed with the updates, and the rest of you either did not
use teams or you’re using a Mac.
Now, here’s the catch, guys.
Microsoft Teams has seen exponential growth since 2020 by 456%,
and I couldn’t find zooms monthly active users since the last April 2020.
But when they release the numbers, you know exactly what to compare it to.
On top of that, you might also see that Microsoft will build an insanely user-friendly file
sharing system for Microsoft Office files in Microsoft Teams.
And soon enough,
you could also see some hurdles, which might make zoom difficult to work with.
Now, the point to be observed over here is that,
in April 2020, while zoom had 300 million daily active users,
one year later, Microsoft Teams already had 145 million active users.
And these users, obviously the ones who could have used zoom or have shifted from zoom to Microsoft Teams.
So effectively,
Microsoft has already started eating into zoom’s customer base. This is how Microsoft kills its competition.
LESSONS from Microsoft
There are three very important lessons to learn from Microsoft’s iconic case.
The first thing
I want you to do is take a step back and look at the story very, very carefully.
Did you see that despite Microsoft sabotaging Netscape, Chrome was very easily able to beat Internet Explorer
to become the most used browser in the world?
Despite Microsoft killing AOL, using MSN Messenger,
Facebook and WhatsApp have turned out to be the winner of the social media revolution.
And it almost looks like Microsoft was so obsessed with killing its competition,
That it completely lost sight of the evolving trends in the internet services like search engines, social media, and even the mobile revolution.
And this tells us two very, very important lessons that
while good companies focus on their competition,
great companies focus on their customers and the needs of the market.
Number two,
regardless of how powerful you are,
if you don’t build great products,
the success you’re going to achieve is always going to be short-lived.
Number three
while Microsoft always wanted to be the richest kid in the block and tried to keep all the wealth to itself,
Apple and Google built a platform for developers to empower them and build wealth for a large number of people.
And in this process, they ended up making more money than Microsoft.
