From Infoworld:
March 24, 1997 Coda dependency may contribute to the fall of the great Gates empire Last week's column demonstrated that Microsoft is unable to respond to the network computer in its usual "co-opt the technology" manner -- a fact that may signal the turning point in the company's history. (Why am I leaving Intel out of this prediction, you ask? Because it is in a far more flexible position than Microsoft. Its chips can run anything. Microsoft needs them to run Windows.) Add to this NC threat the mounting troubles for Microsoft, and it's no wonder there's no joy in Redmond tonight. Look at the trends. According to International Data Corp., Microsoft SQL Server for Windows NT has been losing significant market share for two years to competing products that run on multiple platforms. Microsoft's Wolfpack clustering technology is turning out to be a Chihuahuapack. (See "Toothless Wolfpack," March 17.) Seemingly endless rapid-fire announcements by ISVs to support standards such as Java, JDBC, LDAP, IMAP4, and CORBA are shoving Microsoft's TAPI, MAPI, ISAPI, "SLAP-HAPI," and a host of other Microsoft-centric specifications right out of the limelight. By now you have undoubtedly heard more than you want to hear about the fellow in Germany who demonstrated that a malicious ActiveX control can secretly empty your bank account. Leaks, bugs, and hastily cobbled service packs have been drawing attention to the immaturity of Windows NT. And, most recently, college kids have found more holes in Internet Explorer than it takes to fill the Albert Hall. (My apologies to those outside the Beatles generation who don't get the reference.) Meanwhile, Microsoft has crushed or alienated practically every potential partner that might otherwise have helped it out of its current fix. Network hanky panky This latest Microsoft Internet Explorer security dustup really isn't a bug, it's a feature. Internet Explorer was built to make it easy to launch a file, whether that file is on your hard drive or sitting on a server somewhere in Freedonia. Unfortunately, it took someone outside Microsoft to realize last August that the file one launches from Explorer could be a Word for Windows document packing a malevolent macro. Then, in the past few weeks, .URL, .LNK, and .ISP files were added to the danger list. Then it surfaced that Microsoft's Common Internet File System opens the door to network hanky panky. This is clearly a company that isn't used to thinking outside of the universe of the local LAN. The Microsoft patches configure Explorer to ask your permission before launching a potentially dangerous file type (similar to Netscape Navigator). OK, but this solution makes it virtually impossible for Microsoft or anyone else to integrate a browser seamlessly into the Windows desktop. If seamless, safe desktop access to remote files on the Internet is the goal, Microsoft is spinning its wheels. There is really only one way to provide these features without introducing a local security risk. You have to eliminate the possibility that anything you run can affect your local drives. Better still, get rid of your local drives. In short, a Java-based browser is a good way to do it, but a Java-based network computer is best. Which brings us back to the conclusion of last week's column. But, if you're tired of the repetition, here's a reason you should sit through another sermon: RandomNoise's Coda. Coda lets you design entire Web pages in Java rather than use a mixture of HTML content, tags, and Java applets. Most pundits seem to be fixated on the fact that Coda gives you a way to display fancy fonts that HTML can't handle. Our own Bob Metcalfe is the only one I know of who addressed the bigger picture. (See From the Ether, March 10). He pointed out that Coda may lead the way toward replacing HTML with Java. A Java-based Web page removes the distinction between application and data. It presents data just as an HTML page would, but every element on the screen has the potential to be an interactive part of a sophisticated application. In other words, the Web page becomes both powerful and safe enough to earn the right to be the new desktop user interface to the world. But Internet Explorer and Windows are nowhere in that equation. So is Microsoft in a batting slump, or is this the beginning of the end? Personally, I think Microsoft can pull out of this one. All it would have to do to fully recover is turn Windows NT into Unix, drop Distributed Component Object Model for CORBA, phase out its Windows-centric protocols for platform-independent standards, adopt NetWare's Novell Directory Services, kill ActiveX, port SQL Server to several different platforms, and abandon the idea of integrating Internet Explorer into the desktop. Well, I'm going to take a nap. Wake me when all that happens.