From: Rohit Khare (rohit@uci.edu)
Date: Fri Feb 04 2000 - 00:10:03 PST
Highlights:
> I will evaluate all the new technologies coming out of our
>research group and out of the software industry as a whole
>and develop a three-year plan on how we can develop a
>platform that will allow knowledge workers and consumers to
>better access, manage, and share information either stored
>on their personal devices or out on the Web.
>all the pieces fit together, that when you update a sales
>price in one area, that new price shows up everywhere on
>your site it should.
>What we want is to create applications where not
>only just the users can move information around, but the
>information will be tagged using standards such as XML and
>schema in such a way that it would automatically record
>which movies or books you have ordered, or if something has
>been added to your health record
>yes, we can only achieve
>this by building a whole new user and Internet interface,
>and a whole new set of applications that go behind it. This
>is the same kind of gamble the company made when we bet on
>the graphic interface, when we bet on the Windows NT code
>base. But the stakes of this bet are even higher,
[The Red Herring]
BILL'S NEW JOB
DAVOS, SWITZERLAND -- What follows are highlights from a
give-and-take with Bill Gates during a private lunch with
two dozen of the top editors in the world.
Red Eye: So why did you kick yourself upstairs?
Mr. Gates: I'm actually pretty excited about my new job
because I will get to spend virtually 100 percent of my time
on the subset of the job I have had over the last 25 years
that I really love, which is product design. Basically, I
will evaluate all the new technologies coming out of our
research group and out of the software industry as a whole
and develop a three-year plan on how we can develop a
platform that will allow knowledge workers and consumers to
better access, manage, and share information either stored
on their personal devices or out on the Web.
Red Eye: Can you provide us with a glimpse of what kind of
benefits this new platform may have?
Mr. Gates: There is no doubt that there are some very
important problems that are not yet solved. Ask anyone who
is building a Web site what it's like to make sure that
customer transactions and service are handled right, that
all the pieces fit together, that when you update a sales
price in one area, that new price shows up everywhere on
your site it should. These Web sites are actually becoming
some of the most archaic and messy software applications we
have ever seen in the industry. So my goal is to make sure
that Microsoft helps create a platform that makes building
these Web sites -- the software applications of the future
-- very straightforward. This effort will require some real
breakthroughs in software development, and breaking down the
barriers between what we have traditionally viewed as
software and the content you put up on your site.
Red Eye: That would be from a software development
standpoint, but what impact will this have on the consumer
experience?
Mr. Gates: Let's say you wanted to know what books you have
bought over the Internet and who you sent them to. Well,
your PC should be able to give you that answer -- after all,
it's a pretty straightforward software problem. But, in
fact, the dichotomy today between the software application
and the browser experience prevents you from being able to
get that kind of information. Currently, there are things
your PC applications will do for you, such as record and
track things and share them with other systems that don't
exist in the browsing experience. And there are currently
browser capabilities, such as having a history of what sites
you have visited, that would be nice to have in your PC
applications. It's also actually easier to search the whole
Web than it is your hard drive. My new job is to keep our
developers focused on designing products that bring these
two worlds together.
Red Eye: This is pretty interesting stuff. Could you be more
specific -- and don't be afraid to get a little geeky.
Mr. Gates: What we want is to create applications where not
only just the users can move information around, but the
information will be tagged using standards such as XML and
schema in such a way that it would automatically record
which movies or books you have ordered, or if something has
been added to your health record -- all of that will be
understood. In my opinion, this interoperability between Web
sites and computers is the new holy grail in computing, as
the user interface was back when we developed the first
version of Windows.
Red Eye: One of your other favorite subjects is speech
recognition.
Mr. Gates: Well, that's another big agenda item. People not
only want to have a speech-recognition interface with the PC
screen, they want to have it with their telephone. When you
call someone, you want to be able to call up information on
your cell phone screen, such as a project dateline or movie
schedule, and you should be able to navigate through that
information by talking into your phone because it recognizes
your voice. And you want every Web site to be set up so
users can take advantage of this feature.
Red Eye: Sounds like Microsoft is going to have to
completely reinvent its products all over again to
accomplish this kind of new access and integration.
Mr. Gates: In order to tackle some of this, we are going to
have to throw out some of the old, as well as save some of
the old. We will face the classic trade-offs. But what I am
talking about is a whole new platform that will look better
and work quite differently from the old. And this is a
pretty heroic claim, because the evolutionary process won't
get us there. What we are saying is yes, we can only achieve
this by building a whole new user and Internet interface,
and a whole new set of applications that go behind it. This
is the same kind of gamble the company made when we bet on
the graphic interface, when we bet on the Windows NT code
base. But the stakes of this bet are even higher, because
the stakes in our business are greater than they have ever
been. That's why I have to give 100 percent of my attention
to the big picture.
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