Microsoft-2000

How the corporation predicted modern Internet services 13 years ago: retro review TJournal

In 2000 there was no Facebook, no Twitter, and most of Google's modern products. But there was Microsoft - a monstrous corporation that seemed to enslave the whole world. What the company dreamed of in 2000, says Bloomberg .

13 years ago, Microsoft, which had just been headed by Steve Ballmer, held a series of meetings with journalists. At presentations, the company showed videos that described the future as Microsoft itself sees it.

This future had everything that we have long been accustomed to: video calls, voice control and virtual assistants talking to the “owner”, geolocation services that provide tips depending on the user’s location and inform about friends nearby. Microsoft foresaw both document collaboration, as implemented by Google Docs, and social photo services. The company's fantasies also included full-fledged tablets with a color screen, Internet access and stylus control.

Microsoft predicted a lot of modern services and products, but it managed to implement only a small part of them in practice. Bloomberg reporter Dina Bass, who was one of those journalists to whom Microsoft demonstrated its fantasies for 13 years, believes that several factors are to blame for the company's failure. On the one hand, Microsoft has since left a number of major top managers who implemented the mentioned ideas in their companies, be it Google or VMware. On the other hand, the corporation often abandoned projects after the first failures, waiting until someone else showed the right path. Finally, Bass notes, some things were simply ahead of their time.

Ballmer didn't lack ideas, he lacked performers. Dina Bass, Bloomberg reporter

Now, thirteen years later, Microsoft is preparing to enter a new era: without Ballmer, but with Nokia. And a video from back in the 2000s is perhaps the best demonstration of what a corporation could be like today. She could have, but she didn't.

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