[netcommentator]

XmlHttpRequest is an awesome innovation from the point of view of the software development community as a whole.

But from a Microsoft shareholder's point of view it was a disaster. XmlHttpRequest and ContentEditableDiv (known back then as DesignMode) ushered in Web 2.0 and Web 2.0 ended Microsoft's dominance of the software industry by making Windows irrelevant.

[smallnamespace]

> But from a Microsoft shareholder's point of view it was a disaster.

The disaster is not in inventing the next technology, because if you don't someone else will do so anyway. The failure is failing to exploit what you invented before anyone else does.

But that's inherently difficult to do. Large organizations are usually oriented towards rewarding and incentivizing what makes them money today.

It's easier to be a real start-up than an internal startup at a large company, because it's hard to duplicate real-world market incentives internally.

[kowdermeister]

> by making Windows irrelevant

Yeah, like it's not the most popular OS out there :) What Web2.0 did is that it removed the need of certain type of desktop software.

BTW if Microsoft didn't invent XmlHttpRequest, somebody else had done it.

[zedred]

> What Web2.0 did is that it removed the need of certain type of desktop software.

The commonly held belief at the time was that Microsoft's dominance rested in large part on that desktop software. Think how hard it would be today if you wanted to start a new mobile OS (let's call it "windows phone") years after entire software ecosystems have been established for iPhone and Android.

It's safe to say that Microsoft is not the shining star they once were. If we were to pick a single moment in history that lead to their undoing, I think this would be it.

> BTW if Microsoft didn't invent XmlHttpRequest, somebody else had done it.

"Somebody else" didn't have the market share IE did. Something that was incompatible with IE at the time was a non-starter. What's remarkable about this story is that when Microsoft saw the browser coming in the Netscape years, their entire strategy was to head that shit off by ensuring that their own browser become market dominant so that they could keep the web in a place that wouldn't hurt MS.

After all that effort, the anti-trust suit, etc, etc... and they'd gotten themselves in the place where they controlled the future of the web, it was some random developer at Microsoft itself that invented the very thing which was their undoing.

[cpayne]

> If we were to pick a single moment in history that lead to their undoing

I always find these sorts of comments interesting.

Microsoft is a very different business than say other failures who you could point to a single event (Kodak, Word Perfect, Lotus Software, Myspace)

Remember, Microsoft have over $100 BILLION in cash[0].

You could perhaps cherry pick certain parts of the business. But I remember the stories of how they made more money from Android than Windows Phone[1].

Microsoft has a long, LONG way to fall before I would say they have failed.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-13/why-micro... [1] http://gizmodo.com/5806227/did-you-know-microsoft-makes-five...

[pjmlp]

> After all that effort, the anti-trust suit, etc, etc... and they'd gotten themselves in the place where they controlled the future of the web

Now we have Google for it.

"This web site works better in Chrome"

[guelo]

> If we were to pick a single moment in history that lead to their undoing, I think this would be it.

That was a pivotal moment but I would pick 2005/2006 when they decided to stop investing in Windows Mobile. The same period that Apple was secretly inventing the iPhone.

[bboreham]

Recall that at the time Java was set to make Windows irrelevant. Microsoft had a massive success, via XML, in derailing this future.

To explain a little, the Sun position was "use Java to write everything; then it all talks together nicely". But folks realised they could use XML to tie different pieces together and relegated Java to the server. Yes, there were other other ways to interop, eg CORBA, but they were ugly, expensive and heavyweight.

[pjmlp]

Funny I still see Windows desktops everywhere.

Actually I think Web 2.0 has hurt GNU/Linux more than Windows, in what concerns the desktop.

Thanks to GNU/Linux users keeping themselves happy with a xterm manager and a browser, it will never go much higher than 3%.

A browser doesn't need UNIX, apparently some people even run it almost bare metal.

[EdSharkey]

I get a bit paranoid that some high schooler who will be the world's next Bill Gates is reading your post and think, "hmm, I've got to keep a lookout for any of my developers building XmlHttpRequest-like technology that paves the way for my future monopoly to get busted up prematurely!"

Imagine if someone in Microsoft had a clue and was able to constrain the browser to being a simple scripted document viewer? I'm convinced suppressing client-side web application development would have lent the Windows OS a few more years of platform and developer mindshare dominance!

[userbinator]

Imagine if someone in Microsoft had a clue and was able to constrain the browser to being a simple scripted document viewer? I'm convinced suppressing client-side web application development would have lent the Windows OS a few more years of platform and developer mindshare dominance!

...and the web might have turned out to be a bit less user-hostile and inefficiently resource-consuming than it currently is today, which might not be so bad after all.