Thanks for all the detail from someone who was there.
> completely missing the distinction between the dotcoms which were losing money on every sale with no way to close the gap and Amazon, which was expanding rapidly but was profitable in each business segment within a couple years (e.g. books were cash-positive circa 1995) and could go from reporting losses to profits any time they wanted simply by slowing their expansion plans.
Great insight. And of course Amazon would raise any funds possible to expand into this new frontier.
> Win95 was the first version of Windows to ship with built-in TCP/IP and a web browser, not to mention being a lot closer to the competition on usability.
Per Wikipedia:
"Windows 95 originally shipped without Internet Explorer, and the default network installation did not include TCP/IP .... At the release date of Windows 95, Internet Explorer 1.0 was available,[48] but only in the Plus! add-on pack for Windows 95, which was a separate product. ...
Windows 95 OEM Service Release 1 was the first release of Windows to include Internet Explorer (version 2.0) with the OS."
My point is not to nitpick, but that the Internet's value wasn't obvious to Microsoft at that point.
> completely missing the distinction between the dotcoms which were losing money on every sale with no way to close the gap and Amazon, which was expanding rapidly but was profitable in each business segment within a couple years (e.g. books were cash-positive circa 1995) and could go from reporting losses to profits any time they wanted simply by slowing their expansion plans.
Great insight. And of course Amazon would raise any funds possible to expand into this new frontier.
> Win95 was the first version of Windows to ship with built-in TCP/IP and a web browser, not to mention being a lot closer to the competition on usability.
Per Wikipedia:
"Windows 95 originally shipped without Internet Explorer, and the default network installation did not include TCP/IP .... At the release date of Windows 95, Internet Explorer 1.0 was available,[48] but only in the Plus! add-on pack for Windows 95, which was a separate product. ...
Windows 95 OEM Service Release 1 was the first release of Windows to include Internet Explorer (version 2.0) with the OS."
My point is not to nitpick, but that the Internet's value wasn't obvious to Microsoft at that point.