Microsoft.Net: Is it time yet?
July 11, 2001

by Curtis Lang		print version
		print version (graphics)

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Oracle chieftain Larry Ellison should be delighted with Microsoft’s new .NET initiative, unveiled last month.

Ellison has claimed for years that the future of computing will involve spreading the intelligence on your PC throughout the Internet, enabling you to access all kinds of applications stored on remote servers via a Web browser. Ellison thought that the Java programming language would precipitate the networked computing revolution, and by now we would all be accessing cool productivity applications on inexpensive dumb PCs.

But very smart PCs have become faster and cheaper, and the Java wars have yet to yield the kind of networked computing experience familiar to Europeans, for whom rentable applications are fast becoming a viable outsourcing alternative for small and medium sized businesses that want access to super-expensive enterprise scale applications.

Now Bill Gates has announced that despite his earlier disavowals of the networked computing model, Microsoft now stands ready to provide a new operating system that will embrace the entire Internet, including the operating system on your PC, the software developers use to design websites and server side applications for Internet delivery, and the middleware used to facilitate sharing of information across websites as well as electronic commerce on the Internet. You might call Windows 2000 and Microsoft.NET a new, proprietary operating system for planet Earth.

"The Microsoft. NET platform is similar to what we did with Windows,” explains Gates, Microsoft’s Chief  Software Architect . “That is, creating a framework that allows people to build applications. Windows required us to reach out to literally thousands of third parties and revolutionize the PC industry. .NET is the same, it will allow Web sites to be far richer and allow the user to get things from multiple Web sites in a very simple way.”

Only Bill Gates would have the chutzpah to pursue this computational Crusade in the wake of the Justice Department’s so-far successful antitrust suit against the Redmondites.