Technology: The Microsoft hegemony

In December 1996, I only partly quipped to Vance Oppenheimer, "Eventually, we're all going to be working for Microsoft." My thinking was (and still is) that, in addition to its monopoly in programming languages, operating systems, application software and Internet software (with video-game players, handheld computers and MP3 players now in the offing), Bill Gates was poised with Microsoft Money to skim a cut of every electronic banking transaction, not to mention impose "annuity-based" software licensing (pay Microsoft a yearly fee or your computer stops working) or the market dominance of all its Web properties (which are strongly interconnected through MSN Passport and MSN Wallet, not to mention several direct marketing companies). These are plans that Microsoft has not given up on, and periodically reattempts to impose on the market. I don't believe they will ever give up until they win. What other company has endured the market as unaffected as Microsoft, much less emerged victorious? (Bill Gates swears to Congress that he lives in constant fear of being overturned by a competitor, but no one with a shred of objectivity believes that an 800-pound gorilla can be harmed by a field full of mammals ranging in size from the mouse to the terrier.)

I read an entertaining sci-fi story where Bill G. was 88 years old and known as Golden Gates. The scary thing was that all his contemporaries were named Jason, Tiffany, Brittany and so on.