Love thy ennemy

Laurent POULAIN

Microsoft, which could give some strategy lessons to lots of companies, is currently using a new strategy to attack rival norms: supporting them! The principle is based on the fact that a marketing message has always more power when it cheers the customer in his initial choice ("You like xxx? How smart you are!") rather than trying to have him move backward ("You like xxx? C'mon, buy our product, it's so much better!").

The trick is to support the rival norm to better lead it where you like. The Redmond giant is here using two different strategies. One of them attacks the competitor from the inside (the Trojan horse strategy) whereas the other one does it from the outside (the encapsulation strategy). Note that those two strategies are quite uncommon from Microsoft, which has always been used to just ignore its competitors.

But the software giant has learnt with the Internet to never ignore competitors. Furthermore, it currently has many troubles with some rival norms that are way too popular for Redmond's taste, like Java and HTML. HTML, uncontested standard of the Web, being maybe the most dangerous. Indeed, this standard presents several inconvenient (from a Microsoft point of view): it is simple and efficient - there's no need of Windows 95 to display a HTML page - and is furthermore open and uncontested (an open standard is as dangerous for a monopolistic giant as a free press for a dictatorship).

The Trojan horse strategy

The Trojan Horse strategy consists in pretending having a good will by adopting the rival norms. The good will is actually only deceptive, the actual goal being to lead the norm in the "right" path (i.e. either converging towards one's own standard or in the pit).

Applied to Java

Where as a few years ago, Microsoft's pitch concerning Java would have been something like:

"You like Java? Come on! Use a serious platform, buy Windows."

the current pitch is totally the opposite:

"You like Java? How right you are! And this is your lucky day, because we love Java so much that we are the company the most committed to Java. We love Java so much that we developed our own enhancement, only available on Windows, which turns it into the best operating system for Java. Buy Windows."

As we can see, Microsoft presents itself as the Java champion, trying to steal the spotlight from its creator, Sun. And by proposing "enhancements", it tried to tie Java to Windows. In the worst case (for Microsoft, not for Java), it will contribute to Java fragmentation by pushing another Java API. But whatever the pitch, the final message is always the same: "buy Windows".

Applied to HTML

To attack HTML from the inside, Microsoft created the ActiveX controls and the VBScript language whose common goal is to "activate the Internet". The goal is also to tie up the Web to Windows, just like with Microsoft' "support" to Java.

Microsoft thus makes everything to show good intentions. Bill Gates' corporate pitch would almost be the following one: "You don't like Windows? We understand you. Actually, we happen to be the fiercest opponents to Windows, and that the New version of Windows is THE anti-Windows operating system. Buy the New version of Windows!". If you think about it, that's actually exactly what did Microsoft with Windows 95. The Redmond giant presented its product as the miracle solution to the numerous problems brought by MS-DOS - which it imposed itself a few years ago.

The encapsulation strategy

This strategy has the purpose of destitute a norm from its status of standard (or to prevent it to become one) by defining - and imposing - a norm which encapsulates it. This way, the key norm becomes the encapsulating norm and the encapsulated one is now seen as a simple component.

Applied to HTML

HTML being very difficult to attack directly, Microsoft has decided to attack it through the encapsulation strategy with its Active Documents.

The Active Documents allow to view with the Web browser (i.e. Microsoft Internet Explorer) your everyday documents (i.e. HTML, but primary Word or Excel documents). The user doesn't have anymore to first load his word processor to see a Word document downloaded from the Web.

But with this architecture, HTML is destitute from its status of standard to become an Active Document just like every other one. Of course, once the Active Documents become popular (if it ever happens), Microsoft won't forget to push the use of Word or Excel documents rather than HTML pages for Internet/intranet documents - showing the great features that its applications can provide but that can't HTML can't.

Applied to NetCaster

Same deal against Netscape, Microsoft tries to use the encapsulation strategy in the battle to take control of the push model. Whereas Netscape shipped NetCaster - its proprietary version of the push model - Microsoft announced that CDF (its own norm) will encapsulate NetCaster. The purpose is here the same as before: to have NetCaster be a push model norm like any other, all of them being encapsulated by CDF.

Conclusion

However, one can notice that those two strategies were not always great success stories. This is actually the proof that a good marketing strategy alone is not enough - whatever smart it can be. Indeed, the Java implementation of Microsoft has not imposed itself and ActiveX is still far from having destitute HTML (but it's true that on this one, Microsoft may have deeply underestimated its opponent). But what counts is what would have been the result if Microsoft had decided to ignore the rival norms ("HTML for the Web? What an out-to-date idea. Use Word!"). Probably pitiful.