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’95 seems so long ago….

’95 seems so long ago….

1995. I don’t remember much from that year, but I do recall considerable buzz surrounding a little product called Win95.

Apparently they lit the Empire State Building in the Windows color scheme. Microsoft landed the amazingly mediocre comedic talents of Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry for a promo video. Windows was on top of the world.

The little browser that shouldn’t, Internet Explorer, was rammed down everyones throats for good measure. Bill Gates was spectacular and he knew it.

Win95 represents the peak of desktop PC exuberance. Fortunately, in 2009, the traditional products and services offered by Microsoft are becoming less relevant. The energy and commitment of the open source movement has produced superior products like Mozilla Firefox. With its innovative features, Firefox has helped application development and usher in the age of Web 2.0 while Internet Explorer continues to frustrate and hold back development time. Sun Microsystems OpenOffice.org is a worthy free alternative to Microsoft Office and PHP is less convoluted and bloated server language than Microsoft’s ASP. Meanwhile Apple is riding the iPod wave and the superior Mac OS offerings.

It’s hard to see Microsoft repeating its win95 experience. Google is increasingly becoming the behemoth of the IT industry, albeit a much more benevolent beast: Dont be Evil Google says so!

Thank goodness its no longer ’95.

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Belinda Vesey-Brown About the author
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