Microsoft is Dead

April 2007 A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead.

2007 年 4 月 几天前我突然意识到微软已经死了。

I was talking to a young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo.

我正在与一位年轻的初创公司创始人谈论谷歌与雅虎的不同之处。

I said that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft.

我说过，雅虎从一开始就因为对微软的恐惧而扭曲了。

That was why they'd positioned themselves as a "media company" instead of a technology company.

这就是为什么他们将自己定位为“媒体公司”而不是科技公司。

Then I looked at his face and realized he didn't understand.

然后我看着他的脸，发现他不明白。

It was as if I'd

就好像我会

told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow in the mid 80s.

告诉他 80 年代中期女孩们有多么喜欢巴里·曼尼洛 (Barry Manilow)。

Barry who?

巴里是谁？

Microsoft?

微软？

He didn't say anything, but I could tell he didn't quite believe anyone would be frightened of them.

他什么也没说，但我看得出他不太相信有人会害怕他们。

Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years starting in the late 80s.

从 80 年代末开始，微软给软件世界蒙上了阴影近 20 年。

I can remember when it was IBM before them.

我记得他们之前是IBM。

I mostly ignored this shadow.

我基本上忽略了这个影子。

I never used Microsoft software, so it only affected me

我从未使用过微软软件，所以它只影响了我

indirectly—for example, in the spam I got from botnets.

间接地——例如，在我从僵尸网络收到的垃圾邮件中。

And because I wasn't paying attention, I didn't notice when the shadow disappeared.

而且因为我没有注意，所以我没有注意到影子什么时候消失的。

But it's gone now.

但现在已经消失了。

I can sense that.

我能感觉到。

No one is even afraid of Microsoft anymore.

甚至没有人再害怕微软了。

They still make a lot of money—so does IBM, for that matter.

他们仍然赚了很多钱——就这一点而言，IBM 也是如此。

But they're not dangerous.

但它们并不危险。

When did Microsoft die, and of what?

微软什么时候死的，死的是什么？

I know they seemed dangerous as late as 2001, because I wrote an essay then

我知道它们直到 2001 年才显得危险，因为我当时写了一篇文章

about how they were less dangerous than they seemed.

关于他们如何没有看上去那么危险。

I'd guess they were dead by 2005.

我猜他们到2005年就死了。

I know when we started Y Combinator we didn't worry about Microsoft as competition for the startups we funded.

我知道当我们创办 Y Combinator 时，我们并不担心微软会成为我们资助的初创公司的竞争对手。

In fact, we've never even invited them to the demo days we organize for startups to present to investors.

事实上，我们甚至从未邀请他们参加我们为初创公司组织的向投资者展示的演示日。

We invite Yahoo and Google and some other Internet companies, but we've never bothered to invite Microsoft.

我们邀请了雅虎和谷歌以及其他一些互联网公司，但我们从来没有邀请过微软。

Nor has anyone there ever even sent us an email.

那里甚至没有人给我们发过电子邮件。

They're in a different world.

他们在不同的世界。

What killed them?

是什么杀死了他们？

Four things, I think, all of them occurring simultaneously in the mid 2000s.

我认为有四件事在 2000 年代中期同时发生。

The most obvious is Google.

最明显的是谷歌。

There can only be one big man in town, and they're clearly it.

镇上只能有一个大人物，而他们显然就是这个大人物。

Google is the most dangerous company now by far, in both the good and bad senses of the word.

无论从好还是坏的意义上来说，谷歌都是目前为止最危险的公司。

Microsoft can at best limp along afterward.

微软最多只能在之后步履蹒跚。

When did Google take the lead?

谷歌什么时候领先了？

There will be a tendency to push it back to their IPO in August 2004, but they weren't setting the terms of the debate then.

人们倾向于将其推迟到 2004 年 8 月进行首次公开​​募股，但当时他们并没有设定辩论条款。

I'd say they took the lead in 2005.

我想说他们在 2005 年占据了领先地位。

Gmail was one of the things that put them over the edge.

Gmail 是让他们陷入困境的因素之一。

Gmail showed they could do more than search.

Gmail 表明他们可以做的不仅仅是搜索。

Gmail also showed how much you could do with web-based software, if you took advantage of what later came to be called "Ajax." And

Gmail 还展示了如果您利用后来被称为“Ajax”的技术，您可以使用基于网络的软件做多少事情。并且

that was the second cause of Microsoft's death: everyone can see the desktop is over.

这是微软死亡的第二个原因：每个人都可以看到桌面已经结束了。

It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the web—not just email, but everything, right up to Photoshop .

现在看来，应用程序将不可避免地存在于网络上——不仅仅是电子邮件，还有一切，甚至包括 Photoshop。

Even Microsoft sees that now.

甚至微软现在也看到了这一点。

Ironically, Microsoft unintentionally helped create Ajax.

讽刺的是，微软无意中帮助创建了 Ajax。

The x in Ajax is from the XMLHttpRequest object, which lets the browser communicate with the server in the background while displaying a page.

Ajax 中的 x 来自 XMLHttpRequest 对象，它允许浏览器在显示页面时在后台与服务器通信。

(Originally the only way to communicate with the server was to ask for a new page.) XMLHttpRequest was created by Microsoft in the late 90s because they needed it for Outlook.

（最初与服务器通信的唯一方法是请求一个新页面。）XMLHttpRequest 是 Microsoft 在 90 年代末创建的，因为他们需要它用于 Outlook。

What they didn't realize was that it would be useful to a lot of other people too—in fact, to anyone who wanted to make web apps work like desktop ones.

他们没有意识到它对很多其他人也很有用——事实上，对任何想要让网络应用程序像桌面应用程序一样工作的人来说。

The other critical component of Ajax is Javascript, the programming language that runs in the browser.

Ajax 的另一个关键组件是 Javascript，一种在浏览器中运行的编程语言。

Microsoft saw the danger of

微软看到了危险

Javascript and tried to keep it broken for as long as they could.

Javascript 并试图尽可能长时间地保持它的损坏。

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