Transcript: (disclaimer: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors)
Ben: I’m a little hoarse today, so hopefully we don’t have to do a lot of talking
Ben：我今天嗓子有点沙哑，希望咱们别说太多话
David: Good luck with that.
David：祝你好运
Ben: All right, let’s do this.
Ben：好，我们开始吧
Ben: Welcome to season 14 episode 6, the season finale of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I’m Ben Gilbert.
Ben：欢迎收听《Acquired》第14季第6集——本季终章，这是一档讲述伟大公司及其幕后故事与策略的播客。我是本·吉尔伯特
David: I’m David Rosenthal.
David：我是大卫·罗森塔尔
Ben: And we are your hosts. Well listeners, here we are. Microsoft Volume II, at long last. After the ancient history of Volume I, we now get to the stuff that you grew up with—the Internet, Windows XP, Xbox, the browser, search, and mobile.
Ben：我们就是各位的主持人。听众朋友们，我们终于迎来了《微软篇》第二卷。在回顾了第一卷的远古历史之后，现在要聊的正是你成长过程中熟悉的内容——互联网、Windows XP、Xbox、浏览器、搜索以及移动
In this era, Microsoft had a lot of the right ideas with a lot of the wrong timing and execution on everything from the Zoom to Bing. But despite that, from 1995 where we start our story, to 2014 where we will end this episode, Microsoft grew their annual revenue from \$6 billion to \$80 billion. They became a phenomenally successful company and really cracked the code on selling enterprise software.
在这一时期，从 Zune 到 Bing，微软的许多思路都很正确，却在时机和执行上屡屡踩空。尽管如此，从我们故事的起点1995年到本集终点2014年，微软年收入仍从60亿美元增长到800亿美元，成为极其成功的公司，并真正破解了企业软件销售的密码
I began the research thinking our part one episode would be about the rise and this episode would be about the fall—cultural problems, failed consumer products, antitrust. But it’s really not that straightforward. After spending months unpacking it all, I actually don’t think that’s the right framing anyway.
起初我以为第一集会讲崛起，这一集会讲衰落——文化问题、失败的消费产品、反垄断。但事实远没这么简单。经过数月梳理，我发现这种框架并不恰当
On Microsoft’s 1998 antitrust suit against the Department of Justice, everyone knows of this case, but most people really have no idea what actually happened. Did Microsoft lose? Well, not really, but the answer is nuanced. Finally, today we dive into it all.
关于微软1998年与美国司法部的反垄断诉讼，人尽皆知，却鲜有人真正了解内情。微软输了吗？并不完全是，答案极富层次。今天我们终于要深入探讨这一切
Oh, and listeners, we have just one announcement for you here today. We told you before that September 10th, we are doing the biggest thing in Acquired history, and we’re doing it in the city of San Francisco.
另外，听众朋友们，今天只有一条公告。正如先前所说，9月10日我们将在旧金山举办 Acquired 史上最大规模的活动
David: We’re doing a live Acquired show at the Chase Center, which is the brand new basketball arena here in San Francisco where the Warriors play. We’re putting it on with our good friends at JP Morgan Payments. As you can imagine, they know a few people at the Chase Center.
David：我们将在勇士队新主场——旧金山的大通中心举办 Acquired 现场秀，与摩根大通支付的好友们共同呈现。可想而知，他们和大通中心非常熟
Ben: It’ll be a night to remember with a few different phases of the evening. There’s going to be lots of opportunities to meet other Acquired listeners from around the world. A big show like this deserves a big special guest, and that special guest is the one and only Mark Zuckerberg.
Ben：这将是难忘之夜，分为多个环节。届时你可结识来自世界各地的 Acquired 听众。如此盛会理应有重量级嘉宾——他就是独一无二的马克·扎克伯格
In addition to being the central figure in some of the greatest acquisitions of all time that we have covered right here on Acquired, Mark and Meta are also playing a big role in defining the next decade of computing with AI too. it’s shaping up to be a total blast. We really hope you can join us.
马克不仅是多起史上最伟大收购案的核心人物——这些案例都在 Acquired 讲过——他与 Meta 还正以 AI 塑造未来十年的计算格局。活动必将精彩绝伦，诚邀你共赴盛会
David: Tickets will be available soon and you can sign up at acquired.fm/sf to get emailed as soon as they go live.
David：门票即将开售，你可前往 acquired.fm/sf 登记，开票即会收到邮件通知
Ben: We’re pumped. We’ll see you there. This show is not investment advice. David and I may have investments in the companies that we discuss. and so do all of you if you own index funds. This show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Okay, David, the middle chapter of Microsoft.
Ben：我们热血沸腾，现场见！本节目不构成投资建议。大卫和我可能持有节目中讨论的公司股票，如果你持有指数基金，你也一样。本节目仅供信息与娱乐之用。好了，大卫，让我们进入微软的中篇
David: The middle chapter indeed, and boy is there a lot to discuss. Ben, you covered this in your intro, but I think everybody knows the narrative about what happened to Microsoft between (call it) 1995 and 2014 when Satya took over. There’s even a quote from Satya himself in the very first paragraph of the book that he wrote in 2017 called Hit Refresh, which that title gives it away right there.
David：确实是中篇，内容多得惊人。Ben，你在开场白提到了，但我想大家都知道关于微软从 1995 年到 2014 年（萨提亚接任）期间的叙事。萨提亚本人在 2017 年的《Hit Refresh》一书开篇就有一句话，书名本身就昭示了一切
He writes, “I joined Microsoft in 1992 because I wanted to work for a company filled with people who believed they were on a mission to change the world. But after years of outdistancing all our competitors, something was changing and not for the better. Innovation was being replaced by bureaucracy, teamwork was being replaced by internal politics and we were falling behind.”
他写道：“1992 年我加入微软，因为我想在一家满怀改变世界使命感的公司工作。但在多年击败所有竞争对手之后，情况开始发生不利变化——创新被官僚主义取代，团队合作被内部政治取代，我们开始落后。”
Then he references the famous gun-pointing org chart by cartoonist and software engineer Manu Cornet that probably listeners many of you are familiar with. We will link to that in the show notes. You can sum this whole narrative up as Microsoft was winning, and then it sucked for a long time, and then it is now winning again, and that’s all thanks to Satya.
随后他提到漫画家兼软件工程师 Manu Cornet 画的著名“互相持枪”组织架构图，许多听众可能见过。我们会在节目笔记附上链接。简而言之，这段叙事就是：微软曾经领先，然后长期低迷，而今再度崛起，功劳全归萨提亚
The question we asked as we were doing our research was, is this true? What we ended up learning from the literally dozens and dozens of people that we talked to surprised us a lot. I think we’ll probably surprise listeners too.
在研究过程中我们提出一个问题：事实真是如此吗？我们与数十位人士交谈后得出的结论令我们大为惊讶，也许也会令听众惊讶
Ben: David, you’re burying the lead here a little bit. We talked to probably four to five times as many people as the next highest episode. I’m looking at our little thank-you list. It’s like 20-something people long.
Ben：大卫，你有点卖关子了。我们这次采访的人数大概是以往最多一期的四到五倍。我看着感谢名单，足足有二十多人
David: All right. On the last episode, we left off with the Ben, as you put it, unabashed celebration of software that was the Windows 95 consumer launch in August of 1995. It was perfect. It had everything. It had Jay Leno. It had the Rolling Stones. It had the start button. Or actually, it had almost everything. There was one thing that was missing from Windows 95 at launch, that if you were a consumer user of technology, of software, of products, of operating systems, maybe you wanted to have, and that was an Internet browser.
David：好。在上一集，我们停在 1995 年 8 月 Windows 95 面向消费者的发布会上，那正如 Ben 所说，是对软件的无比热烈庆祝。它几乎完美：有杰·雷诺，有滚石乐队，有开始按钮。但实际上还缺一样东西——如果你是技术、软件、产品或操作系统的消费者，你大概希望拥有的互联网浏览器，在 Windows 95 首发时并不存在
Ben: It’s so funny because we intentionally left all the internet components out of Windows 95 in the previous episode because once you start talking about the Internet, you’re really talking about the next chapter of Microsoft, and you can’t help but dive into it all.
Ben：有趣的是，我们上一集刻意不提 Windows 95 的任何互联网组件，因为一旦谈到互联网，就进入微软的下一章节，不由得要深入探讨
But in retrospect, the thing that mattered about Windows 95 all these years later is that’s the platform that everyone started using the Internet on. Everything that we talked about in the last episode, yeah it’s all important, but it’s not nearly as important as it being the internet operating system. How did this come to be?
但事后回看，Windows 95 真正重要之处在于它成为大众上网的平台。上一集谈到的那些固然重要，却远不及它作为“互联网操作系统”来得重要。这是怎么发生的？
David: At the time, things were changing so fast. There was this phrase called Internet time. Things happened in weeks versus years. But if you rewind just a little bit back to ’92, ’93, ’94, even into early ’95, going online for consumers meant using a service like CompuServe or Prodigy or (of course) the big one, AOL. These services were not what we think of today as the Internet, but they were more like walled gardens with proprietary services that were bundled with access via dial-up modems.
David：彼时变化极快，有个词叫“互联网时间”，以周而非年为单位。但如果把时间拨回到 1992、1993、1994，甚至 1995 年初，普通消费者上网意味着使用 CompuServe、Prodigy 或更大的 AOL 这类服务。这些并非今日所称的互联网，而更像围墙花园：通过拨号调制解调器访问，并捆绑专属服务
Ben: For consumers it was a similar experience. You could get content on your computer, but the main difference was how to put content on that network. It wasn’t like anyone could just plug in a server and then boom, you have a website. It was like you had to have some negotiating power and know someone at AOL to go do a deal to get your content on their platform.
Ben：对于消费者来说体验类似：你能在电脑上获得内容，但关键差别在于如何把内容放到那个网络上。并非任何人插上服务器就能搞定网站，而是得有谈判筹码，认识 AOL 内部人士，达成合作才能将内容上架其平台
David: I think the best way to sum all this up is do you know who owned the CompuServe service at the time?
David：我想最能概括这一切的方式是：你知道当时 CompuServe 属于谁吗？
Ben: No, but I know it was a Columbus-based company.
Ben：不知道，只记得它是一家总部在哥伦布的公司
David: Oh, interesting. It was owned by H&R Block, the tax prep company.
David：有意思。它属于报税公司 H&R Block。
Ben: Really?
Ben：真的吗？
David: Yeah.
David：是的。
Ben: Whoa, crazy.
Ben：哇，太疯狂了。
David: That’s what online was like just a few years or months before the Windows 95 launch. Microsoft, of course, says inheritor of the earth and all things technology, want to play in this online services arena too. In 1993 they start sniffing around AOL and see if maybe Microsoft could acquire AOL.
David：这就是在 Windows 95 发布前几个月甚至几年里人们的上网方式。当然，自称科技领域“地球继承者”的微软也想在在线服务领域分一杯羹。1993 年，他们开始接触 AOL，看看能否将其收购。
Steve Case, the founder of AOL, isn’t interested in selling, but there’s this whole thing where Paul Allen goes off by himself and he buys a large stake and that creates all sorts of headaches because Microsoft is like, well if we can’t buy them, we’re going to compete with them. So they start an internal project called Project Marvel to build their own online service that becomes MSN.
AOL 创始人 Steve Case 不想出售，但保罗·艾伦却私下买入了大笔股份，这让事情变得棘手——微软想，既然买不到，那就跟他们竞争吧。于是公司启动了名为 Project Marvel 的内部项目，打造自家在线服务，后来演变为 MSN。
Ben: There’s a little sleight of hand that you just did there. You said it becomes MSN. Marvel, when it initially was conceived, was a proprietary online service. Eventually, when that completely failed, which you’re about to get to, they repurposed the name MSN for their internet-based media property. Complete shift in strategy.
Ben：你刚才有点偷换概念。你说 Marvel 变成了 MSN。最初的 Marvel 是封闭的专有在线服务，后来彻底失败——你马上会讲到——微软才把 MSN 这个名字挪去做基于互联网的媒体业务，战略来了个 180° 大转弯。
David: At the same time, many people in technology, especially at Microsoft itself and lots and lots of investors on Wall Street, believe that these walled-garden online services were just temporary. They were just a bridge to a more utopian networked consumer culture and economy that they called the information superhighway.
David：与此同时，科技圈里尤其是微软内部以及华尔街的许多投资人都认为，这些“围墙花园”式在线服务只是过渡，通向他们口中的“信息高速公路”——一个更理想的网络化消费文化与经济。
The specific vision of how this information superhighway utopia was going to work was interactive television, all mediated by the pay-television providers like the cable and satellite companies out there, the Comcast, the Charters, the Time Warner Cables, the DirecTVs on the satellite side. These were going to be the big consumer technology companies.
人们对这条信息高速公路的具体设想是交互式电视，由有线和卫星付费电视运营商来主导——例如 Comcast、Charter、时代华纳有线，卫星端的 DirecTV 等——它们将成为最大的消费级科技公司。
This wasn’t crazy. This actually made a ton of sense because television, and in particular cable television, at the time was the primary existing consumer medium. The Internet was not a thing.
这并不疯狂，实际上非常合乎情理，因为当时电视，尤其是有线电视，是最主要的消费媒介，而互联网尚未成形。
Ben: Well think about the number of things required to create some sort of networked entertainment interactive thing. You would need screens, you would need some way to control those screens to create a feedback and mechanism. You would need content, you would need infrastructure connecting people’s homes. All of those already existed by the cable companies and their endpoints, the televisions.
Ben：想想要打造一种网络化互动娱乐需要多少要素：屏幕、控制屏幕并实现交互的方式、内容、连接家庭的基础设施……这些电视和有线公司及其终端——电视机——全都具备。
If you pitched me on the idea that actually everyone’s going to go buy a brand-new device like a PC, like a computer, and we’re going to have a different set of wires that actually bring all of that to the home, or maybe we’ll repurpose some of the same wires, but gosh, we need to bring in new networking equipment everywhere along the way, oh and there’s going to be completely different content companies that figure out how to create the content, all of that falls flat. Of course you’re going to use all the existing infrastructure and content. You’re not going to bank on standing it all up new from whole cloth.
如果你跟我说，每个人都要去买一台全新的设备——比如个人电脑——然后我们得重新拉一套线路把内容送进家里，或者勉强复用部分线路，但还得在各处部署新网络设备，而且还需要完全不同的内容公司去生产内容，这听起来就要泡汤。当然应该利用现有的基础设施和内容，而不是从零开始搭建一切。
David: Totally. Microsoft, just like they had done in entering the PC software market in partnership with IBM, they’re going to partner with these big consumer cable companies.
David：完全正确。微软就像当年与 IBM 合作进入 PC 软件市场一样，打算与这些大型消费级有线公司结盟。
反复上演，现在是跟OpenAI，等自己能行了马上自己干，微软的特点是执行力。
Starting in the summer of 1993, there are all these rumors flying around that Microsoft is working on a big JV with the cable companies dubbed Cablesoft. You can’t make this up.
1993 年夏天开始，市面上盛传微软正与有线公司筹划一个名为 Cablesoft 的大型合资项目，听上去都像段子。
The idea is that, Ben, like you’re saying, the cable companies will control the pipes and the customer relationships and probably a lot of the content, Microsoft will write the software both for the set-top boxes in consumers’ homes and for the servers on the backend. This software project is code-named Tiger. Then there’s a third company, a third piece of this unholy alliance for the information superhighway. That was a company called Silicon Graphics that would make all the hardware.
设想正如你说的，Ben：有线公司掌控管道、客户关系，可能还掌握大量内容；微软则为家中的机顶盒和后端服务器编写软件，代号 Tiger；这条信息高速公路的“邪恶联盟”还有第三方——硅谷图形传奇 Silicon Graphics（SGI），负责所有硬件。
Cable companies are going to make the hardware themselves. You’re going to need pretty powerful hardware here, both at the home and on the server side, and SGI as Silicon Graphics was referred to was legendary. They are the graphics company that enabled the CGI in Jurassic Park. Of course, their founder and chairman was legendary in Silicon Valley, one Jim Clark. Put a pin in that name.
有线公司要自制硬件——家庭端和服务器端都需要颇为强大的设备。而 SGI 在当时堪称传奇，他们为《侏罗纪公园》提供了 CGI 技术；其创始人兼董事长正是硅谷传奇 Jim Clark。记住这个名字。
Ben: So pinned.
Ben：已记下。
David: Wall Street, of course, are nuts over all this. The hype is out of control. It’s a trillion-dollar opportunity. There are all these spy shots of Bill meeting with John Malone at TCI and Gerald Levin at Time Warner, and they’ll start spending time with Michael Ovitz talking about how Microsoft can get in on the content game too, either through the MSN project or through other things they’re going to do. This leads to MSNBC, the cable network that people are probably familiar with.
David：华尔街当然对此疯狂，炒作失控——这是万亿美元级机会。到处都是比尔·盖茨与 TCI 的 John Malone、时代华纳的 Gerald Levin 私会的偷拍照，还跟 Michael Ovitz 商谈微软如何通过 MSN 或其他方式进入内容领域，这最终催生了大家熟知的有线频道 MSNBC。
Ben: This is so interesting because we’re talking about this general idea of interactive computing involving other people, and Microsoft so far has two initiatives, Marvel and the information superhighway, neither of which are the Internet or the web browser.
Ben：这太有意思了。我们在讨论面向大众的交互式计算概念，而微软目前有两个项目——Marvel 和信息高速公路——但它们都不是互联网，也不是网页浏览器。
David: Correct.
David：没错。
Ben: You’re already getting this picture of Microsoft’s business strategy, which is until we know exactly what the future looks like, start placing bets that approximate, so that we’re in the mix even though we don’t know exactly what the future is.
Ben：由此可见微软的商业策略：在确切未来尚未明朗前，先押注一些“接近”的方向，确保自己身处牌桌，即便尚不清楚未来究竟是何模样。
David: Which as we talked about in part one had always worked so well for the company. And it’s going to work really well here, too. Bill actually decides at this point that he needs to write a book for the public to evangelize this information superhighway thing. Embarrassingly, given how long the book world takes to actually publish a book, it doesn’t come out until November 1995 after the Netscape IPO has already happened and Windows 95 has shipped.
David：正如我们在第一卷中谈到的，这招一直对微软很奏效，这次也不会例外。比尔此时决定写一本面向大众的书来宣传信息高速公路。尴尬的是出版周期太长，直到 Netscape 已经上市、Windows 95 已发布后的 1995 年 11 月才面世。
In this book called The Road Ahead—I have two copies of it here on my desk—the hardcover copy and the softcover copy which was revised and came out in 1996, the hardcover copy is all about the information superhighway, or as Bill likes to call it, information at your fingertips. Then when the softcover version comes out later, basically they control-F’d every instance of information superhighway and replaced it with the Internet and the web browser.
这本名为《The Road Ahead》的书——我桌上就有精装和平装两版——精装版通篇讲信息高速公路，或者用比尔的话说“触手可得的信息”。而到了 1996 年修订版平装书上市时，他们几乎把书里所有“信息高速公路”都用“互联网”和“网页浏览器”替换掉了。
Ben: This is one of these moments on an Acquired episode where we have just a delightfully concrete illustration of this year it was unclear, the next year it was extremely clear. David look up in the indexes of both of those books, the number of references to the Internet.
Ben：这正是《Acquired》里那种典型瞬间，今年还模糊不清，明年就一目了然。大卫，去翻翻那两本书的索引，看看提到“Internet”的条目各有多少。
David: In the hardcover version, there are three portions of the book where it is discussed. In the softcover version, the index for the Internet takes up an entire page. There needs to be an index for all the sub indexes of the Internet in the soft cover version. Amazing.
David：精装本里，“互联网”只在书中三处出现；而在平装修订版里，“Internet”索引占了整整一页，甚至需要给“互联网”各子条目再做个索引，真是不可思议。
The hardcover version is the state of play. In January, 1994 when a young Windows networking engineer named James Allard, or Jay as he goes by, writes a memo to Bill Gates and to the senior leadership at Microsoft entitled, Windows: The Next Killer Application on the Internet.
精装本代表了当时的局面。1994 年 1 月，一位年轻的 Windows 网络工程师 James Allard（大家叫他 Jay）写了一份题为《Windows：互联网上的下一个杀手级应用》的备忘录，递交给比尔·盖茨和微软高层。
In this memo, he points to a new piece of software coming out of the National Center for Supercomputing applications at the University of Illinois that is spreading like wildfire, and appears to be written by some kid programmer there by the name of Marc Andreessen.
在备忘录中，他提到伊利诺伊大学国家超级计算应用中心的一款新软件正如野火般蔓延，作者似乎是那里的年轻程序员 Marc Andreessen。
Ben: In his free time. It’s not even his real job.
Ben：而且这是他业余写的，根本不是本职工作。
David: Yes, and it is called Mosaic. In this memo, Jay argues that the Internet and this software instantiation of it in the Mosaic web browser, looks like it is going to become an exponential phenomenon given the rate at which it is growing. It represents an enormous opportunity for Microsoft to “embrace and extend” the Internet into Windows itself.
David：没错，这款软件叫 Mosaic。Jay 在备忘录中指出，互联网以及 Mosaic 浏览器这种软件形态正以指数速度增长，微软应抓住这一巨大机遇，将互联网“拥抱并扩展”进 Windows 本身。
This is the origin of the ‘embrace and extend’ mantra. The exact words he uses are ‘embrace, extend, innovate.’ In popular press and public opinion of Microsoft, that would of course get changed to ‘embrace, extend, extinguish.’
这就是“拥抱并扩展”口号的起源。他原话是“embrace, extend, innovate”（拥抱、扩展、创新）。后来在媒体和公众口中，被戏称为“embrace, extend, extinguish”（拥抱、扩展、消灭）。
Ben: By their effectively competitors and political enemies. But the embrace and extend thing is actually a brilliant business strategy. There are already a whole bunch of people who love this thing. We want to embrace that new behavior.
Ben：那是竞争对手和政敌的说法。但“拥抱并扩展”本身是极妙的商业策略——既然已有大量用户喜爱某个事物，我们就要先拥抱这种新行为。
There’s no product/market fit risk because we can clearly already see it happening. People want to use this browser thing to access hypertext on the Internet. We’re going to embrace that and we’re going to figure out a way to work it into our business model to extend the functionality in a way that we can make money on.
没有产品与市场匹配的风险——需求已摆在眼前，人们想用浏览器访问互联网超文本。我们先拥抱它，再想办法将其融入自身商业模式，通过功能扩展来赚钱。
David: The business model is we sell Windows through OEMs, to businesses and the like, and to consumers, and we can just bake this into it. Honestly, it’s pretty incredible that Jay lays out the whole winning strategy for Microsoft and the Internet here in January 1994.
David：我们的商业模式是通过 OEM 向企业和消费者销售 Windows，把浏览器直接内嵌进去就行。说真的，Jay 在 1994 年 1 月就为微软赢得互联网战争制定了完整策略，十分惊人。
Ben: This is a few months before Netscape is even founded.
Ben：要知道，这可是 Netscape 成立前几个月。
David: Yes. Netscape as a company does not exist yet. There’s just the Mosaic web browser at the University of Illinois. Then in this exponential growth theme, the very next month in February, 1994, Bill’s technical assistant/shadow, which is a legendary role at Microsoft, now exists at Amazon too, a man named Steven Sinofsky goes on a recruiting trip to his alma mater at Cornell University. While he’s there there’s a big snowstorm. He gets stuck on campus. He has to stay on campus for a few extra days.
David：没错，那时 Netscape 这家公司还不存在，世界上只有伊利诺伊大学的 Mosaic 浏览器。随后“指数增长”主题真就继续上演：1994 年 2 月，比尔的技术助理（微软传奇职位，亚马逊后来也设立）Steven Sinofsky 回康奈尔母校招聘，恰逢暴雪滞留校园，被迫多待几天。
Ben: It’s a very Cornell story.
Ben：这真是个典型的康奈尔故事。
David: Yeah, most Cornell thing ever. The most Ithaca story ever. He notices that all these kids, especially when the campus is snowed in, are all using the Internet. And he knows what the Internet is. It was an academic project for years. He was an academic guy before getting into commercial software and joining Microsoft.
David：没错，再康奈尔不过、再伊萨卡不过的情节。他发现，尤其是大雪封校时，学生们全都在上网。而他当然知道什么是互联网——多年来那一直是学术界的项目；在投身商业软件、加入微软前，他本人也来自学术圈。
Ben: But it was this way for scientists to basically trade research and you’re starting to get some cool entertainment use cases, but there’s certainly no business or business interest or commercial. It’s all just the way that academics communicate with each other.
Ben：可在那时，科学家们上网基本只是交换研究资料，也开始出现些有趣的娱乐用例，但绝对谈不上商业化，更得不到商业界关注——互联网只是学术圈彼此交流的渠道。
David: And this is what absolutely floors Steven. He’s like, I remember the Internet as what you’re saying, Ben. Now, I’m here on campus and all these kids are using it for flirting, registering for classes, messaging each other, sending email that has nothing to do with papers or work or school or academics or anything.
David：这让 Steven 大吃一惊。他心想，Ben 说的那种互联网我也记得，可现在我在校园里看到，这些学生用它来调情、选课、互相发消息、写与学术毫不相关的邮件，什么论文、工作、学业都不沾边。
He gets so excited that he writes another memo to Bill and the leadership team entitled, Cornell is Wired!
他激动得写了一份新备忘录给比尔和公司高层，标题叫《康奈尔已连网！》。
Ben: This is so funny. Microsoft’s history is told through a series of memos, every milestone is some executive publishing a company-wide memo.
Ben：太有意思了。微软的历史就是一连串备忘录，每个里程碑都是某位高管发出的全公司备忘录。
David: Well it’s so funny because some of these memos definitely were internal memos for exactly what you say. And some of them were written for publication to the press.
David：是啊，搞笑的是，其中确实有些备忘录如你所说仅供内部使用，而另一些则写成了对外公开的新闻稿。
Bill has a great quote. “When I heard Steven talk about what was happening at Cornell, I began to take the Internet quite seriously.” Steven and Bill organize an “internet offsite,” with all the top execs with Jay, Bill, Steven, everybody who’s investigating this internet thing. It takes place on April 5th, 1994, which is the very next day after Netscape was incorporated on April 4th.
比尔有句名言：“听到 Steven 描述康奈尔的情况后，我开始非常严肃地看待互联网。”随后 Steven 和比尔召集 Jay 等高管举行了一次“互联网闭门会议”，时间是 1994 年 4 月 5 日——也就是 Netscape 在 4 月 4 日注册成立后的第二天。
Ben: Amazing.
Ben：太神了。
David: At this offsite, Bill totally gets religion that the Internet, as Jay said in his initial memo, is actually an exponential phenomenon. As Bill puts it to the team gathered there and then the whole company later, it is a core Microsoft company value that exponential phenomena cannot be ignored.
David：在那次闭门会上，比尔彻底“皈依”，相信正如 Jay 最初备忘录所言，互联网是指数级现象。比尔当场并随后向全公司强调：微软的核心价值观之一，就是绝不能忽视指数级趋势。
Ben: Oh wow. I had no idea that was the impetus of him taking it seriously. Think back to everything we talked about in the last episode. The whole concept of Microsoft is founded on the idea that Moore’s law is a thing and therefore we can develop software that people have never dreamed of that in just a few years will be usable.
Ben：哇，没想到这就是他开始严肃对待互联网的动因。回想我们上一集讨论的一切，微软的整个理念都建立在摩尔定律之上——既然硬件性能会飞跃，我们就能开发人们从未想象、而在几年后就能用得起的软件。
David: Speaking of Netscape being incorporated the day before, remember I said to put a pin in the name Jim Clark? Of course, many listeners already know where we’re going here. Jim Clark, legendary founder of SGI, Silicon Valley legend.
David：说到 Netscape 前一天才刚注册成立，还记得我让大家标记的那个名字 Jim Clark 吗？很多听众应该已经猜到我们要聊什么了。Jim Clark 是 SGI 的传奇创始人，硅谷传奇人物。
Well, a couple of months before that in February 94—it’s crazy how fast all of this happened; it’s just insane—Jim is still at SGI. He’s really frustrated with the board and the company though for not pushing even harder on this information superhighway opportunity. What does he do? He resigns from the company in protest, the company he founded. On his very last day in February 94 at SGI, he cold-emails the kid in Illinois, Marc Andreessen.
事情发生得很快——就在 1994 年 2 月，也就是 Netscape 注册成立前几个月——当时 Jim 仍在 SGI，但他对董事会和公司没有更大力度地推动“信息高速公路”机会感到非常沮丧。于是他辞去了自己创立的公司的职务以示抗议。1994 年 2 月的最后一天，他在 SGI 的办公室给伊利诺伊州那个年轻人 Marc Andreessen 发了一封“冷邮件”。
Ben: You get the opportunity to team up with an industry legend. Of course.
Ben：如果有机会跟行业传奇合作，当然要抓住啊。
David: Jim in this email writes, “I’m impressed with Mosaic, and clearly this seems to be getting adoption. If there’s any way that you and I, Marc, might be able to collaborate, that would be ‘of interest to me.’”
David：Jim 在邮件里写道：“我对 Mosaic 印象深刻，而且它显然正在被广泛采用。如果有什么方式能让我们合作，Marc，我会非常感兴趣。”
The two of them get together and then they found this company on April 4th, 1994 called Electric Media. The initial goal of Electric Media, soon to be Netscape, is that oh, Marc is this hotshot programmer. Clearly the information superhighway is what this web is going to turn into. We’re going to do what SGI was supposed to do. We’re going to make set-top boxes for the information superhighway.
他们于是联手，在 1994 年 4 月 4 日创立了一家公司，最初叫 Electric Media，也就是日后的 Netscape。创立初衷是：Marc 是一名炙手可热的程序员，很明显万维网将演变成信息高速公路，我们要做 SGI 本该做的事——为信息高速公路制造机顶盒。
Ben: In retrospect you, got to be looking at them thinking, how dense are you? Marc Andreessen is the person in the world who understands what a crazy exponential phenomena the Internet is, the web is, what it can be. Marc had (I think) by this point already put the image tag into HTML, so they can now send images that render in browsers. And when Jim Clark emails him, they decide to go do the information superhighway and not to do the Internet.
Ben：事后回看，你会觉得他们怎么这么“犯傻”？Marc Andreessen 是全世界最懂互联网指数级爆发的人，他已经（我记得这时）在 HTML 里加入了 <img> 标签，让浏览器能显示图片。可当 Jim Clark 给他发邮件时，他们却决定去做信息高速公路，而不是互联网。
David: Yeah, this is amazing. The way they’re going to do this as a startup—this is so great—one of the other big things that SGI had done besides building the graphics workstations that Hollywood ran on and did Jurassic Park and all that, was they were Nintendo’s technology partner for the N64. They made the graphics engine for the N64.
David：是的，这太神奇了。他们要以初创公司的方式来做——这真是绝了。SGI 除了给好莱坞制作《侏罗纪公园》等电影的图形工作站外，还曾是任天堂 N64 的技术合作伙伴，为 N64 制作图形引擎。
Jim has this relationship with Nintendo. The N64 is going to be coming out. It’s going to be this amazing box in the living room attached to TVs in consumers’ homes. They’re going to team up with Nintendo and turn the N64 into an information superhighway box.
Jim 与任天堂关系紧密。N64 即将上市，这将是一台摆在客厅电视旁的神奇主机。他们打算与任天堂合作，把 N64 打造成信息高速公路的机顶盒。
Ben: Meanwhile, it’s hilarious that we keep talking about the information superhighway because it never happened. There were these little tests done with cable companies that would wire up 300 houses or something, but it never happened anywhere at any scale.
Ben：有意思的是，我们反复提到“信息高速公路”，但它根本没实现。曾有有线电视公司做过小规模测试，给 300 户家庭布线之类，可从未大规模落地。
When you’re listening to this and you keep trying to figure out, like sorry, what exactly was the information superhighway and what did it look like? Nobody knows because it never happened.
如果你一直在想：等等，信息高速公路到底是什么，长什么样？——没人知道，因为它压根没出现过。
David: It’s such a classic case of way, way, way too many cooks in the kitchen and just total slideware.
David：这完完全全是“厨子太多”的典型案例，全靠 PPT 幻灯片在画饼。
Ben: And the fact that even Marc himself didn’t pound the table for no, the Internet’s going to be the thing, that really shows you how the human brain is not wired to understand compounding.
Ben：即便是马克本人也没有大力疾呼“互联网必将成为未来”，这件事本身就充分说明了人类的大脑并不擅长理解复利效应。
Theoretically, this network should continue to get more nodes. The technology should evolve little by little. Moore’s law is happening on the compute side. There’s some reason to think that bandwidth is going to be available to homes in the same way it’s available to universities and companies. But still it just wasn’t obvious enough to continue down that path. It was almost like great, I’ve made a name for myself doing this toy thing that probably isn’t the future. Now, we’ll go do the big boy stuff because that’s what all the experts are saying.
理论上，这张网络应该持续增加节点，技术也会一点一滴地进化。计算端有摩尔定律在推进，带宽也很可能像在大学和企业那样进入家庭。但即便如此，坚持这条道路依旧并非显而易见。感觉就像是：太好了，我靠这个玩具项目出了名，但它大概不是未来方向；现在我们去做专家们口中的“大项目”。
David: Totally. Shortly after this, by late spring 1984, Mosaic now has a million active users. Clearly Bill Gates is paying attention here. Shortly after all this, Jim Clark and Marc Andreesen say, wait a minute. Let’s just go do this Mosaic thing.
David：完全同意。之后不久，到1984年晚春时，Mosaic 已经拥有一百万活跃用户。很显然，比尔·盖茨也注意到了。紧接着，吉姆·克拉克和马克·安德里森说：“等等，我们干脆把 Mosaic 做成一家公司吧。”
They scrap the N64 information superhighway. They go raise money from Kleiner Perkins. John Doerr invest, joins the board, most legendary investor of the time. By October 1994, the newly christened Mosaic Communications Corporation posts the first version of its browser, Mosaic Navigator, for free to download on the web.
他们放弃了 N64 信息高速公路的计划，转而从凯鹏华盈融资。传奇投资人约翰·杜尔投资并加入董事会。到1994年10月，新成立的 Mosaic Communications Corporation 将其浏览器首个版本 Mosaic Navigator 免费发布在网络上供人下载。
Their business plan is that they’re going to give away the consumer browser for free, and they’re going to charge companies for server software. If you want to host a website—you’re a corporation or whomever—you need server software to do that. They’re going to charge companies for the server software.
他们的商业计划是：向消费者免费提供浏览器，而向企业收取服务器软件费用。如果你想托管网站——无论是公司还是其他组织——就需要服务器软件，他们将向企业收取这部分费用。
Ben: Great. Listeners, you should be paying attention to something David just said there. He said it’s the Mosaic Corporation and then you said it’s Mosaic Navigator. Even though it’s called Mosaic, because Marc Andreessen wanted to draft off the success of the previous project he had done called Mosaic, this is completely new code. They founded a company, they started writing code from scratch. They had the experience of writing Mosaic, the thing owned by the university and the NCSA before. This is a new thing called Mosaic that does the same thing architected for commercial use.
Ben：很好。各位听众，注意 David 刚才提到的一点：他说的是 Mosaic Corporation，又说是 Mosaic Navigator。虽然名字里都有 Mosaic，因为马克·安德里森想借前一个 Mosaic 项目之名声，但这完全是新代码。他们成立新公司，从零开始写代码。此前的 Mosaic 归大学和 NCSA 所有，他们有写它的经验；而新的 Mosaic 是为商业用途重新架构的产品。
David: Exactly Ben. Meanwhile, back at the University of Illinois, even though they’re academic and government institution here, they realize that they’ve got something valuable in the original Mosaic.
David：正是如此，Ben。与此同时，在伊利诺伊大学那边，虽然作为学术和政府机构，他们也意识到原版 Mosaic 是一项宝贵资产。
Ben: The pilot code, millions of users. Marc doesn’t work there anymore, but it seems to be working.
Ben：那套原型代码吸引了数百万用户。马克早已离开，但软件显然运转良好。
David: They license their Mosaic, the original one, to a local company called Spyglass.
David：于是他们把原版 Mosaic 授权给一家名为 Spyglass 的本地公司。
Ben: The state of play is you’ve got the old Mosaic which Spyglass has the right to license for commercial use, you have a new thing that will become Netscape called Mosaic that is totally separate code, and Marc Andreessen’s new Mosaic keeps trying to go do deals like sell their server software. Every time they’d find a customer, Spyglass threaten to sue. They basically blow up the deal because they keep calling each customer and saying, yeah, we’re going to sue.
Ben：局势是这样：Spyglass 拿到商业化授权的旧 Mosaic，一套全新代码但同样叫 Mosaic 的东西将来会成为 Netscape，而马克·安德里森的新 Mosaic 不断尝试做交易，例如销售服务器软件。每当他们找到客户，Spyglass 就威胁起诉，打电话告诉客户“我们要告你们”，从而搅黄交易。
This is obviously very frustrating and technically illegal. Marc Andreessen’s Mosaic realizes that this is going to be an existential problem for them unless they do something about it. They actually sue Spyglass. You guys got to stop. So there is a settlement.
这显然令人极度沮丧，而且在技术层面上也不合法。马克·安德里森的 Mosaic 意识到，如果不采取措施，这将是生存危机。他们反过来起诉 Spyglass：“你们得住手。”最终双方达成和解。
David: Well, the net of all of this is that Marc and Jim’s company—let’s call it that—changes its name in the fall of 1994 to Netscape. Marc had a typically great Marc quote about this to the press at the time. “You go to school, you do your research, you leave, and then they try and cripple your business. Had I known this would happen, I would’ve gone to Stanford.”
David：总而言之，马克和吉姆的公司——姑且这么称呼——在1994年秋季更名为 Netscape。当时马克在媒体上发表了一句典型的“马克式”精彩言论：“你去上学，做研究，然后离开，他们却试图扼杀你的生意。如果早知道会发生这种事，我就去斯坦福了。”
Ben: Which of course is apocryphal because he had no means of going to Stanford at the time. He lived in the Midwest. He was going to go to a state school. No one recognized his genius yet at the time.
Ben：当然这段话并不确凿，因为那时他根本没有条件去斯坦福。他住在中西部，只计划上州立学校，当时还没人在意他的天赋。
David: It’s also the best Marc Andreessen quote ever, which is awesome. Meanwhile, remember the online services—the Compuserves, Prodigy, AOL, et cetera? They’re not blind. They see that the Internet and the web is also becoming a thing. They want to go license a web browser and incorporate it into their platform.
David：这也是马克·安德里森最精彩的名言，真是绝了。与此同时，还记得那些线上服务——CompuServe、Prodigy、AOL 等吗？他们并不是瞎子，看到互联网和万维网正在崛起，于是想去授权浏览器，把它整合进自己的平台。
Ben: I think it was late 93 or early 94, but this was a seminal moment where the AOLs of the world interconnected with the Internet. Now, you could not just navigate the proprietary services but also surf the open web.
Ben：我记得大约在93年末或94年初，这是一个划时代的时刻，AOL 之类的服务与互联网打通；此后人们不仅能使用专有服务，还能畅游开放的网络。
David: Netscape isn’t interested in licensing because they have their own business model selling web server software and they want to allow free downloads of the navigator client. Spyglass, though, they start licensing that original Mosaic, and they start doing deals with the online service providers. A small startup company called BookLink goes and codes up another browser that they start licensing to companies as well.
David：Netscape 无意授权，因为他们的商业模式是销售服务器软件，并允许用户免费下载 Navigator 客户端。而 Spyglass 则开始授权原版 Mosaic，并与线上服务商签约。还有一家名为 BookLink 的小型初创公司也编写了一款浏览器并向企业提供授权。
Ben: Bill Gates and Steven Sinofsky go and meet with BookLink in May of 1994. Coming right off of this internet retreat, we’re going to make this a core part of Microsoft and a core part of Windows. They’re interested in licensing BookLink as well. They start negotiating, they’re talking about (call it) a \$2 million license deal, and all of a sudden AOL comes in and buys the whole company of BookLink for \$30 million.
Ben：1994年5月，比尔·盖茨和史蒂文·西诺夫斯基与 BookLink 会面。微软刚在一次互联网战略会议上决定把网络功能作为 Windows 的核心，他们也想授权 BookLink 的浏览器，谈判金额大约200万美元。结果突然，AOL 斥资3000万美元收购了整个 BookLink。
This now leaves Microsoft without a browser. There are basically only three real browsers on the market. There’s BookLink that AOL just bought, there’s…
这下微软手里没有浏览器了。当时市场上基本只有三款真正的浏览器：AOL 刚收购的 BookLink，还有……
Ben: Netscape Navigator, which is not available to license.
Ben：Netscape Navigator，但它不对外授权。
David: And then there’s Mosaic and Spyglass. Microsoft goes to who else? Spyglass. They license the source code for Marc Andreessen’s original Mosaic browser from Spyglass Software for \$2 million. That code base becomes the base upon which Microsoft builds Internet Explorer.
David：另外就是 Mosaic 和 Spyglass。微软还能找谁？当然是 Spyglass。他们以200万美元从 Spyglass Software 授权了马克·安德里森原版 Mosaic 浏览器的源代码，这套代码成为微软开发 Internet Explorer 的基础。
Ben: Well David, I’m glad you took the bait. I am here to tell you that that is the public narrative and very close to the truth. But there’s some more nuance here. You ready to hear it?
Ben：好吧，David，我很高兴你接了我的话。我要说的是，公众的说法基本属实，但其中还有更细微的差别，你想听吗？
David: Well hey, if you click the about menu in the early versions of Internet Explorer, a text box pops up that says, based on NCSA Mosaic, distributed under a licensing agreement with Spyglass Inc.
David：嘿，只要你在早期版本的 Internet Explorer 中点击“关于”菜单，就会弹出一个文本框，上面写着：基于 NCSA Mosaic，并按照与 Spyglass Inc. 的授权协议进行分发。
Ben: Yes. All of that technically true. It is just not quite as meaningful as you think it is. As with all of these things, it’s not just like Bill Gates and Steven Sinofsky are having a think, and the rest of Microsoft is sitting around waiting for the think to finish, and then an edict comes down and then they go and do the work. There are a lot of people with a lot of ideas working on a lot of stuff in parallel.
Ben：对，技术上没错，但这并没有你想象的那么重要。就像所有这类事情一样，并不是比尔·盖茨和史蒂文·西诺夫斯基闭门苦思，而微软其他人坐等结果、接到命令后才开始工作。实际上，有很多人同时在推进大量创意与项目。
That is why Microsoft’s history is so delightfully messy, is there are a zillion initiatives going on and it’s never clear if your thing is going to become the next company strategy or not. Here is a slightly different version of this history with different players, and I want to underscore it for one big reason. It will come up later in antitrust.
这也正是微软历史如此精彩又混乱的原因——无数项目并行，你永远不知道自己手上的东西是否会成为公司的下一大战略。我接下来要讲一个由不同人物推动的稍有差异的版本，并强调这一点，因为它后来在反垄断案件中至关重要。
David: Okay.
David：好的。
Ben: Some of the Windows 95 team in late 94 led by Thomas Reardon, is pulled off before it ships to start thinking about what should we do after Windows 95 ships? What would the next marquee investments be for what at the time they’re calling Windows 97, which of course there was never a Windows 97.
Ben：1994 年末，由托马斯·里尔登带领的部分 Windows 95 团队成员在正式发布前就被抽调出来思考：Windows 95 上市后我们该做什么？当时称作 Windows 97（尽管最终并未发布）的下一代系统应有哪些核心投入？
The group’s opinion is all internet all the time. How could the next iteration of Windows be extremely internet-native in a very embedded way? There are tons of proposals in this little group. There’s virtual meeting software, think Zoom-type things. There’s an email client specifically built for the Internet rather than for your company’s corporate network, which at the time was novel. Then there’s of course a browser.
小组的共识是“全程互联网化”。下一代 Windows 要如何深度嵌入、原生互联网？他们提出了大量设想：虚拟会议软件（类似如今的 Zoom）、专为互联网而非企业内网打造的邮箱客户端——这在当时颇为新颖——当然还有浏览器。
But the big vision was what if the whole Windows Shell is a browser? Every visual thing that you interact with in Windows, what if that actually was an HTML-rendered server communicating online thing?
更宏大的愿景是：如果整个 Windows Shell 本身就是浏览器呢？用户在 Windows 中交互的每个可视元素都由 HTML 渲染、实时在线通信，会怎样？
The team technically looked at it this way. We should build HTTP directly into the operating system since it was just another protocol on top of the TCP/IP protocol that the Internet is based on. We should provide reusable UI component to any application that wants to display HTML. That’s a good engineering building block to build, is this HTML renderer that any application can frame in and use.
团队从技术角度认为：应将 HTTP 直接内置到操作系统，因为它只是建立在 TCP/IP 之上的另一种协议。同时要提供可复用的 UI 组件，供任何需要显示 HTML 的应用调用；开发这样一款可被嵌入的 HTML 渲染器是理想的工程基块。
Of course, Microsoft, the strategy here is we will develop a browser application that used the building block that others could also use to render HTML. They actually go to Netscape and say, hey, we have this great HTTP stack, we have the HTML engine, we have these wrappers to go around it. Instead of rewriting all of it, just use our off-the-shelf code that we intend to ship with Windows.
微软的策略是：先开发一个使用这些基块的浏览器，同时让其他开发者也能用同样的基块来渲染 HTML。他们甚至去找 Netscape，说：“我们有成熟的 HTTP 协议栈、HTML 引擎和外围封装，与其重写，不如直接用我们计划随 Windows 预装的现成代码。”
Famously, Netscape did not do that. IE (Internet Explorer) actually ends up being the only application that used all these Windows components. Once they got going on the browser, they convinced the Windows leadership that actually we can do this fast, we should get this done as a part of Windows 95, not wait for the next big release.
众所周知，Netscape 拒绝了。结果 IE（Internet Explorer）成为唯一使用全部 Windows 组件的应用。一旦浏览器项目启动，团队便说服 Windows 高层：我们能很快完成，应将其作为 Windows 95 的一部分推出，而不是等到下一次重大版本发布。
David: We’re going to get to this in a minute, but when Windows 95 launched, it had either at launch or very shortly thereafter, what was called the plus pack. Internet Explorer was available as part of the plus pack.
David：我们稍后会谈到这点，但当 Windows 95 发布时，无论是发布当日还是很快之后，它都带有一个名为 Plus Pack 的增强包。Internet Explorer 就包含在这个增强包里。
Ben: Yes. Anyway, how does NCSA Mosaic and Spyglass come into this? Well, the nuance is Spyglass had actually massively changed the Mosaic code. They were trying to create the Spyglass browser that was based on this NCSA code base, but it wasn’t very good.
Ben：是的。那么，NCSA Mosaic 和 Spyglass 是如何牵涉进来的呢？细节在于，Spyglass 实际上大幅修改了 Mosaic 代码，他们想基于 NCSA 的代码库开发出 Spyglass 浏览器，但效果并不理想。
That is what Microsoft was able to get their hands on. They could not license the original NCSA version. That was gone, or at least not available for license. They tried backing out a lot of the Spyglass stuff. Ultimately, it wasn’t that helpful in creating Internet Explorer, and they spent just as much time trying to undo a lot of it, and then build the Internet Explorer stuff on top.
微软能拿到的就是这份代码。他们无法获得原版 NCSA 的授权，那已经不存在或至少无法授权。于是他们尝试回退大量 Spyglass 的改动，但这对打造 Internet Explorer 并没太大帮助，反而花了同样多的时间去撤销这些改动，再在其之上构建 IE 的功能。
Ultimately, did it actually accelerate their path to market? And was it actually Marc Andreessen’s code? Some of it was in there, but it’s not like they grabbed it off the shelf and now it’s IE.
最终，这真的加快了他们的上市进程吗？那真的是 Marc Andreessen 的代码吗？确实有一部分，但并不是随手拿来就成了 IE。
David: It makes for such a good story, though. It sounds like reality is a lot like the DOS acquisition. Yes, Microsoft bought QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) from Seattle Computer Products. Was that the same thing as Microsoft DOS? Sort of.
David：不过，这个故事听起来确实很精彩。这情形听上去很像当年收购 DOS：没错，微软从 Seattle Computer Products 买下了 QDOS（Quick and Dirty Operating System）。那跟 Microsoft DOS 是同一回事吗？算是吧。
Ben: A lot of work went into it after the deal.
Ben：交易完成后，他们还是投入了大量工作。
David: As you would expect, same thing here. But it is definitely true that if you click that about box in the early versions of Internet Explorer…
David：正如你所料，这里也是同样的情况。不过确实，如果你在早期版本的 Internet Explorer 中点击“关于”窗口……
Ben: David’s holden to it.
Ben：David 对此乐此不疲。
David: It’s just so delicious.
David：这实在太有趣了。
Ben: It is delicious. The two vague takeaways here, at least from this additional version of the story is: (1) what they actually wanted to do was make Windows web-enabled in a really deep, integrated way, not just have this one little application called a browser. Technically there was a lot of co-mingling there. A lot of what became the code underpinning Internet Explorer was actually Windows code implemented in Windows operating system to do these protocols. And (2) still a lot of work to make IE after the deal.
Ben：确实有趣。从这个补充版本里可以得出两点模糊的结论：（1）他们真正想做的是让 Windows 以一种深度、集成的方式实现对 Web 的支持，而不仅仅是提供一个叫浏览器的小应用。从技术上说，两者之间有大量代码交叉融合，很多后来支撑 Internet Explorer 的代码其实是 Windows 操作系统为实现这些协议而编写的；（2）即便达成授权，开发 IE 仍需投入大量工作。
David: This brings us now to the launch preparations for Windows 95. In the spring leading up to all this, Bill writes another memo. This one intended for publication, so to speak. That is the famous Internet Tidal Wave memo. I just want to do a big quote from it here.
David：这就把我们带到了 Windows 95 的发布筹备阶段。此前的春天，比尔写了另一份准备公开发布的备忘录，也就是著名的《互联网浪潮》备忘录。我想在这里引用一大段内容。
“Perhaps you have already seen memos from me or others here about the importance of the Internet. I have gone through several stages of increasing my views of its importance. Now, I assign the Internet the highest level of importance. In this memo, I want to make clear that our focus on the Internet is crucial to every part of our business. The Internet is the most important single development to come along since the IBM PC was introduced in 1981. It is even more important than the arrival of the graphical user interface.” Can’t get any more clear than that.
“也许你已经看过我或其他人在此谈到互联网重要性的备忘录。我对其重要性的认识经历了几个阶段的提升，现在，我把互联网置于最高重要级别。在这份备忘录中，我想明确一点：我们对互联网的关注对于公司业务的每一个部分都至关重要。自 1981 年 IBM PC 推出以来，互联网是最重要的单一发展，它的重要性甚至超过图形用户界面的出现。” 这再清楚不过了。
Ben: Very clear.
Ben：很清楚。
David: That brings us to the August 95 Windows 95 launch scheduled for the 24th. On August 9th, a couple of weeks beforehand, Netscape goes public with a market capitalization of \$3 billion.
David：这让我们来到 1995 年 8 月 24 日计划发布的 Windows 95。就在两周前的 8 月 9 日，Netscape 以 30 亿美元市值挂牌上市。
Ben: Massive IPO.
Ben：史诗级的 IPO。
David: Massive. This is 1995 we’re talking about.
David：确实巨大——别忘了，这可是 1995 年。
Ben: Netscape, we should say, goes from 1 million to 15 million users in one year. Just instant product/market fit. It was so clear that people wanted to browse the web. A lot of the time in technology in this ecosystem, we’re always looking around like, hey, is that going to become a thing? Is that going to become a thing? That was from 1994 onward, never a question about the Internet.
Ben：必须指出，Netscape 的用户在一年内从 100 万激增至 1500 万，产品与市场瞬间契合。人们想要上网浏览这一点再清楚不过。在科技圈我们常常四处张望——“那个东西会火吗？”自 1994 年起，对互联网则从未有这种疑问。
David: Never, yeah. In the IPO press cycle, Marc Andreessen is quoted as saying that “Netscape will soon reduce Windows to a poorly debugged set of device drivers.”
David：的确没有。在 IPO 宣传期间，马克·安德里森被引述说：“Netscape 很快会把 Windows 变成一堆调试不良的设备驱动程序。”
Ben: It’s such a good quote, and there’s so much behind it too. If you really dwell in that quote, what does it mean? If one of the things he’s saying is Windows is a platform upon which independent software vendors write applications, Windows is the way that currently people write software for businesses and consumers to use.
Ben：这句话太精彩了，背后信息量巨大。仔细品味，它意味着什么？其中一层意思是：Windows 是独立软件厂商编写应用的平台，是当下企业与个人开发和使用软件的基础。
If we are going to reduce Windows to a poorly debugged set of device drivers, what I’m implying is that these crappy static web pages that get served right now, is merely a step on our journey to enabling rich web applications. Think JavaScript, CSS, eventually Java and Flash. The web will be a way that developers write their applications. That’s right there implicit in the quote.
如果要把 Windows 贬为一堆调试糟糕的设备驱动，我暗示的是：如今这些简陋的静态网页只是迈向丰富 Web 应用的第一步——想想 JavaScript、CSS，后来还有 Java 与 Flash——Web 会成为开发者编写应用的新方式。这一点已隐含在那句引言中。
When they’re saying, we’re going to reduce Windows blah-blah-blah, it’s saying, okay, Windows has all this stuff right now for developers, but essentially you’re going to use Windows or any operating system just to boot it up, connect to all your peripherals—your screen, your mouse, your keyboard and everything—you’ll open your browser, and you’ll do everything through the browser.
当他们说要把 Windows 如何如何时，其实是在表达：虽然 Windows 目前为开发者提供了大量功能，但从根本上看，你使用 Windows 或任何操作系统不过是为了开机、连接显示器、鼠标、键盘等外设，然后打开浏览器，把一切操作放到浏览器里完成。
That scared the hell out of Microsoft. Not specifically this quote, but Microsoft had come to the same conclusion too of, oh my God, if the web becomes the platform of the future, all the reasons why we have all this incredible business, people feeling the need to use our operating system to be able to get access to their favorite software, and for developers to build applications on our platform to get access to the users, that could go away.
这让微软惊恐万分。并非仅因这句话，而是微软也得出了同样结论：天哪，如果 Web 真成了未来的平台，人们之所以依赖我们的操作系统来使用心仪软件、开发者之所以在我们的平台上构建应用以触达用户的所有理由，都可能消失。
In the same memo that you were quoting earlier, the Internet Tidal Wave, Bill Gates famously says, and when I say famously, it’s because the Department of Justice later grabbed this quote and used it as a exhibit, Bill writes, “A new competitor born on the Internet is Netscape. Their browser is dominant with a 70% usage share, allowing them to determine which network extensions will catch on. They are pursuing a multi-platform strategy where they move the key API,” the application programming interface, “into the client to commoditize the underlying operating system.”
在你刚才引用的《互联网浪潮》同一份备忘录中，比尔·盖茨写道——之所以“著名”是因为美国司法部后来将其作为证据——“一个诞生于互联网的新竞争者是 Netscape。他们的浏览器以 70% 的使用份额占据主导地位，从而能够决定哪些网络扩展会流行。他们正推行多平台战略，将关键 API（应用程序接口）移至客户端，以便将底层操作系统商品化。”
They got it immediately. The web is an application platform that completely reduces our value.
他们立刻看穿了：Web 是一种应用平台，会彻底削弱我们的价值。
David: You can see why it was so important to Microsoft to beat Netscape, to bring the Internet in the form of Internet Explorer into Windows, and have Windows maintain its role as the dominant platform. All this stuff will cut off their air supply. It was existential.
David：你可以理解为什么微软如此重视击败 Netscape，把互联网以 Internet Explorer 的形式带入 Windows，并让 Windows 继续保持其主导平台的地位。这些事情若不做，将断掉微软的“氧气供应”，关系到生存。
Ben: And how amazing is this? It’s an application platform of the future that is distributed as a Windows app. Windows had huge market share at this point. I don’t know, 80%–90%. Eventually over 90% market share. The way that Netscape could get to consumers was because Microsoft had all these computers out there running Windows. It was this ultimate Trojan horse that they could build the platform of the future through Microsoft.
Ben：这有多惊人？这是一款作为 Windows 应用分发的未来应用平台。那时 Windows 的市场份额巨大，我想大概有 80%–90%，最终甚至超过 90%。Netscape 能够触达消费者，正是因为微软在全球布满运行 Windows 的电脑。借助微软，他们得以用这种终极“特洛伊木马”来打造未来的平台。
David: Yup. Windows 95 launches a couple of weeks after the Netscape IPO. Internet Explorer is not baked in, at least not in the retail box version. You can buy it for \$50 as part of the Plus pack that I was referencing before. Install that and add it into Windows, and Microsoft will make money on the sale of that software. But that, of course, does nothing to make a dent in the free version of Netscape Navigator that is out there.
David：是的。Windows 95 在 Netscape IPO 后几周发布。Internet Explorer 并未预装，至少零售盒装版没有。你可以花 50 美元购买我之前提到的 Plus Pack，然后安装到 Windows 中，微软可以通过该软件销售赚钱。但这当然无法撼动外面免费版的 Netscape Navigator。
Ben: If Microsoft’s goal is to cut off the air supply, David, as you already quoted of Netscape, the goal is ubiquity instantly. We don’t care about making money. We just need to get this thing out, so the Internet doesn’t kneecap our business. We can embrace and control it, or perhaps embrace and extend it.
Ben：如果说微软的目标是“掐断氧气”，那么 Netscape——正如你引用的那样——则追求的是立刻无处不在。我们不在乎赚钱，只要迅速把产品推向市场，免得互联网削弱我们的业务。我们要么拥抱并掌控它，要么“拥抱并扩展”它。
David: Netscape run continues. The Netscape stock triples over September, October, November. Netscape is now a \$10 billion public company. Insane.
David：Netscape 的涨势还在继续。仅在九月、十月、十一月，股价就翻了三倍，市值已达 100 亿美元，令人难以置信。
Ben: I don’t think making very much money on their server software yet. All the market cap creation is attributable to people believing they have the dominant platform of the future and not based on their current financials.
Ben：我认为他们的服务器软件还没赚到多少钱。所有市值的增长都源于市场相信他们掌握了未来的主导平台，而非当前的财务表现。
David: Basically all of the hype train that had been behind the information superhighway has now completely poured it over to Netscape.
David：基本上，曾经围绕“信息高速公路”的所有炒作热潮如今已全部倾向 Netscape。
Ben: That’s true. What’s our tracker for the Internet? Netscape, everybody pile in.
Ben：确实如此。那我们衡量互联网发展的指标是什么？答案是 Netscape，人人蜂拥而至。
David: I could make an analogy to today, but I’m going to spare us all.
David：我本可以拿今天来打比方，但还是留给大家吧。
Ben: Make this episode timeless, David.
Ben：让这期节目永不过时吧，David。
David: I’m going to make the episode timeless. Okay. Then on December 7th, 1995, Bill Gates announces that Internet Explorer is now free and it will be bundled in with every single copy of Windows 95 going forward. On that day, Netscape stock drops by about a third and never recovers. That was the high watermark for Netscape. It’s over after that.
David：好，那就让它永不过时。接着，1995 年 12 月 7 日，比尔·盖茨宣布 Internet Explorer 免费，并将随所有 Windows 95 副本捆绑提供。当天，Netscape 的股价暴跌约三分之一，此后再未回到高点。那成了 Netscape 的巅峰，故事就此落幕。
Ben: And for good reason. There’s a very difficult to learn lesson, but you learn it once, you never forget it. If your distribution decides to compete with you and decides to make that a priority, your business is over in a minute.
Ben：这是有充分理由的。有一条极难学会却一旦领悟便终生难忘的教训：如果你的渠道方决定与你竞争，并且将此列为首要任务，你的生意会在瞬间崩溃。
David: That’s exactly what happened. This is now the march of Internet Explorer. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s inevitable. By the end of the next year in 1996, Microsoft has now done deals with AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy, all the old online services, to ditch whatever browsers they were using and bundle in Internet Explorer.
David：事情正是如此。接下来就是 Internet Explorer 的推进，这一进程并非一夜之间完成，却势不可挡。到下一年的 1996 年底，微软已与 AOL、CompuServe、Prodigy 等老牌线上服务商达成协议，让他们放弃原先的浏览器，改为捆绑 Internet Explorer。
By the end of that year in 96, Internet Explorer passes 20% market share. 97, it passes 40% market share. 98, it passes 60% market share. Then by the year 2000 Internet Explorer basically has, for all intents and purposes, 100% worldwide browser market share.
到 1996 年底，Internet Explorer 的市场份额突破 20%；1997 年突破 40%；1998 年突破 60%；到 2000 年，Internet Explorer 基本上在全球浏览器市场上实现了事实上的 100% 份额。
If you look at the Internet Explorer market share chart over time, it is the most perfectly rounded hill that you will ever see. It goes from 0 in 95 to 100 in 2000, and then all the way back down to 0 in 2010.
如果你查看 Internet Explorer 的市场份额随时间变化的图表，它呈现出你能见到的最完美的圆弧：1995 年从 0 开始，到 2000 年攀至 100，然后在 2010 年又一路滑回 0。
Ben: Which is the next chapter of this story, is how on earth did they lose that monopoly that they had in the browser? But before that, there’s this interesting moment of reflection here. Why did Netscape business dry up? Because their business was made from selling server software.
Ben：故事的下一章是他们到底如何失去了曾经在浏览器上的垄断。但在此之前，我们先反思一个有趣的问题：为什么 Netscape 的业务会枯竭？因为他们的收入来自销售服务器软件。
Well, the way to have the best server software is to also control the client. People are very interested in making sure that their websites run perfectly using the experience that everyone has. When you can no longer claim, hey, a whole bunch of internet users actually use our browser, do I really want to buy my server software from you? Or should I just be open to buying it from anyone that it’s the lowest cost and the best value with the most features, all that. They lose the competitive edge in the revenue side of the company.
要想让服务器软件保持领先，就必须同时掌控客户端。站点所有者十分关心自己的网站能否在大众常用的浏览体验下完美运行。当你再也无法宣称“大量互联网用户都在用我们的浏览器”时，人们还会愿意向你购买服务器软件吗？还是会转而选择成本更低、价值更高、功能更丰富的其他供应商？于是，他们在营收端的竞争优势就丧失了。
On top of that, it’s just really hard to recover for companies that have a 80% drawdown or whatever in their stock price. There was a lot of excitement around the company that then goes away. Suddenly, all these employees are under compensated. It’s a company-killing event.
此外，一家股价暴跌 80% 的公司想要复苏极其困难。围绕它的兴奋情绪烟消云散，员工的激励瞬间缩水，这几乎是致命打击。
David: And all the market cap and excitement was all on the come. It wasn’t because of the revenue.
David：而此前的市值和热度全都建立在对未来的押注之上，并非基于实际营收。
Ben: To this point, Microsoft has not changed their business model. They simply vanquished a potential future that was dangerous for them. They’re still doing the same thing as ever selling Windows licenses through OEMs and to consumers at retail.
Ben：截至目前，微软并未改变其商业模式。他们只是消灭了一个对自身危险的潜在未来，仍旧像往常一样通过 OEM 和零售渠道销售 Windows 授权。
David: There are a couple of more fun little tidbits from this era. In August 1997 is when the famous Macworld happens where Steve Jobs returns to the company. Bill Gates shows up on the satellite feed, and of course this moment is legendary. But studying it from this lens, I realized there’s this whole other aspect to it that I didn’t know before.
David：那个时代还有几个有趣的花絮。1997 年 8 月，在著名的 Macworld 大会上，史蒂夫·乔布斯重返苹果，Bill Gates 则通过卫星连线现身，这一瞬间堪称传奇。但从今天的视角重新审视，我发现其中还有之前不知道的另一层意义。
What Bill and Steve announced on stage, it’s also so telling that Bill couldn’t even be there in person, he joins by satellite. There are four points to the partnership. One is the \$150 million investment from Microsoft and Apple. Two is the five year commitment on the part of Microsoft to ship Office for Mac. Those are the big ones that everybody talks about.
Bill 和 Steve 在台上宣布的合作内容颇具象征意义——Bill 无法亲临现场，只能通过卫星连线。合作有四个要点：首先，微软向苹果投资 1.5 亿美元；其次，微软承诺未来五年持续推出 Mac 版 Office。这两点是外界讨论最多的。
Ben: Which by the way, saved Apple. The company would’ve been completely out of business because it was so existentially important to anyone using an Apple computer to use Office, that if Microsoft decides, oh, we’re going to stop developing Office, people stop buying Macs. The company’s already in such a tenuous financial position, it’s just over.
顺便提一句，这笔交易拯救了苹果。对所有使用苹果电脑的人来说，Office 的可用性事关生死；如果微软决定停止开发 Office，人们就会停止购买 Mac。苹果本就财务岌岌可危，届时公司必将倒闭。
David: The third deal point was they agree to end all patent disputes. This is the end of all the back-and-forth that we talked about in part one. But then the fourth point, which I didn’t even remember at all, was that Internet Explorer would become the default browser on the Mac, displacing Netscape. That continued from 1997 until 2003 when Safari became the default browser on Mac.
协议的第三点是双方同意终结所有专利纠纷，这也就结束了我们在第一部分谈到的唇枪舌剑。第四点——我当时完全不记得——是 Internet Explorer 将取代 Netscape 成为 Mac 的默认浏览器；这一安排从 1997 年一直持续到 2003 年 Safari 成为 Mac 默认浏览器为止。
Ben: Oh, don’t I know it?
哦，我当然知道。
David: And knowing this now and knowing the headspace that Bill was in, I got to imagine that’s the reason he did the deal.
现在了解了这一切，也知道比尔当时的心态，我敢说这就是他促成此交易的原因。
Ben: Well it’s funny. I actually do have some color on why he did the deal. Steve Jobs wanted to message this as Microsoft believes in the Mac as a great way to use the Office Suite. They believe in us as a company, so they’re investing \$150 million in making this commitment to help us get through this difficult time. This money, by the way, just to help people understand, Apple was worth about \$2 billion at the time. This is Microsoft buying 8% of Apple.
有意思的是，我确实知道他为什么要这么做。史蒂夫·乔布斯想传递的信息是：微软认可 Mac 作为使用 Office 套件的绝佳平台，也相信苹果这家公司，因此投资 1.5 亿美元，承诺帮助我们渡过难关。顺便说明，当时苹果的市值约 20 亿美元，相当于微软购买了苹果 8% 的股份。
David: Wow.
哇。
Ben: Steve cleverly identified this moment as a time to call Microsoft and say, hey, I know we’re through all the patent issues, that big lawsuit. I have more. I think you guys are using some of our stuff. I don’t want to sue you. I know the DOJ is looking at you guys for antitrust right now.
史蒂夫敏锐地把握时机，致电微软说：嘿，我们刚解决完所有专利纠纷和那场大官司，但我还有别的事——我觉得你们在用我们的东西。我不想起诉你们，而司法部眼下正因反垄断盯着你们。
Apple was aware that Microsoft would be interested in appearing collaborative with another major player in the ecosystem. We have the leverage to say, hey, what if you guys invested in us and did this big commitment to Office for Mac? It’s super important to help us get through this difficult time. Microsoft said back, well, it’s really important to us to have IE everywhere.
苹果知道微软希望展示与生态系统中另一大玩家合作的姿态。于是我们有筹码提议：若你们投资我们，并对 Mac 版 Office 作出重大战略承诺，将极大帮助我们度过难关。微软回应说，让 IE 无处不在对他们同样至关重要。
They rolled it all into one big deal. No one’s going to sue anyone, all the IP is cross-licensed, Microsoft gets the win with IE, Apple gets the win with the investment in Office, and we can all walk away.
最终，他们把这一切打包成一笔大交易：双方互不诉讼、所有知识产权交叉授权，微软因 IE 获益，苹果因 Office 投资受益，皆大欢喜。
David: Interesting.
有意思。
Ben: Apple is saved. Truly, Apple would’ve gone out of business had Steve Jobs not seized this opportunity.
苹果得救了。可以毫不夸张地说，如果乔布斯没有抓住这个机会，苹果真的会破产。
David: It was a critical business deal for both of them. To close the book on Netscape in November, 1998, AOL acquires Netscape in an all stock deal for just over \$4 billion. But again, all stock, and this is just a little over a year before the Time Warner merger.
David：对于双方而言，这是一笔至关重要的商业交易。1998 年 11 月，为 Netscape 画上句号的方式是 AOL 以全股票方式、略高于 40 亿美元的价格收购 Netscape。同样需要强调，这是一次全股票交易，而且距离 AOL 与时代华纳的合并仅一年多。
This moment here is just the absolute peak of Microsoft as a consumer technology company. I think maybe the absolute peak of any consumer technology company ever. Think about the market power that Microsoft has at this point in time.
眼下正是微软作为消费科技公司的绝对巅峰——甚至可能是历史上任何消费科技公司的最高峰。想想此刻微软拥有的市场主导力。
Apple has an existential reliance upon them. They have completely crushed Netscape, “cut off the air supply.” There’s nobody else. There is nothing else except Microsoft.
苹果在生存层面依赖微软；微软彻底击垮了 Netscape， “切断了其氧气供应”。已再无其他竞争者，剩下的只有微软。
Ben: Google is three years from being founded. Facebook is nine years from being founded.
Ben：距离 Google 成立还有三年，距离 Facebook 成立还有九年。
David: There’s Yahoo, sure.
David：当然还有 Yahoo。
Ben: There’s real competition in the enterprise at this point—Sun, Oracle. But in terms of what your point is, the consumer technology landscape, yeah, they had ultimate power.
Ben：在企业市场确实存在真正的竞争者——Sun、Oracle 等。但就你所说的消费科技格局而言，微软的确拥有终极掌控力。
But David, I don’t know. The whole thing of you can just decide to, and then you completely vanquish your biggest existential threat by cutting off their air supply. Shouldn’t that be illegal?
不过 David，我在想：仅凭一己之意就能通过“切断氧气供应”彻底消灭最大的生存威胁——这难道不该是违法的吗？
David: Well…
David：呃……
Ben: To lead you a little bit into our next section. Well listeners, I think you know what is coming next based on David and I coyly alluding to it. But before we get there, we’ve really been talking about this idea of development platforms. We were talking about the web as a potential development platform of the future, even as far back as 1994 people building web applications, or Windows 95 and its hating. But what makes four a great development platform?
Ben：稍作铺垫，带大家进入下一部分。各位听众，我想你们已经猜到接下来要聊什么了，因为我和 David 刚才暗暗提及。不过在此之前，我们一直讨论“开发平台”的概念——早在 1994 年就有人构建 Web 应用，把 Web 视作未来的潜在开发平台，或者说 Windows 95 当年的排斥情绪。那么，究竟什么才造就一流的开发平台？
Okay, David. We’ve arrived. The famous 1998 Microsoft versus the US Department of Justice antitrust trial.
好了，David，我们到了——著名的 1998 年“微软与美国司法部反垄断案”。
David: I was thinking about it in the transition at the end of the browser wars there.
David：我当时就在浏览器大战结束的过渡期想到这件事。
Ben: Oh, you didn’t like my snarky comment?
Ben：哦，你不喜欢我那句挖苦的话？
David: Well, we were being glib about like, oh, this should be illegal. That’s really the question here. All that power that Microsoft had had probably never been concentrated in the hands of one company like that and probably never will be again. The question is, was that illegal and did Microsoft do anything wrong?
David：嗯，我们刚才随口一句“这应该是违法的”，但真正的问题就在这里。微软当时掌握的权力之大，可能在历史上从未有哪家公司如此集中，也可能再也不会有。问题是，这合法吗？微软到底做错了什么吗？
Ben: We’re getting into a whole bunch of very interesting questions here, and I asked it exactly to pop open the can of worms. But there’s the question of what actually is legal in the US? What actually is legal in the EU?
Ben：这引出了许多非常有趣的问题，而我正是故意要把这盒“蠕虫”打开。可问题在于，什么在美国是合法的？什么在欧盟又是合法的？
Then there’s this interesting question emotionally for everyone who is working on software at Microsoft. The vast, vast majority of people are not really focused on what is the business and competitive strategy. Most people who worked on any of this stuff, their whole goal was, I want to ship great software and make things that people love to use, and I want to work with people that I love making it with.
还有一个从情感层面看对微软软件工程师们很有意思的问题。绝大多数人在意的并不是商业或竞争策略。他们做这一切，只是想发布出色的软件，做出用户喜爱的产品，并与志同道合的伙伴携手完成。
If you ask most people who worked on any of this, their opinion is, I don’t know. We were trying to just make the best software out there. Which is very interesting to square with this growing public perception that Microsoft is being a bully, especially public generated by their competitors. Then the literal legal question of did they do something illegal, because the actual antitrust laws are a super different thing than, ooh, does this feel anti-competitive in some way to me?
如果你问大多数参与者，他们会说：我不知道啊，我们只是想做最好的软件。这与公众——尤其是竞争对手制造的公众舆论——日益认为微软是个“霸凌者”的观点形成了有趣的对比。接下来才是字面层面的法律问题：他们到底违法了吗？因为反垄断法的实际条文与“嗯，这好像有点反竞争”这样的感觉是截然不同的。
David: And then there’s the other dimension too of, as a consumer, am I unhappy that I get a world-class web browser included in my operating system?
David：还有另一个维度——作为消费者，如果操作系统内置一款世界级的网页浏览器，我会不高兴吗？
Ben: Well, David, now you’re cracking open the issue of consumer harm, the consumer welfare standard that the whole thing is based on. Take us into the story.
Ben：好吧，David，你现在提出的正是“消费者损害”问题——整个反垄断体系建立其上的“消费者福利标准”。把故事娓娓道来吧。
David: The Microsoft Antitrust saga actually started not with the Department of Justice, and not in 1998, but with the Federal Trade Commission (the FTC), all the way back in 1990 when they opened an investigation into the company about whether it was violating antitrust laws.
David：微软反垄断大戏的开端并非 1998 年、也不是司法部，而是早在 1990 年由联邦贸易委员会（FTC）率先揭幕——那年 FTC 对微软是否违反反垄断法展开了调查。
Ben: This centered on the notion of per processor licensing, which we discussed in our last Microsoft episode.
Ben：调查的焦点在于“按处理器授权”的做法，这在我们上一期微软节目中提过。
David: In July 1993, the FTC commissioners vote on whether Microsoft is a monopoly that deserves further action and penalties. They deadlock at 2:2, which means essentially a win for Microsoft. No action would be taken against the company. This is a huge victory. The antitrust case of the US Federal government against Microsoft should be closed at this point in time.
David：1993 年 7 月，FTC 委员就“微软是否构成应受进一步制裁的垄断”进行表决，结果 2:2 不分高下，这相当于微软胜诉——FTC 不会采取措施。这是微软的重大胜利，按理说美国联邦政府针对微软的反垄断案应就此了结。
Ben: Yup, because theoretically, they could have examined any monopolistic practice at this point. They said just the one narrow thing that we were worried about, they agreed to stop doing. We in voting 2:2, we see no other issues that we need to investigate.
Ben：没错，因为理论上此时他们本可以检查任何垄断行为。而他们认为我们担忧的那个小范围做法，微软已经同意停止。我们 2:2 的投票结果也说明没有其他问题值得继续调查。
David: Microsoft, you are good as far as the US federal government is concerned. However, the very next month, in August 1993, the Department of Justice picks up the case, which is pretty unprecedented.
David：就美国联邦政府而言，微软，你没事了。可就在下个月，即 1993 年 8 月，司法部接手了此案，这几乎闻所未闻。
One department in the US Federal government essentially investigates a company about whether it is abusing its monopoly power, declines to prosecute them for it, then another department within the federal government, the very next month says essentially, well, we don’t think you did it right. We’re going to do it. Microsoft is now all of a sudden basically standing trial for the same accused crimes twice.
美国联邦政府里的一个部门刚刚调查完是否滥用垄断权，决定不起诉；紧接着下个月，联邦政府的另一个部门却说：“嗯，我们觉得你们没处理好，我们来办。”于是微软忽然要因同样的指控二度受审。
Ben: Theoretically, double jeopardy is not a thing.
Ben：从理论上讲，“双重起诉”（double jeopardy）本应不存在。
David: In fact, several members of the FTC commission opposed this whole process and tried to refuse to turn over their notes to the Justice Department. But nonetheless, the DOJ proceeds, and the next year in July 1994, Microsoft just settles with them rather than going to trial.
David：事实上，FTC 委员会中有几位成员反对整个流程，并试图拒绝将他们的记录交给司法部。但司法部仍然继续推进，并且在次年的 1994 年 7 月，微软选择与其和解，而不是上庭应诉。
They’re like, all right, look. We just want to be done. We are going to settle with you DOJ. We’re going to be done with the US federal government here. In that settlement, they agree to enter into what folks may know, the famous words, a consent decree.
他们的态度是：好吧，听着，我们只想了结此事。我们决定与你们——司法部——和解，跟美国联邦政府的纠缠到此为止。根据这份和解，他们同意签署大家所熟知的“同意令”（consent decree）。
That means they consent in this case, that they are not going to tie the sale of Microsoft application products to the sale of Windows. Meaning they can’t say like, hey OEMs or businesses or consumers or whoever, if you’re buying Windows, you have to also buy Office or X or whatever else that we’re selling in our applications group.
这意味着他们在本案中承诺，不会把微软应用软件的销售与 Windows 的销售捆绑在一起。也就是说，他们不能对 OEM、企业或消费者说：如果你买 Windows，就必须同时购买 Office 或我们应用部门销售的其他产品。
Importantly, as part of the consent decree, they remain free and clear Microsoft does to integrate additional features into the Windows operating system. Which brings us right back to Internet Explorer. Is it a product or is it a feature?
更重要的是，根据同意令，微软仍然拥有在 Windows 操作系统中整合额外功能的完全自由。这就把话题引回到 Internet Explorer——它究竟是独立产品，还是系统功能？
Ben: Exactly. This is so messy because I think, David, you just used the exact language, which is they cannot tie these application products in a bundled sale. However, they absolutely can integrate new features.
Ben：没错。事情之所以如此混乱，是因为，David，你刚刚用了那句关键的措辞：他们不能把这些应用产品打包销售。然而，他们完全可以整合新的系统功能。
David: Yes. What is Internet Explorer?
David：对。那么，Internet Explorer 到底是什么？
Ben: And this also looks the other way at the whole idea of software development and platforms, which is, it is a continuously changing landscape, where over time in the interest of users, platforms do more and more and more things that applications used to do. The whole notion that they’re going to write that sentence and then call it good, what is an application today might be a feature years down the line, but the law is written and we have to pay attention to that sentence constantly reevaluated in the context of the current time.
Ben：这也从另一个角度反映了软件开发和平台的整体理念：这是一个不断演变的生态，为了用户利益，平台会逐渐承担过去由独立应用完成的更多功能。把那句话写进法律就算一劳永逸，可今天被视为应用的，几年后可能就成了系统功能；但法律条文已经写定，我们必须不断结合时代背景重新审视那句话。
这中间有激烈的对抗，平台和应用之间，竞争会让少数足够优秀的胜出。
David: Today, could you imagine purchasing a device that has an operating system and that device not having an internet browser as part of the core system? No, you can’t even imagine that. Of course it’s a feature.
David：如今，你能想象买一台装有操作系统的设备，而它却没有内置网络浏览器这种核心组件吗？当然无法想象。浏览器理所当然是一项系统功能。
Ben: Well, is it a feature? It’s actually literally an application. It is a bundled application as it exists today. This is the gray area.
Ben：可是，它真的是系统功能吗？严格说来，浏览器其实是一个应用，而且是被捆绑的应用。这就是灰色地带。
David: This is the gray area. Look, if you ask Bill and Microsoft and Jay Allard all the way back to the original memo, it was absolutely intended to be a core feature of the Windows operating system, having an internet browser as part of it.
David：这正是灰色地带。要知道，如果你去问比尔、微软和 Jay Allard，追溯到最初的备忘录，他们绝对把浏览器视为 Windows 操作系统的核心功能之一。
Ben: Clearly motivated by the idea that we want our Windows platform to maintain the power it enjoys from its monopoly market share. There’s this sympathetic view for sure of, hey, this is core functionality to an operating system, whether it’s a feature or an application that we bundle. Also, clearly the reason you are incentivized to ship your own browser is to cut off the air supply of potential competitors that develop the platform of the future.
Ben：显然，这背后的动机是让 Windows 平台继续享有其垄断市场份额带来的影响力。从同情的角度看，无论它被界定为功能还是捆绑应用，浏览器确实是操作系统的核心功能之一。同时，促使你自家开发浏览器的原因也很明显——要“切断氧气”，遏制那些可能打造未来平台的潜在竞争者。
David: So in October, 1997, the Justice Department files a motion in federal District Court stating that by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, Microsoft has now violated the 1994 consent decree against product tying.
David：因此，在 1997 年 10 月，司法部向联邦地区法院提出动议，称微软将 Internet Explorer 与 Windows 捆绑销售，已违反 1994 年针对产品捆绑的同意令。
Ben: It’s important to know what they’re basically asking is, this is not about future versions. We know you’re doing some Windows 98 thing. We’re saying right now, stop shipping IE bundled into windows.
Ben：要知道，他们实质上的要求并不针对未来版本。我们知道你们在搞什么 Windows 98，但我们的诉求是：从现在起，停止把 IE 捆绑进 Windows 发货。
Microsoft insists this is an integrated product. You cannot do that. It’s not even necessarily a legal argument yet of we’re allowed to do this because it’s an integrated feature. They’re saying we ship a pile of code and you actually cannot just rip out Explorer.
微软坚持认为这是一款集成产品，无法拆分。这甚至还不是“它是集成功能所以我们有权这样做”的法律辩解，而是说：我们交付的是一大堆代码，你们根本没法把 Explorer 直接剥离。
If you remember at this time, you could do all sorts of crazy stuff. You could paste a web address in Windows Explorer and it would render even though it wasn’t Internet Explorer. If you think back to that vision of the browser is integrated into the Windows shell and it happened, a browser, at least Internet Explorer, was not really its own standalone thing. It was deeply integrated. Now could they have pulled it apart as a different question if they really wanted to.
还记得那时候吗？你可以做很多神奇的操作，比如把网址粘贴进 Windows 资源管理器，它就会渲染网页——即便那并不是 Internet Explorer。如果回想当初“浏览器融入 Windows 外壳”的愿景，它确实成真了；至少 IE 并非真正独立的程序，而是深度整合的一部分。当然，如果真想拆分，那又是另一个问题。
David: Also, remember. The fact pattern here isn’t exactly great for Microsoft of, well they did ship Windows 95 without Internet Explorer right in the beginning, so…
David：另外别忘了，这里的事实情况对微软并不有利——毕竟他们最初确实发布过不带 IE 的 Windows 95，所以……
Ben: Right. The federal judge, Thomas Penfield Jackson, orders them to do it anyway. Or more specifically, he ordered Microsoft to ship a version of Windows to the PC makers, the OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) that didn’t include IE, so that those OEMs could load those onto the PCs that they were going to ship to customers if they wanted to.
Ben：对。联邦法官托马斯·彭菲尔德·杰克逊还是命令他们照做。更准确地说，他要求微软向 PC 制造商（OEM）提供一个不含 IE 的 Windows 版本，OEM 若愿意可将其预装到出货的电脑上。
Microsoft said, we told you we can’t do that, but you’re a judge and you’re ordering us to, so they do and surprise, surprise, when you just disable a bunch of code that other code depends on, it doesn’t work.
微软表示：我们早说过做不到，但您是法官，下了命令我们就照办。结果毫不意外，禁用一大堆被其他代码依赖的模块后，系统就跑不起来了。
Then, of course, two things happened. Judge Jackson is not pleased since it appears Microsoft is complying with the letter of the law but violating the spirit, thumbing its nose and being arrogant. That’s thing one. Thing two is obviously the PC makers don’t actually ship this version of Windows, so it never sees the light of day. Things get real petty real fast. The DOJ asks the court to hold Microsoft in contempt.
接着显然发生了两件事：第一，杰克逊法官不悦，因为微软似乎只是在字面上服从，却漠视法律精神，显得傲慢无礼；第二，PC 制造商根本没预装这个阉割版 Windows，它从未面市。场面瞬间变得鸡毛蒜皮。司法部遂请求法院以藐视法庭罪裁定微软。
David: Yup, whole bunch of back and forth. Microsoft appeals Judge Jackson’s order, and in early May 1998, the appellate court rules that Microsoft can continue shipping Windows with IE bundled into it, and also continue to bundle any other features that they want as part of Windows as long as it benefits consumers.
David：没错，拉锯不断。微软对杰克逊法官的命令提出上诉，1998 年 5 月初，上诉法院裁定微软可继续将 IE 捆绑进 Windows 发货，也可继续把任何其他功能整合进 Windows，只要这对消费者有利。
Ben: This is interesting because this is when it really hammers home the idea of what we, the US courts care about is consumer welfare. We haven’t explored the idea of if Microsoft is a monopoly or not, yet, but for now what we are saying is as long as what they are doing is in the consumer best interest, they’re not causing harm, they’re not raising prices, then it’s okay.
Ben：这很有意思，因为这恰恰凸显了美国法院真正关心的是“消费者福利”。我们尚未讨论微软是否构成垄断，但目前的结论是：只要微软的做法符合消费者最大利益，没有造成损害，也没有抬高价格，那就可以。
David: One week later on May 18th, 1998, the DOJ announces a brand new, enormous, wide-ranging antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act and abusing its monopoly power to suppress competition.
David：一周后的1998年5月18日，美国司法部宣布对微软提起一项全新的、规模庞大且范围广泛的反垄断诉讼，指控其违反《谢尔曼反托拉斯法》并滥用其垄断力量以压制竞争。
Ben: And this investigation is way bigger than just, is it okay if they tie Internet Explorer with the shipment of Windows? This is: (a) is the company a monopoly, and (b) are they doing anything across their entire business to abuse that monopoly power in the disinterest of consumers?
Ben：这项调查的范围远不止于“他们把 Internet Explorer 与 Windows 绑定销售是否可以”这一问题，更在于：(a) 这家公司是否构成垄断，以及 (b) 他们是否在整个业务层面利用垄断力量做出损害消费者利益的行为？
David: It is not necessarily illegal to be a monopoly. It is illegal to abuse your monopoly power. This court is examining both of those questions. (1) Is Microsoft a monopoly? (2) Are they abusing their power? This is really bad for Microsoft.
David：成为垄断者本身并不必然违法；违法的是滥用垄断力量。法院正在审视这两个问题：(1) 微软是否是垄断企业？(2) 他们是否滥用了其市场力量？这对微软来说非常糟糕。
Ben: Really bad and it’s worth decoupling. Did they do anything wrong from just legal strategy by holding a very firm line early of we’re appealing this decision, we couldn’t possibly be doing anything wrong here. Microsoft is starting to take this super aggressive stance and the Department of Justice is then like, wait, you didn’t give an inch? You’re not open to just this one thing. The tying of Internet Explorer and Windows? Okay, we’re going to look at everything.
Ben：确实非常糟糕，而且值得拆开来看。从法律策略角度说，他们早早就坚持强硬立场——“我们要上诉这一裁决，我们不可能做错任何事”，这难道不是错误吗？微软开始采取非常强势的态度，而司法部则觉得：等等，你们一步也不让？连这一件事都不愿意妥协——把 Internet Explorer 与 Windows 绑定？好，那我们就要把所有事情都查个遍。
David: You can see how it goads them into like okay, we’re going to bring the big lawsuit. But this whole suit, you can also see from Microsoft’s perspective a feeling of betrayal by their government. This is the third time we are being tried for what feels like the same crime. Ben, you said double jeopardy isn’t a thing earlier. What is this, triple jeopardy? Come on. I thought this was supposed to be a free country where we can build businesses. What the hell?
David：你可以看到，这激怒了他们，好吧，那我们就要打一场大的诉讼。但从微软的角度看，这整个诉讼也让他们感到政府背叛了他们。这已经是第三次因为感觉上同样的罪行被审判了。Ben，你之前说过并不存在双重危险原则。那么这算什么，三重危险？拜托。我还以为这是一个自由的国家，让我们可以创办企业。搞什么鬼？
Ben: Microsoft folks at the time too are starting to get this inkling of why are they doing this? Are consumers really mad at us? Who’s being helped here? And they’re starting to realize there is a lot of lobbying going on behind the scenes of Netscape and everyone else we’re competing against trying to find a way to call us anti-competitive. Which we should say is always true in these big antitrust lawsuits. But that was certainly happening in this one.
Ben：当时的微软人也开始隐约意识到：他们为什么要这么做？消费者真的对我们很生气吗？这到底帮到了谁？他们开始意识到，在幕后网景以及其他所有竞争对手都在进行大量游说，想找理由说我们反竞争。这在这些大型反垄断诉讼中总是如此，但在这次案件中确实也发生了。
David: For all these reasons, including Ben as you say, the legal strategy they started with in the first place of we’re going to fight everything, they say, all right. We’re fighting this. We’re going to fight it hard. Ben, you talked to a lot of people here. Take us through what happens in this big trial through the fall of 98 and into 99.
David：出于所有这些原因，包括你提到的他们一开始就采取的法律策略——我们要对所有指控奋力反击——他们说，好吧，我们要战斗，我们要狠狠地战斗。Ben，你采访了很多人，给我们讲讲这场大审判在 98 年秋天到 99 年期间发生了什么。
Ben: The first question that everyone is wondering is, did Microsoft have a monopoly here? Well the fact is that they had over 90% of PC operating system sales. I’m not a judge, but at first glance there you think like, okay they have market power.
Ben：大家最先关心的问题是，微软在这里是否拥有垄断地位？事实上，他们的 PC 操作系统销量占据 90% 以上。我不是法官，但乍一看，你会觉得，嗯，他们确实拥有市场力量。
In August of 1998, Judge Jackson issues a pretrial order that all depositions shall be submitted during the trial only in transcript form. For folks who aren’t in this world or looked at lawsuits before, a deposition is when the council goes and does a bunch of interviews beforehand. You’re not being called as a witness in the trial, but it’s basically information gathering.
1998 年 8 月，Jackson 法官发布了一项审前命令，规定所有证词在庭审中只能以文字记录的形式提交。对于不熟悉此类诉讼的人来说，证词是律师在庭审前进行的一系列访谈——你不会作为庭审证人被传唤，基本上就是信息收集。
David: Interview process.
David：访谈过程。
Ben: Yes. On August 27th, Bill Gates is deposed by the DOJs appointed prosecutor, David Boies, for 20 hours. I think this happens over multiple days, actually on YouTube, which is interesting to note, you can watch 12 of the 20 hours. I think I’ve watched eight or nine of it, but it’s just hours and hours and hours of—
Ben：是的。1998 年 8 月 27 日，比尔·盖茨接受司法部指定的检察官 David Boies 的 20 小时质询。我想这是分多天进行的；值得一提的是，在 YouTube 上你可以看到其中 12 小时的视频。我大概看了八九个小时，但那就是一小时又一小时又一小时的——
David: Just some light bedtime viewing.
David：就是一些轻松的睡前观影。
Ben: Of Bill Gates being asked questions. The strategy that Gates and the Microsoft legal team used was one that was tailored for this pretrial ruling. If you watch the video, you can see that the strategy is essentially never give an inch, avoid saying anything that can be used against you. Microsoft walked out of it feeling like they were pretty successful in this.
Ben：比尔·盖茨被连番提问。盖茨和微软法律团队采取的策略是针对这项审前裁定量身定做的。如果你观看视频，就会看到他们的策略基本上是绝不让步，避免说出任何可能被用来对付自己的话。微软在结束时觉得他们在这方面相当成功。
David: And when you say tailored for the pretrial ruling, you mean tailored with the assumption that this is only going to be delivered as a written transcript? Right. There will be no video, no recording of these depositions.
David：当你说是针对审前裁定量身定做时，你的意思是这些证词只会以书面记录形式提交，对吗？不会有视频，也不会有录音。
Ben: And yet I just watched the video on YouTube, so what’s going on here?
Ben：可是我刚刚在 YouTube 上看到了视频，这是怎么回事？
David: How did that happen?
David：这怎么发生的？
Ben: If you’re watching the video, though, it’s very easy to think this guy is rude, pedantic, and disrespectful. I’m not out on a limb saying that opinion. If anybody watches this video, that is just the obvious takeaway.
Ben：不过，看了那段视频后，很容易觉得这家伙粗鲁、卖弄学问且不尊重人。我并不是危言耸听；任何人看过这段视频都会得出这样的明显结论。
David: At a certain point, they argue over the definition of definition, is that right?
David：在某个时刻，他们居然为了“definition（定义）”这个词的定义争论不休，对吗？
Ben: Yes. A couple of examples—I’m not exaggerating here—the deposition really does come across as just showing pure disdain for the prosecutor and the questions he’s asking. Bill Gates rat holes on things like refusing to answer questions about memorandums since they were not memos but emails. I couldn’t possibly answer you on the question about the memorandum.
Ben：没错。举几个例子——我一点也不夸张——那份证词完全流露出对检察官及其提问的蔑视。比尔·盖茨还会钻牛角尖，比如拒绝回答有关备忘录的问题，因为那些并不是备忘录而是电子邮件。他会说，关于备忘录的问题我不可能回答你。
At one point he does look at David Boies and ask him how he would define the word definition, of course, while smirking the whole time. The whole thing is very obviously tailored with this idea that I’m going to give you pages and pages and pages of which you will have nothing that can be used against me.
有一次，他看着 David Boies，问他如何定义“definition”一词，整个过程中都在得意地笑。整件事显然是想表达：我会给你一大堆文字，但你找不到任何可以用来对付我的东西。
That is the whole strategy. I don’t care how I come across, I don’t care how ticky-tacky the language is. He sits and pauses forever. He’ll say, well you asked me what the person who sent this was referring to. How should I know what they’re referring to? I didn’t write the email. You’d have to ask them. I don’t know. It’s 20 hours of this.
这就是整个策略。我不在乎别人怎么看我，也不在乎语言有多么吹毛求疵。他长时间沉默，然后说：你问我邮件发送者指的是什么，我怎么知道？邮件又不是我写的，你得去问他们。我不知道。整整 20 个小时都是这样。
Well somehow—I actually don’t really know how this happened—after the deposition is recorded on October 9th, the judge then issued a reversal saying that videotaped depositions are indeed allowed to be used in court.
但不知怎么的——我真的不知道这是怎么发生的——这段证词在 10 月 9 日录完后，法官随即推翻先前裁定，宣布录像证词确实可以在庭上使用。
David: Oof.
David：唔。
Ben: Yeah.
Ben：是的。
David: How did this hold up?
David：那这在法庭上是如何发挥作用的？
Ben: And if you give a great prosecutor like David Boies this opportunity, he uses it masterfully. Throughout the trial, he’d show little clips at strategic moments in the trial where he either wanted to give the press something juicy to write about that day, because there’s a whole press section in the back going and listening to all the witnesses every single day. Or he would play something he knows is going to get to rise out of the judge. If the judge makes an expression, then the press writes about, oh the judge is leaning this way or that way.
Ben：如果你给像 David Boies 这样的优秀检察官这种机会，他就会运用得淋漓尽致。整个庭审期间，他会在关键时刻播放短片，要么给媒体当天写报道的猛料——因为后面有一整排记者每天旁听所有证人——要么播放他知道能激怒法官的片段。如果法官露出表情，媒体就会写道：哦，法官倾向于哪一方。
Also, he would use it anytime there was an opportunity to feel sympathetic for Gates or anyone at Microsoft. Then he would show a clip that clearly causes you to lose any sympathy or leaning. It was just dripped out in this really clever way.
此外，只要有可能让人对盖茨或微软任何人产生同情，他就会播放一段明显能让你瞬间失去同情心的片段。这些视频就这样被极其巧妙地一点点放出来。
David: And certainly went a long way towards shaping the decision, but also shaping more importantly public opinion about Gates and about Microsoft. How did this hold up, though? Didn’t Microsoft appeal the change from recordings not being allowed for depositions to recordings being allowed?
David：这确实在很大程度上影响了判决，并且更重要的是塑造了公众对盖茨和微软的舆论。但这样的裁定最终是如何被维持的？微软不是就“是否允许在证词中使用录像”这一规则变化提起上诉了吗？
Ben: That is a great question, David, and one of the things that I read to prepare for this episode is a book called World War 3.0, which is exclusively about this trial, and the author has this comment on it. “Microsoft feared that Judge Jackson was a foe. He had made a number of pretrial rulings deemed hostile to the company. They were especially unhappy that he modified the pretrial order, that depositions shall only be submitted in transcript form, issuing a new order, allowing videotaped depositions.
Ben：这是个好问题，David。我为了准备这一期节目读了一本专门讲述这场诉讼的书，名叫《World War 3.0》。作者在书中评论道：“微软担心杰克逊法官是他们的敌人。他在审前做出了多项被认为对公司不利的裁决。微软尤其不满他修改了原先‘证词只能以文字记录提交’的命令，发布新的命令允许使用录像证词。”
Microsoft suspected that justice had somehow prevailed on Jackson to amend his earlier court ruling. Jackson categorically denied this, but does not recall exactly why he issued the October 9th ruling. They groused, but only in the most unguarded private moments because they were terrified of offending him that Jackson was biased and would rule in favor of the government.”
微软怀疑有人设法说服杰克逊修改了他早前的裁决。杰克逊坚决否认这一点，但他也记不起自己为何在 10 月 9 日做出那项裁定。他们私下抱怨，却只敢在最没有防备的场合，因为他们害怕惹恼杰克逊，担心他带有偏见并会判决偏向政府。”
Your question of how does it hold up? I guess there was no formal challenge of that change in rule, and part of it probably was just because they realized they had a long way to go with the judge and didn’t want to agitate too much.
至于你问这一改变最终如何站得住脚？我想微软并未正式对这一规则变动提出挑战，部分原因大概是他们意识到还需在法官面前走很长的路，不想过度激怒对方。
David: Wow. Interesting. It also sounds like maybe they didn’t realize yet how disastrous these tapes getting out was going to be for Bill and for the company.
David：哇，真有意思。听起来他们当时可能还没有意识到这些录像被公开对比尔本人和公司意味着多么灾难性的后果。
Ben: I think that’s right.
Ben：我想是这样的。
David: Interesting. Well, okay. All of this starts to culminate in November 1999. These trials take forever when Judge Jackson issues a finding of fact that Microsoft is indeed a monopoly in the operating systems business.
David：有意思。好吧，这一切在 1999 年 11 月开始达到高潮。审理拖了很久，随后杰克逊法官发布事实裁定，认定微软在操作系统业务中确实是垄断者。
Now remember, it’s okay to be a monopoly. It’s not okay to abuse the power, but simply the fact that the judge has now issued his opinion that it is a monopoly, everybody knows this probably means the other shoe is about to drop.
要记住，成为垄断者本身并不违法，违法的是滥用垄断力量。但仅仅因为法官已经发表意见认定微软是垄断者，大家都知道接下来很可能就要落下另一只靴子了。
Ben: And more specifically, the finding was that the network effects from the large installed base—that’s users—and large body of applications—apps—makes it prohibitively expensive for a competitor to develop its PC operating system into an acceptable substitute for Windows.
Ben：更具体地说，裁定指出，由于庞大的已安装用户基础（也就是用户）以及海量的应用程序（应用）所带来的网络效应，使得竞争者开发一款能与 Windows 媲美的 PC 操作系统成本高得难以承受。
David: Which yeah, of course obviously. That’s what our whole episode one was about. Correct.
David：是啊，完全显而易见。这正是我们第一期节目的全部内容，对吧。
Ben: The finding of fact is hey, it’s monopoly. But again, not necessarily illegal to be a monopoly, only illegal to abuse monopoly power.
Ben：事实裁定是，嘿，这是垄断。但再次强调，成为垄断者未必非法，非法的是滥用垄断力量。
David: Right. A couple of months go by after the finding of fact, and then on June 7th, 2000 Judge Jackson issues the final judgment in the case. He rules that Microsoft did indeed abuse its monopoly power. As a remedy for having done so, he orders that Microsoft be broken up into at least two separate companies. Separate operating system company and a separate applications company, just like the Standard Oil breakup order, however many years it was before 90, I think.
David：没错。在事实裁定后又过了几个月，2000 年 6 月 7 日，杰克逊法官在该案中发布最终判决。他裁定微软确实滥用了其垄断力量，并作为补救措施，命令将微软拆分为至少两家公司——一家操作系统公司和一家应用软件公司，就像当年拆分标准石油一样，距今大约 90 年左右吧，我想。
Ben: Also, what? This is completely lost to history unless you are a tech old timer. Microsoft was ordered—that was the ruling by the court—to split up.
Ben：什么？除非你是科技圈的老炮儿，否则这段历史几乎无人知晓。法院裁定要求微软被拆分——这是法庭作出的判决。
David: It wasn’t just that oh Microsoft lost the DOJ case. No, the ruling was Microsoft will be split up by order of the United States government.
David：这不仅仅是微软输掉了司法部的案件这么简单。裁决是：美国政府下令将微软拆分。
Ben: And there’s a whole bunch of additional provisions in this. Steve Ballmer had to work at one company and Bill Gates had to work at the other. They could not work at the same company. Each of those two, after they picked their companies, had to divest all of their shares from the one that was not their employer, so they couldn’t have this conflict of interest.
Ben：而且这还有一大堆附加条款。史蒂夫·鲍尔默必须在其中一家公司任职，比尔·盖茨则必须在另一家公司任职，两人不得在同一家公司工作。二人各自选择公司后，必须将其持有的另一家公司股份全部出售，以避免利益冲突。
It is crazy imagining this world that could have been. Clearly this didn’t happen, but for a moment in time this was the position of the United States government.
想象那个可能出现的世界实在太疯狂了。显然这最终没有发生，但在那一刻，这就是美国政府的立场。
David: It’s totally wild. Can you imagine if there was the Gates Company and the Ballmer company? As we’re going to talk about in the rest of this episode, that is what happened, but in a very different way.
David：这太离谱了。你能想象如果真的出现了“盖茨公司”和“鲍尔默公司”吗？正如我们接下来要讨论的，那确实发生了，但方式截然不同。
Ben: It’s also worth pointing out that from late 1999 when the findings of fact came out, over the next 12 months Microsoft’s market cap dropped from \$600 billion to \$270 billion, which was a 55% drop. Now this coincided with the dot-com bubble and the CEO change that we’re going to talk about shortly, but the perception of Microsoft, this super high flyer, completely fell off a cliff from this ruling.
Ben：还值得指出的是，从 1999 年末事实裁定公布起的 12 个月内，微软的市值从 6000 亿美元跌至 2700 亿美元，下跌了 55%。这与互联网泡沫及随后的 CEO 更替同时发生，我们稍后会谈到，但这项裁决让市场对微软这只“高飞”股票的看法瞬间坠崖。
David: Imagine if a ruling comes out tomorrow that Apple needs to be broken up. iOS needs to be separated from the devices and you need to be able to buy a phone without iOS. What do you think that’s going to do to the company’s market cap?
David：想象一下，如果明天有裁决要求拆分苹果公司，iOS 必须与设备分离，你必须能买到不含 iOS 的手机，你觉得这会对苹果的市值造成什么影响？
Ben: Not exactly the same thing, of course, because this is not about devices.
Ben：当然，这两者并不完全相同，因为这件事并非涉及硬件设备。
David: Well right, but I’m just making a similar type of scale analogy, like what the impact would be.
David：对，我只是做一种规模上的类比，说明这种影响会有多大。
Ben: Yes. Do you know the technicality that was discovered?
Ben：是的。你知道后来人们发现的那个程序性细节吗？
David: No, I don’t. I know that Microsoft immediately appeals.
David：不知道。我只知道微软立刻提出了上诉。
Ben: Of course. It was discovered later in June 2000 that Judge Jackson had secretly been meeting with reporters in his chambers before the rulings were delivered. It’s not allowed. Judge Jackson was removed from the case. The reporters all had these embargoed stories they could drop immediately afterwards, and everyone was like, how did you… what?
Ben：当然。后来在 2000 年 6 月，人们发现杰克逊法官在裁决宣布前曾私下在办公室接见记者。这是不被允许的。杰克逊法官因此被撤销审判资格。那些记者手里都攥着禁运报道，判决一出就可以立刻发布，所有人都震惊：你是怎么……怎么做到的？
有一个相对公平对抗的环境，理论上垃圾的漏洞应该是多的。
David: Wow. That’s wild. What a freaking crazy escapade here. There’s no other way to put it.
David：哇，太疯狂了。这真是一出荒诞闹剧，别无他词可形容。
Ben: This is June of 2000, by the way. The appeal then takes a long time. There’s a meaningful moment in history, I think about 15–16 months, where the official ruling is Microsoft should be going through the preparations to do their breakup.
Ben：顺便说一句，现在是 2000 年 6 月。上诉过程持续了很久。我认为大约有 15–16 个月的历史时段，官方裁定是微软应当着手准备拆分。
David: That is what the world believes as far as anyone knows. The appeals court removes Judge Jackson from the case. They install a new judge to re-adjudicate the matter. She gets up to speed. We’re now in the year 2001. She starts pushing the parties toward a settlement,
David：就所有人所知，这就是世界普遍相信的情况。上诉法院将杰克逊法官从案件中撤下，改派一名新法官重新审理此事。她迅速熟悉案情。此时已是 2001 年，她开始推动各方达成和解，
Ben: Especially 9-11 happens. I think that’s a galvanizing factor to pull the parties into the room and say, hey, this has gone on too long and we need to put this behind us.
Ben：尤其是 9·11 事件发生后。我认为那成为把各方拉到同一房间的催化剂：嘿，这事拖得太久了，我们得把它了结。
David: Also there was a political administration change from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration?
David：还有从克林顿政府到布什政府的政治权力交接，对吧？
Ben: Yup.
Ben：嗯。
David: So then in November, 2001, just a couple of weeks after the Windows XP launch, the DOJ and Microsoft finally completely settled the case.
David：于是到了 2001 年 11 月，就在 Windows XP 发布几周后，司法部与微软终于彻底和解了此案。
Ben: Also, can we just say this case is brought against Windows 95. Windows 98 comes out, and then before we have a resolution, Windows XP comes out.
Ben：还有，得提一句，这个案子针对的是 Windows 95。随后 Windows 98 推出，而在我们得到结果之前，又发布了 Windows XP。
David: Windows 98, you mean the marketing update to sell back-to-school PCs?
David：Windows 98，你是指那场为返校季 PC 促销而做的营销升级？
Ben: Yes, but insane, right? And the whole time Internet Explorer is shipping with Windows,
Ben：是的，但太疯狂了，对吧？而且整个期间，Internet Explorer 始终随 Windows 捆绑发货，
David: The whole time.
David：自始至终。
Ben: So November 2nd, 2001, the settlement is proposed. At this moment in time, Internet Explorer has right around 90% market share.
Ben：于是 2001 年 11 月 2 日，和解方案被提出。此刻，Internet Explorer 的市场份额约为 90%。
David: If you are in the camp of Microsoft was a monopoly, was abusing its monopoly power, you’re like well this was a complete failure of process. The damage is done. Meanwhile also if you’re in the Microsoft camp of what the hell is our government doing? You’re also like what the hell? Nobody is happy here.
David：如果你认为微软是垄断者并滥用其垄断力量，你可能会说这完全是程序的失败，伤害已造成。与此同时，如果你站在微软一方，会想，我们的政府到底在干什么？同样也会觉得这是什么鬼？没有人对此感到满意。
Ben: An innovative company that built the most important product for that technology phase. Meanwhile there’s this whole new thing going on with the Internet, and like we need to figure out how to legally navigate that transition.
Ben：一家创新公司打造了那个技术阶段最重要的产品。与此同时，互联网这股全新的浪潮正在发生，我们需要弄清楚如何在法律上驾驭那场转变。
David: We have enough existential threat to our business from technology trends happening, that to try and navigate that with our hands tied behind our back because of these legal proceedings, like come on.
David：技术趋势本已对我们的业务构成生存威胁，却还要在这些法律程序的束缚下应对，像这样前行，真是够了。
David: We have enough existential threat to our business from technology trends happening, that to try and navigate that with our hands tied behind our back because of these legal proceedings, like come on.
David：技术趋势已对我们的业务构成足够的生存威胁，而我们还得在这些法律程序的束缚下应对，这简直太过分了。
Ben: So 2002, the settlement is finally approved. It reverses the order to be split up. Obviously, Microsoft is still one company. Officially, the ruling that Microsoft did indeed have a monopoly is upheld. They put in place a five-year consent decree, and the terms are that Microsoft is not allowed to enter into contracts with PC makers that excluded competitors. Fine. Two, Windows had to be interoperable with non-Microsoft software, which of course it does.
Ben：到了 2002 年，和解协议终于获批，拆分命令被撤销。显然，微软依旧是一家公司。正式裁决仍认定微软确实拥有垄断地位，并制定了一项五年的同意法令，条款包括：1）微软不得与 PC 制造商签订排除竞争对手的合同；2）Windows 必须能与非微软软件实现互操作，这当然没问题。
David: It always was.
David：它一直都是。
Ben: It’s a developer platform. They have to write API documentation and make their APIs such that developers can build applications on top of them. That is the purpose of the company. So okay. Three, an independent technical committee was created to field complaints from competitors. Okay.
Ben：Windows 是开发者平台，他们本来就要编写 API 文档并开放接口供开发者构建应用——这正是微软的使命。再者，第三条是成立一个独立技术委员会来受理竞争对手投诉。好吧。
David: They created a call line.
David：他们开了一条热线。
Ben: That is it.
Ben：就这样。
David: Wow. That’s it.
David：哇，就这样。
Ben: Am I missing something David? That’s my understanding of what it is.
Ben：David，我有落下什么吗？我理解的就是这些。
David: No, I don’t have anything else. But okay, that is the letter of the resolution here. The actual cost of this was immense. Nothing could have been bigger. We spent the whole first section of this episode talking about how Microsoft was so powerful, had never been more powerful, and there probably never will be a more powerful company than Microsoft in the late 1990s. This is what destroyed it.
David：没有了。我也没有其他补充。但就文本而言，解决方案就是这样。然而其真实代价巨大，难以估量。我们在节目上半部分反复提到，微软当时的强大前所未有，也可能是 1990 年代末迄今最强大的公司，而这场风波摧毁了它。
Ben: Oh that is a take right there. I think that we will debate at the end of the episode.
Ben：这可真是个观点。我想我们会在节目结尾讨论它。
David: Oh well, the back half of the episode is about the incredible story about how Microsoft rebuilt itself in a completely new market into now again the most valuable company in the world. But let’s just talk about what the actual cost was, not in terms of money.
David：好吧，节目的下半段将讲述微软如何在全新市场中重塑自身、再度成为全球最有价值公司的精彩故事。但现在让我们先谈谈它真正付出的代价，而非金钱层面。
It certainly didn’t actually impact Internet Explorer or Windows. XP was a huge success. Sells over half a billion copies, gets used over its lifetime on probably a billion PCs. It unifies windows under the NT architecture, has the Bliss wallpaper, amazing. But the true cost is what it did culturally and emotionally to Microsoft.
这场事件对 Internet Explorer 或 Windows 本身几乎没有直接影响。Windows XP 大获成功，销量超过 5 亿套，生命周期内可能运行于 10 亿台 PC 上。它将 Windows 统一到 NT 架构，配有“Bliss”壁纸，令人惊叹。但真正的代价是它对微软文化和情感层面的伤害。
We talked to all these people and God I was like death being there. To believe for 16 months that the company was going to be broken up, for Bill to have this really embarrassing video of him all over the press, and to have the narrative change about bill change, about the company, change about for every employee working at the company, to oh you’re the best and brightest in America, to you guys are evil and why are you working at this company.
我们与许多人交谈，天哪，那种感觉仿佛置身死亡阴影。16 个月里大家都相信公司将被拆分，比尔那段令人尴尬的视频在媒体上反复播放，公司和比尔的形象急剧恶化；对每位员工而言，从“你们是美国最优秀最聪明的人”变成“你们是邪恶的，为什么要在这种公司工作”，其心理冲击难以言喻。
Ben: It exposes the difference, too, in the legal strategy of both sides where Microsoft’s strategy was to refute point by point every allegation brought against them, to the point where they were trying to refute Netscape. We don’t view Netscape as an existential threat to us.
Ben：这也揭示了双方法律策略的差异——微软的策略是逐条反驳所有指控，甚至试图否认网景带来的威胁，宣称“我们并不认为 Netscape 对我们构成生存威胁”。
And they should have just probably acknowledged, Bill literally wrote a letter that got published, a memo saying that Netscape is a competitive threat born on the Internet, but they wanted to refute every single point and knock of an inch.
其实他们本该承认这一点——比尔亲自写过一封公开信，明确指出 Netscape 是互联网时代的竞争威胁，但微软仍坚持逐条反击，不肯退让半步。
Meanwhile, all David Boies and the DOJ wanted to do was destroy Microsoft’s credibility, so that every time they brought a witness there were emails or there was a deposition that basically called into question, are they really telling the truth on the stand? Can they really not remember that? And it just blow by blow made Microsoft look like they were duplicitous.
与此同时，David Boies 与司法部的目标则是摧毁微软的可信度——每次传唤证人时，就拿出电子邮件或证词质疑对方是否在说真话，是否真的“不记得”——步步紧逼，让微软看起来虚伪狡辩。
And that has to leak into the company culture. That has to make you on the one hand feel like your government is attacking you. But on the other hand, start to question and say why did we do this again? I thought we were just trying to make the best software. Were we trying to do something illegal and I just didn’t know about it?
这种氛围必然渗入公司文化：一方面你觉得政府在攻击你，另一方面又开始自问——我们当初为什么这么做？我们不是只想做最好的软件吗？难道我们真的在干违法的事而自己却不知情？
It’s worth talking about some of the other pieces of fallout. It did slow Microsoft down. There were huge amounts of protocol documentation that needed to happen. If anyone’s running a software company, you know that if your iteration times are slower and you just have permanent new drag on your development process, you are going to fall behind. I think that was one that was felt by a lot of employees and managers who suddenly can do less with the same amount of resources that they have.
还有其他后果值得一提：它确实拖慢了微软。大量协议文档必须编写，若你运营一家软件公司就会明白，迭代速度一旦放慢且开发流程长期被新增负担拖累，必然落后。许多员工和经理都切身感受到，手中资源未变，却能做的事情变少。
There was also a bunch of private lawsuits—Sun, AOL, Real Networks. Microsoft was paying out billions of dollars in these private settlements that followed the DOJ, their civil suits.
此外还有一连串私人民事诉讼——Sun、AOL、Real Networks 等——微软为此支付了数十亿美元的和解金。
David: Not to mention state attorney generals were also suing Microsoft left and right and international.
David：更不用说各州总检察长乃至国际层面也在对微软提起诉讼。
Ben: Many of the state AGs for years who brought the suit together with the DOJ did not accept this reversal. They tried to continue independently suing Microsoft, which was painful for another five-ish years. We made it all the way to 2009 before they settled their EU version of this antitrust case. That’s another seven years after the reversal.
Ben：多年与司法部联手起诉的州检察长们并不接受这一逆转，仍试图单独继续诉讼，又折磨了微软约五年。直到 2009 年，微软才了结其在欧盟版本的反垄断案——距离美国判决翻案又过去七年。
In May 2011, that is when the final consent decree finally expired. Basically from 1990 until 2011, 21 years of the company’s life, the majority of the company’s life had been spent under some antitrust scrutiny or active litigation.
2011 年 5 月，最后一项同意令才终于到期。基本上从 1990 年到 2011 年，微软 21 年的岁月里，大部分时间都处于反垄断审查或诉讼阴影之下。
David: Wow. Obviously the company thrived through much, if not all of that.
David：哇。显然，公司在很大程度上依然繁荣发展。
Ben: But were consumers ever harmed? I continue to wonder this. It was horrible for Microsoft, even though there weren’t any real material changes they had to make. But effectively they won, which (I guess) they should have because it’s not clear that there was a negative impact to consumers.
Ben：但消费者真的受害了吗？我一直在想这一点。对微软而言这段经历极其痛苦，尽管他们其实并未被迫作出实质性改变。从结果看他们还是赢了——这或许可理解，因为并没有明确证据表明消费者受到了负面影响。
There was all kinds of negative impact to existing competitors or future potential competitors. But that is not the US standard for antitrust law, especially at this point in history. I guess the right answer is the right thing happened eventually but it was awful to get there, and it had all sorts of indirect negative impact on the company.
现有竞争者或潜在竞争者的确遭受了种种负面影响，但那并非当时美国反垄断法的评判标准。或许最终的结果是“正义得到伸张”，但到达那一步的过程非常痛苦，而且给微软带来了各种间接的负面影响。
David: I said a minute ago, I think it killed Microsoft’s immense dominant consumer technology power. The biggest reason I say that, we didn’t talk to Bill Gates as we were preparing for this, but is what this whole thing clearly did to Bill Gates.
David：我刚才说过，我认为这件事扼杀了微软在消费科技领域巨大且主导的力量。我之所以这样说，最主要的原因是——虽然我们在准备这期节目时并没有采访比尔·盖茨——但这整件事显然对他本人造成了极大影响。
Ben: Microsoft had one competitive advantage that no other company had, and that was Bill Gates.
Ben：微软拥有其他公司所没有的唯一竞争优势，那就是比尔·盖茨。
David: And for whatever sets of reasons, I can imagine so many thinking about if I were in that seat going through that, Bill at Microsoft was never the same person after this.
David：无论出于何种原因，我能想象，如果我处在那样的位置经历那些事情，比尔在微软就再也不可能是从前的那个人了。
Ben: In fact, Bill stepped down before the final ruling from Judge Jackson.
Ben：事实上，比尔在杰克逊法官做出最终裁决之前就已经辞去了职务。
David: Yeah. In July 98, right as this big huge DOJ antitrust suit is heating up, Steve Ballmer gets promoted to president of the company. Bill is still CEO, but Steve is now promoted to president and is the clear number two. Then they go through the trial, the deposition, the November 99 finding of fact that Microsoft is a monopoly.
David：是的。1998 年 7 月，正值司法部大型反垄断诉讼愈演愈烈之际，史蒂夫·鲍尔默被提升为公司总裁。比尔仍然担任 CEO，但史蒂夫升级为总裁，成为毫无争议的二号人物。随后他们经历了审判、取证，以及 1999 年 11 月认定微软构成垄断的事实裁定。
Then Ben, as you’re referring to on January 13th, 2000 Bill Gates announces that he is handing the CEO role of Microsoft over to Steve, and that he is moving to a newly created position as chief software architect. He will remain chairman of the company, but he is no longer going to be CEO. Then, of course, it’s just a few months later that the breakup verdict comes down.
接着，正如你所提到的，Ben，2000 年 1 月 13 日，比尔·盖茨宣布将微软 CEO 的职位交给史蒂夫，并转任新设立的首席软件架构师。他仍将担任公司董事长，但不再担任 CEO。当然，仅仅几个月后，拆分判决就随之而来。
Ben: Going through something like this has to feel personal and has to change you forever. I can’t imagine how it wouldn’t.
Ben：亲身经历这种事情一定会让人感觉受到个人打击，并彻底改变你的一生。我无法想象不受其影响的可能性。
David: Totally.
David：绝对如此。
Ben: Especially when again, it’s not clear to me how consumers were harmed. This constant battle, this war that was waged on forever and ever and ever and ever, it totally distracted Microsoft. As anybody can attest, especially in the tech industry, if you are distracted, you just fail because you need to have all of your best resources making stuff, building stuff, focused on firing on all cylinders, clear North Star strategy. If you tie up a company for five years…
Ben：尤其是当我再次想到，到底消费者受到了什么伤害还是不甚明朗。这场永无止境的拉锯战彻底分散了微软的注意力。任何人都知道，尤其在科技行业，一旦分心就会失败，因为你需要把最精锐的资源都投入到产品研发、建设上，专注、火力全开，有清晰的北极星战略。如果让一家公司的手脚被束缚整整五年……
David: And you lose your leader through it. Somebody we talked to characterize this period as a mental breakdown for the whole company. I think that’s the best way to characterize it.
David：而且在过程中你失去了领袖。我们采访的一位人士形容那段时期是整个公司的精神崩溃。我认为这是最贴切的说法。
Ben: It’s not fair to blame everything we’re about to talk about all the future consumer failings on this, but it is helpful to keep this in mind and say, okay, why perhaps did they not fully have their wits about them?
Ben：把我们接下来要谈的、未来所有消费者产品的失败都归咎于此是不公平的，但牢记这一点有助于理解，为什么他们当时也许没能保持足够清醒。
David: So the transition to Steve Ballmer happens. This is the context under which Steve Ballmer became the CEO of Microsoft.
David：因此，史蒂夫·鲍尔默的接班就这样发生了。这就是他成为微软 CEO 时的背景。
I talked to a whole bunch of people who are at Microsoft in this era. One thing that every single person brought up that never gets talked about is how much Steve was the emotional rock for the company when this was happening. All the stuff, everybody thinks about Steve, the running around on stage, the yelling, the screaming.
我采访了许多在那个时代任职于微软的人。每个人都提到一点，却从未被外界讨论——在这场风暴中，史蒂夫为公司提供了多么强大的情感支撑。大家想到史蒂夫时，总是联想到他在舞台上奔跑、呼喊、尖叫的一面。
Ben: Developers, developers, developers.
Ben：开发者，开发者，开发者。
David: When do you think all this happened? The crazy dancing on stage. I love this company. That was in September of 2000 when they thought they were going to get broken up. Steve was there trying to keep everybody moving forward. Everybody we talked to was like, I don’t know how he did it. It meant so much.
David：你觉得这些事情都是在哪时发生的？舞台上的疯狂舞蹈，还有那句“我热爱这家公司”。那是在 2000 年 9 月，人们以为公司即将被拆分。史蒂夫当时努力让大家继续前行。我们采访的每个人都说，不知道他是怎么做到的，但这意义重大。
比尔·盖茨更容易折断，跟乔布斯差不多，锐利有余韧性不足，史蒂夫·鲍尔默在后来长期拿着微软的股票一动不动，巴菲特是体现韧性的最佳案例。
Ben: It’s actually shocking. They held onto as much talent as they did in a 15 month period of people assuming the company was about to be split.
Ben：这真的令人震惊。在那 15 个月里，大家都以为公司要被拆分，他们却仍留住了如此多的人才。
David: Knowing that context, for me at least, it completely changed my perception of Steve and of the company during this time.
David：在了解了这一背景后，至少对我而言，这完全改变了我当时对史蒂夫和公司的看法。
Ben: Fascinating.
Ben：太有意思了。
David: So when Steve takes over, his agenda is three things, and I think in basically priority order. Number one, hold the company together emotionally. I love this company. That was job number one. Just keep everybody coming to work. Job number two, clean up this antitrust mess. Then job number three I think was, hey, let’s keep this company like growing and winning. I think it’s fair to say he did all three.
David：当史蒂夫接管公司时，他定下了三个目标，按优先顺序排列：第一，维系公司的情感凝聚力——“我热爱这家公司”，要务就是让大家继续来上班；第二，收拾这场反垄断烂摊子；第三，让公司继续成长并取胜。我认为他三件事都做到了。
We just talked about one, emotionally holding the company together. Two, one of the very first things Steve does when he becomes CEO is he promotes Brad Smith to general counsel, who Brad Smith is still of course leading all this at Microsoft to this day.
我们刚谈到第一点：情感上凝聚公司。第二点：史蒂夫成为 CEO 后做的首件大事之一就是提拔布拉德·史密斯为总法律顾问，如今布拉德仍在微软负责这一切。
Ben: He’s now president.
Ben：他现在是总裁。
David: And Steve tells Brad, go make peace. Actually, this is amazing. Brad’s final interview with the Microsoft Board of Directors.
David：史蒂夫对布拉德说，去达成和解。事实上，这太令人惊讶了——布拉德在微软董事会的最终面试。
Ben: Oh I was wondering if you found this.
Ben：哦，我正想问你有没有发现这一点。
David: Yup. For his job to be promoted to general counsel, his PowerPoint presentation to the board is just one slide that has one sentence on it. It’s time to make peace. That is totally what he goes and does.
David：没错。为了晋升总法律顾问，他向董事会做的 PPT 只有一张幻灯片，上面只有一句话：“是时候和解了。”他随后就真的这么做了。
He says, okay, I’m going to figure out what settlements we can live with and I’m going to go settle everything. This company just needs to move forward. it doesn’t matter that we all feel it wasn’t fair. It doesn’t matter that we all feel this was a sham of a process. We just have to move on, and we have to live in a new reality.
他表示：好，我要找出我们可以接受的和解方案，并去解决所有问题。公司需要向前走。即便我们都觉得这一切不公平、觉得这是一个荒谬的过程，也无关紧要；我们必须继续前进，适应新的现实。
Ben: And you need a new set of people to do that. It’s amazing that Steve was part of the old guard and the new guard do this because how can you say, I’m going to put how unfair I feel this was aside and just focus on moving forward. That is an extremely difficult compartmentalization exercise.
Ben：要做到这一点，就需要一批新的人。令人惊叹的是，史蒂夫既属于旧时代，也引领新时代——你要怎样才能把“我觉得这一切多么不公”抛诸脑后，只专注于向前推进？这种极端的情感隔离极其困难。
For Brad to come in and say like, I’m going to be the guy who is able to disregard the past and figure out how we—I use this phrase in the first episode—become a trusted partner to governments around the free world, how crazy is it that this Microsoft that we just talked about for the last hour became the Microsoft that can do no wrong from a regulatory perspective. The only one that’s not under active antitrust investigation today by the federal government. The one that is a massive provider of software and services to the US and its allies at the government level.
布拉德的加入则意味着：我要成为那个能够抛开过去，思考如何——我在第一集用过这句话——让微软成为“自由世界各国政府的可信赖伙伴”的人。想想看，这家公司在过去一个小时里还是我们讨论的那个微软，如今却成了监管视角下“做什么都对”的微软；在联邦政府层面，它是唯一未被主动进行反垄断调查的大型科技公司，也是向美国及其盟友政府提供大量软件与服务的供应商，这难道不是非常疯狂吗？
David: The reversal here is it doesn’t get talked about enough what an amazing job Brad and the company did to reverse this perception. That leaves job number three on Steve’s agenda of be successful—continue to have Microsoft be a leading technology company and hopefully still grow revenue and profits.
David：这次形象的扭转没有得到足够的关注——Brad 和公司为了改变外界观感所做的精彩工作鲜有人提及。这也让 Steve 议程上的第三项任务显现：取得成功——继续让微软保持领先的科技公司地位，并且最好还能持续增长营收与利润。
Ben: And Bill Gates is still chairman of the board. Not only is he a full-time employee being the chief software architect, it’s not that it’s like a sham that he’s not the CEO, but he is a very present voice at the table in these big decision making moments. For how do we become a company that continues to innovate and make great products, despite all this, he still has Bill as the technical leader of the future products.
Ben：而且比尔·盖茨仍然是董事会主席。他不仅是全职员工、担任首席软件架构师，并不是说他不当 CEO 就是做做样子；在这些重大决策时刻，他始终是会议桌上一位极具存在感的声音。为了让公司在经历这一切后仍能持续创新、打造出色产品，他依旧把比尔作为未来产品的技术领袖。
David: Absolutely. Bill was still there, and Steve had Bill. They were running the company together. Absolutely. But what’s so interesting is Microsoft right at this time basically starts a transformational journey from a technology company writ large, a consumer and enterprise technology company, to the enterprise technology company.
David：完全没错。比尔仍在，Steve 有比尔，他们一起管理公司。但有趣的是，就在这时，微软基本上开始了一场变革之旅——从一家面向消费者和企业的综合性科技公司转型为一家侧重企业技术的公司。
That is a muscle that as we talked about last episode, Steve had been building for a while, but does he really come into his own here. Microsoft, the entire enterprise juggernaut that it builds, the bulk of it really is post-DOJ. It is like new business and new markets that they are getting into.
正如我们在上一集讨论的，那是一项 Steve 早已着手打造的能力，而到了此刻他真正发挥了出来。微软随后建立起的庞大企业业务主体，大部分都是 DOJ 事件之后的产物——他们进入了全新的业务领域和市场。
Ben: Then the question becomes how did Microsoft build this phenomenal enterprise business? And along with that release XP, the most successful Windows operating system ever. Then we’re going to talk about Vista, and then we’re going to talk about Zune, search, Bing, and Windows Mobile.
Ben：那么问题来了，微软是如何打造出如此惊人的企业业务的？与此同时他们还发布了 XP——有史以来最成功的 Windows 操作系统。接下来我们将谈谈 Vista，也会讲到 Zune、搜索、Bing 以及 Windows Mobile。
David: Windows 8 and all that.
David：还有 Windows 8 之类的。
Ben: All right. To contextualize how this enterprise business was built, it is worth understanding the shape of Microsoft’s business, like the divisions, what products generated what revenue even before all this DOJ stuff.
Ben：好的。为了说明这块企业业务是如何构建的，我们有必要先了解微软业务的构成，比如各部门、各产品在 DOJ 事件前就产生了多少收入。
If we go back to 1996, Bill Gates gave a great interview where he was talking about the four businesses that they’re in today.
如果我们回到 1996 年，比尔·盖茨曾接受过一次精彩的采访，谈到他们当时所处的四大业务。
David: Oh this is the Wired interview with Kevin Kelly, right?
David：哦，就是那次 Wired 杂志对 Kevin Kelly 的采访，对吧？
Ben: Yes.
Ben：对。
David: It’s on YouTube. It’s great.
David：YouTube 上也有，非常棒。
Ben: It is great. There’s Windows, which he calls one business, there’s NT/BackOffice, there’s Office, which he calls a \$4 billion a year business. Those three businesses together are over 90%. You can think about it as Windows, and he said NT/BackOffice, but this is the enterprise and Office.
Ben：确实棒。那时有 Windows——他称之为一个业务；有 NT/BackOffice；还有 Office——他称之为每年 40 亿美元的业务。这三大业务合计占比超过 90%。你可以把它们视为 Windows，以及他说的 NT/BackOffice，也就是企业业务，再加上 Office。
David: Which is so funny that Bill thought of it as NT/BackOffice.
David：太有趣了，比尔竟然把它当成 NT/BackOffice。
Ben: It really exposes that Steve was the one who had the passion for the enterprise. Bill was like, it’s this stuff that businesses buy, but I’m going to refer to it by its Microsoft product name of one of the products we sell, which is NT. And then the last 10% is everything else. There’s MSN ecommerce, Games, encyclopedia, Maps, joint ventures, Dreamworks and NBC.
Ben：这充分说明其实史蒂夫才是对企业业务充满热情的人。比尔的想法是：这是企业会购买的那些东西，但我就用我们销售的微软产品名称 NT 来称呼它。而剩下的 10% 则是其他所有业务：MSN 电子商务、游戏、百科全书、地图、合资企业、梦工厂以及 NBC。
He’s talking about the interesting thing, the server business, which is a different way he refers to NT/BackOffice all the way back in 96, is the fastest growing business even faster than Windows or Office. They know they’re onto something, but they haven’t quite cracked the go-to market motion, the pricing, the service, organizationally how do they fit it in. That all comes later.
他所说的有趣之处——也就是服务器业务，在 96 年他用来指代 NT/BackOffice 的另一种说法——是当时增长最快的业务，甚至超过了 Windows 和 Office。他们知道自己抓住了机会，但尚未真正理清市场推广模式、定价、服务以及在组织架构中的定位，这些都得以后再解决。
David: Or the products, either, really.
David：说真的，产品方面也一样。
Ben: That’s a great point.
Ben：说得很好。
David: The fact that he calls it BackOffice, this is so telling. We did talk last time about NT, Dave Cutler, and the heroics that he performed to write NT. Windows NT though was still a client operating system architecture for a user to use a personal computer with.
David：他把它称作 BackOffice 这一点很能说明问题。我们上次谈到了 NT、Dave Cutler，以及他在编写 NT 时的英勇事迹。但 Windows NT 仍然是一种面向个人电脑用户的客户端操作系统架构。
Ben: NT basically was enterprise-ready. It was very networked for workgroups. It ran on only the most high power PCs. But you’re right, David, it was designed for the thing that the first 25 years of Microsoft was all about, which is PCs. It’s not like, oh we’re a systems company that makes stuff for all use cases all over your enterprise. It’s no, we make stuff that runs on a box sitting in front of you.
Ben：NT 基本上已经具备企业级特性，非常适合工作组的网络连接，只能运行在高性能 PC 上。但你说得对，David，它是为微软最初 25 年所专注的事物——PC——而设计的。并不是说我们是一家为企业各种应用场景打造系统的公司，而是说我们做的软件跑在你面前那台机器上。
David: And discovering this distinction is what Microsoft in this next era really, really nailed. They discovered that the enterprise is not about users, it’s about IT. And it’s about systems.
David：而发现这一差异正是微软在接下来这个时代真正做到的。他们认识到企业客户的关键不是终端用户，而是 IT 部门，是系统层面。
Ben: For better or for worse.
Ben：无论好坏，确实如此。
David: Discovering that, the products, and the sales motions that Microsoft could then go use to sell to enterprise IT and sell systems was a new, multi-hundred billion dollar market that Microsoft could now go attack and play offense in in this post-DOJ landscape. Whereas they’re playing defense everywhere else, hey here our market share is zero, we can do whatever we want here.
David：在意识到这一点后，微软打造出的产品及其向企业 IT 部门销售系统的方式，成为了一个全新的、数千亿美元级别的市场。在后 DOJ 时代，他们可以在这片领域主动进攻；而在其他领域他们都在防守——在这里我们的市场份额为零，我们想怎么做都可以。
Ben: Well it wasn’t zero, but they were fighting Sun, IBM, Oracle.
Ben：也不是完全没有，但他们的对手是 Sun、IBM、Oracle。
David: Really IBM, but Sun, yeah too, Oracle, et cetera. And it was perfectly suited to Steve’s strengths. Ben, if you’ve ever heard of these now strange-sounding Microsoft products, SQL Server, Active Directory, Exchange, Dynamics, SharePoint—Sharepoint was technically within Office, but it is one of these systems types products—these are all, every single one of those names I just mentioned become multi-billion dollar revenue enterprise IT server products that are built and sold during the Steve Ballmer era of Microsoft.
David：主要是 IBM，不过 Sun、Oracle 等也在其中。而这一切正契合史蒂夫的优势。Ben，如果你听过现在听来有点陌生的微软产品，如 SQL Server、Active Directory、Exchange、Dynamics、SharePoint（严格来说 SharePoint 属于 Office，但它也是此类系统产品之一）——我刚提到的每一个名字在史蒂夫·鲍尔默时代都成为了创收数十亿美元的企业级 IT 服务器产品。
What’s so honestly beautiful about this is they work in concert with Windows and Office on the PC client side. This is the client-server era that Microsoft really dominates here, and Microsoft within enterprises, all these new server products work best with Windows operating system devices running Microsoft Office applications on them. Those Windows operating system devices and those office applications work best with the Microsoft server products. You now have a full system solution from one technology vendor as a major enterprise. It’s like the most incredible three-sided technology flywheel ever built.
真正美妙的是，这些产品与 PC 端的 Windows 和 Office 协同工作。这是微软真正称霸的客户端-服务器时代；在企业内部，所有这些新服务器产品与运行 Microsoft Office 的 Windows 设备配合效果最佳，而这些 Windows 设备和 Office 应用与微软服务器产品的配合也最佳。作为大型企业，你可以从一个技术供应商处获得完整的系统解决方案——这就像构建了史上最惊人的三向技术飞轮。
Ben: And one benefit from this—which of course if you’re Microsoft, you don’t want to lean on this benefit, but they end up doing it—is if you make everything integrated together, work well, and come from one vendor, nothing actually has to be best of breed. You’re no longer competing with any point solutions. You offer the whole thing. Sure, yeah, you can consider going and buying that other vendor’s directory service or that other vendor’s email server. But are you really, because you buy everything from us and it all works pretty well together.
Ben：这一做法还有一个好处——当然，如果你是微软，你并不想过分依赖这个优势，但他们最终还是这样做了——就是当你把所有东西整合在一起，由同一家厂商提供并且运行良好时，每一项单独产品就不必非得是同类最佳。你不再需要与各类点式解决方案竞争，而是提供一整套方案。是的，你当然可以考虑去买别家厂商的目录服务或邮件服务器。但你真的会吗？因为你从我们这里买齐了所有东西，而且它们都能很好地协同工作。
David: The very, very, very best example of this that most listeners can probably tangibly relate to as well is Exchange email and calendaring service and Microsoft Outlook and Windows.
David：对此最鲜明、也是大多数听众能切身感受到的例子，就是 Exchange 邮件与日历服务，以及 Microsoft Outlook 和 Windows 的组合。
Ben: It all has Active Directory that syncs across everything. In doing all this research, it seemed to me that once an enterprise adopted Active Directory, they were going to tip and they were going to buy the rest of the software too. Because whoever manages the source of truth for who are all the people and what are all the resources, devices and everything that my company owns, everything else needs to reference that canonical set of proper nouns, whether it’s email, whether it’s calendar. That was this incredible sticky product that then you could just keep attaching more and more stuff to. Any enterprise need? Oh we got you covered and hey it works with Active Directory.
Ben：所有这一切都依赖 Active Directory 跨系统同步。在做这些调研时，我发现一旦企业采用了 Active Directory，他们就会“倾斜”——接着购买微软的其他软件。因为谁掌握了“真相源”，即公司里所有人员、资源、设备等的权威信息，其他系统（无论邮件还是日历）都必须引用那套规范的专有名称集。Active Directory 作为一个黏性极强的产品，可以不断叠加更多功能。企业有任何需求？没问题，我们都有方案，而且还能与 Active Directory 无缝协作。
David: The whole product effort here started with database. In 1998, Microsoft takes SQL Server. It was the first real enterprise-ready database that can rival IBM and mainframe databases, Oracle databases. Of course, unlike IBM, it runs on x86 Intel architecture.
David：这一系列产品的起点是数据库。1998 年，微软推出 SQL Server——首个真正具备企业级能力、能够与 IBM 大型机数据库和 Oracle 数据库抗衡的产品。当然，与 IBM 不同，SQL Server 运行在 x86 Intel 架构之上。
The pitch now to enterprise IT is everything we just said about why working with Microsoft Server products is better for the whole ecosystem reasons, also total cost of ownership. Don’t pay IBM tons of money for their mainframes. Just go buy cheap x86 Windows boxes from Dell or whomever, and use that as your IT server architecture.
微软向企业 IT 推销的理由既包括我们上面提到的生态协同优势，也包括“总体拥有成本”——别再花大价钱买 IBM 大型机了，去戴尔或其他供应商那儿买便宜的 x86 Windows 服务器就行，把它们作为你的 IT 架构基础。
Ben: Fascinating. I don’t think I quite understood that. Basically, you then have NT as the operating system, SQL is the database, and then you’ve got all these other applications that basically run on that stack.
Ben：真有意思。我之前并未完全理解——也就是说，你先用 NT 作为操作系统，SQL 作为数据库，然后其他应用都运行在这同一技术栈上。
David: And here’s where Exchange and Outlook and everything comes in. This is right as email is taking off as the killer application in enterprises. Now Microsoft shows up and says, we’ve got this great new product for you. It’s called Exchange. Maybe you were using Lotus Notes before, which of course developed by the legendary Ray Ozzie. He’s going to come back up here in a minute. Lotus gets acquired by IBM for \$3.5 billion in 1995. You’re buying Lotus Notes from IBM. Come take a look at Exchange.
David：这就是 Exchange、Outlook 等产品登场的时刻。当时电子邮件正成为企业中的“杀手级应用”，微软便推出全新产品——Exchange。也许你之前在用 Lotus Notes（由传奇人物 Ray Ozzie 开发，1995 年 IBM 以 35 亿美元收购 Lotus）。你从 IBM 手里买 Lotus Notes？不如来看看 Exchange。
Exchange has email. Exchange has calendaring. Exchange has address book. Exchange has Outlook. It is a first class included in the bundle of Microsoft Office, office application that you, mister and missis enterprise are now going to get for all your users. It works just beautifully and perfectly with our exchange email calendaring and address book service. It sells itself, basically.
Exchange 提供邮件、日历、通讯录，并配套 Outlook——这是 Microsoft Office 套件中的一流应用。企业用户可以一次性为所有员工获得这些功能，与 Exchange 的邮件、日历、通讯录服务完美集成，可谓自带“销售力”。
And then you were talking about Active Directory. That led to Active Directory of oh, okay, well now you’ve got your whole database architecture running on Microsoft. You’ve got your email and your calendaring architecture running on Microsoft. You’ve got your Windows machines out there.
接下来便是 Active Directory。既然数据库架构、邮件与日历系统都运行在微软平台，客户端也都是 Windows 设备，
Well you’ve got all these employees within your company, all these users with all these devices. You need to manage them. You need to know who has what security access, how to find each other, where should the mail get routed and all that. Well we’ve got this great new product for you. It’s called Active Directory.
那你必然需要管理众多员工及其设备，了解每个人的权限、互相查找信息、邮件如何路由等。于是，微软推出了这款出色的新产品——Active Directory。
Ben: It’s pretty incredible. That’s all on the why it’s good for customers. On the why it’s good for Microsoft, Steve also pioneered this bundling idea, which is once you sign the enterprise agreement, you get access to all of this.
Ben：这真是令人难以置信。这些都是它对客户有利的理由。至于它对微软有利的原因，Steve 还首创了这种捆绑思路——只要你签署企业协议，就能使用所有这些内容。
If you’re a customer that’s only using 30% of the things in the bundle, if you have business needs that involve some Microsoft product that comes for free in your bundle, you’re going to adopt that. Guess what? You just became a stickier Microsoft customer.
如果你作为客户只使用了套餐中 30% 的功能，只要你的业务需求涉及到套餐里赠送的某款微软产品，你就会采用它。结果呢？你立刻就成了对微软更具粘性的客户。
I feel like this often goes overlooked in the, oh, Microsoft’s a big boring enterprise company right now. There was a tremendous amount of business model innovation in figuring out that bundling like that with additional products can create stickiness, which eventually creates more enterprise value for your company because you’ve got these long, durable compounding revenue streams. Oh and all your customers are growing, so you have the whole land and expand thing there. The thing underpinning it all is the software itself has zero marginal costs. You can bundle in all this stuff for free because it actually doesn’t cost you anything.
我觉得这一点常被忽视——人们总说微软现在是一家又大又无聊的企业公司。实际上，微软在商业模式上进行了大量创新，意识到通过将更多产品捆绑在一起可以提高客户粘性，最终为公司创造更大的企业价值，因为这样能带来长期、稳定、复利式的收入流。再加上客户本身也在增长，于是形成了“落地并扩张”的完整逻辑。而支撑这一切的核心是软件的边际成本为零——你可以把所有东西免费打包，因为对你来说并不会增加实际成本。
David: I know it’s enterprise software, so it’s not as sexy or exciting or thought about as much as consumer software. But truly the innovation that was happening here was among the most that has ever happened at a technology company because Microsoft was figuring all this out. Again, these were not lessons that people knew.
David：我知道这是企业软件，所以它不像消费级软件那样性感、令人兴奋，也没有那么多人关注。但此处发生的创新绝对是科技公司史上最具突破性的之一，因为微软正在把所有这些问题逐一攻克——要知道，这些经验当时并无人知晓。
In the IBM era that came before this, in the enterprise, there were no users. Microsoft is now figuring out how to build and sell enterprise technology systems in this new era to businesses where there are users of the technology.
在此前的 IBM 时代，企业级市场里根本不存在“用户”这个概念。而微软正试图在新时代中，向真正会使用这些技术的企业客户构建并销售企业技术系统。
On the business side, yeah, what you just said, this is crazy. Microsoft said, okay, we’re not going to just sell you the software. We’re going to introduce this thing called an enterprise agreement where you, based on the size of your company, will pay us a certain dollar amount per year per employee—actually I think it was per device, but in these days it was like most employees just had one device—and we’ve got you covered. Everything that you would want access to in our whole suite of software products…
从商业角度看，正如你刚才所说，这简直疯狂。微软表示：好吧，我们不再只是卖给你软件，我们要推出一种名为“企业协议”的模式——根据贵公司的规模，你每年按员工（准确说当时多按设备计算，因为那时多数员工只有一台设备）向我们支付一定金额，我们就包揽你所需。只要是我们整套软件产品目录中的任何东西……
Ben: Inclusive of Windows and Office. It’s not just a salesman comes to you and sells you Windows. This is Microsoft amortizing their go-to-market costs across all of their products because when you show up at an enterprise, you’ve got lots of stuff to sell them.
Ben：这当然包括 Windows 和 Office。不再是销售人员跑来只卖你 Windows。微软把自己的市场推广成本摊到所有产品上，因为当你走进一家企业时，你有一整套东西可以卖给他们。
David: Now Microsoft has turned a one-time sale of software into an annual annuity that is going to keep growing every year and is going to grow with headcount.
David：如今，微软已把一次性的软体销售转变成一笔会随员工人数逐年增长的年金收入。
Ben: And a key feature of the EA is that it is a three year agreement, which means that you really need everything to be aligned to pull this off. There’s something pretty convenient that you may have noticed about Windows and Office. They both tend to release an operating system or a new package of office once every three years or so. Every customer, no matter when they sign the agreement, is essentially guaranteed one upgrade during their lifetime.
Ben：企业协议的一个关键特征是它为期三年，这意味着你必须让一切都协调一致才能顺利执行。你可能注意到 Windows 和 Office 有个很方便的特点：大约每三年就会发布一个新操作系统或新版 Office。如此一来，无论客户何时签约，基本都能在协议期内享受一次升级。
David: Here’s something else that you get now as an enterprise IT buyer in the enterprise agreement world with Microsoft. Your needs as IT are actually pretty different than your users. They’re actually very different. If you are an employee of a large company at this time, you are using a Windows PC at your office. What are the set of things that you want from that device?
David：在微软企业协议体系下，作为企业 IT 采购方，你还能获得别的好处。IT 部门的需求其实与终端用户大不相同。如果你是当时一家大型公司的员工，你在办公室使用的是 Windows 电脑。那么，你希望这台设备满足哪些需求呢？
You probably want to be able to procrastinate, you might be able to want to play some games, you probably want to poke around the Internet, you definitely want it to be easy to use, and you definitely don’t want restrictions on there.
你也许想偶尔拖延下工作、玩玩游戏、上网冲浪，你肯定希望它易于使用，也绝对不想受到各种限制。
Ben: You’re willing to make trade-offs. If you can get a little bit more efficiency but trade-off some security, that’s fine. If you can, maybe use some pirated software but it makes you better at your job, that’s also fine. You’re acting with your own agency, not necessarily the company’s best interest in mind.
Ben：你愿意做权衡。如果稍微提高效率就要牺牲一点安全性，也无妨。或者用点盗版软件却能让你工作更高效，这也可以。你的行为更多从个人意愿出发，并不一定以公司的最佳利益为重。
David: You want to run some VBA macros, et cetera. Okay, now you are a corporate IT administrator, and all of a sudden you have to manage all these rogue agents all over your systems; rogue agents called your employees. You want the ability to restrict your users from doing what they can do. You want to say like, no, you cannot upgrade this software without us doing it. You cannot install anything, you cannot run these macros, you cannot visit these websites, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Part of that is productivity, but a large part of that, Ben, as you said, is security.
David：你想运行一些 VBA 宏，等等。好，现在你成了企业 IT 管理员，突然要管理遍布系统的“流氓代理”——也就是你的员工。你需要限制他们的操作权限，比如：未经我们处理，你不能升级这软件；你不能安装任何东西；你不能运行这些宏；你不能访问那些网站，等等等等。其中一部分是为了效率，但很大程度上正如你所说，Ben，这是为了安全。
Ben: Security, privacy, legal compliance.
Ben：安全、隐私、法规合规。
David: Am I going to get hacked? Am I going to get sued? Are we going to lose data? Well, Microsoft’s got a beautiful solution that they can sell you. With the enterprise agreement you can customize all of this and we will give you exactly what you want.
David：我会被黑客入侵吗？会被起诉吗？会丢失数据吗？微软正好有一套绝佳方案可卖给你。通过企业协议，你可以自定义所有这些需求，我们会精准提供你想要的一切。
Ben: But now David, you’re starting to expose a couple of features of enterprise adoption, which have trade-offs if you’re Microsoft.
Ben：不过，David，你现在开始揭示企业采用软件时的几个特征——如果你是微软，这里面就存在权衡。
David: Oh yes they do.
David：没错，确实如此。
Ben: First of all, if you are a user, you want the latest and greatest software with all the most innovative features. Your IT administrator has a lot of incentive to say, I don’t really want to go train everyone on anything new. If the software never confused anyone, that’s a win. Even if it means we never get any new features.
Ben：首先，作为终端用户，你想要最新最棒、包含各种创新功能的软件。但 IT 管理员很有动力说：我可不想再培训所有人学新东西。如果软件从不让任何人困惑，那就是成功，哪怕意味着永远得不到新功能。
Ben: Suddenly, and I have a direct quote from someone who is an executive in Office told me, “When I was in Office, I always thought we could stop bundling new features for 10 years and it would be fine. No one would notice.”
Ben：突然之间，正如一位 Office 业务高管直接跟我说的：“当年在 Office 部门，我一直认为我们可以十年不加入新功能，没人会察觉。”
David: I think people would probably pay more for it.
David：我觉得人们甚至可能会因此愿意付更多钱。
Ben: Office got to this point where, and I think Steven Sinofsky even writes about this in Hardcore Software in his book and on his Substack, that at some point they were trying to ship features that the PMs thought were great and users would love. They would do this user research, they would hear that people want them, and then the sales force would run back to them and say, no, no, no, no, no, no. Do not include that. Are you kidding me? I’m going to have all these objections in my sale if you make me take this new feature or take this ribbon or any big UI change. Everything has to be small, iterative, and not add any training or confusion.
Ben：Office 发展到这样一种状态——Steven Sinofsky 在他的《Hardcore Software》一书及 Substack 上也提到——产品经理觉得某些新功能棒极了，用户也会喜欢，他们就去做用户调研，结果销售团队回来大声反对：不不不不不！千万别加！你要我带着这新功能、这条功能区、任何大的界面改动去卖，我会被客户各种质疑。所有变化都得小而迭代，不能增加任何培训负担或造成困惑。
David: I joined the corporate workforce in 2007 when I graduated from college, and I was an investment banking analyst on Wall Street at UBS. I started mid-summer 2007 and our corporate IT systems, my Windows laptop was so locked down. We were using XP of course.
David：我 2007 年大学毕业进入职场，在华尔街的瑞银做投行分析师。2007 年盛夏入职时，公司 IT 系统把我的 Windows 笔记本管得死死的。当然我们用的是 XP。
Ben: In 2007 you were using XP?
Ben：2007 年你们还在用 XP？
David: Yes. We were using Office 2003, of course, and over everyone’s dead bodies, would any of that change? Everything was firewalled. We couldn’t install anything. We couldn’t access tons of websites. I remember when I first started, we could still access miniclip.com. The analysts were playing tons of games and pretty quickly IT caught on and that got the kibosh. I’m sure UBS as a customer loved every single bit of that.
David：对啊。我们还在用 Office 2003，谁也别想改动。所有东西都被防火墙封锁。我们装不了任何软件，也访问不了许多网站。我记得刚入职时还可以上 miniclip.com，分析师们玩了好多游戏，很快 IT 就发现并封掉了。我敢说，瑞银作为客户肯定对这种锁得死死的环境非常满意。
Ben: The other big thing that you are talking about, which you were hinting at with VBA macros, the key to enterprise is backward compatibility. Saying, look, we don’t necessarily need to promise you anything too groundbreaking. We need to meet your needs today and be the most cost-efficient, total cost of ownership–driven system that meets your needs and your employees are fine with. And from here on out, everything’s going to stay compatible. Any modifications you make enterprise or software you use and rely on, we won’t break no matter what.
Ben：你刚才提到的另一个重点——你利用 VBA 宏暗示过——企业最看重的是向后兼容。也就是说，我们不一定要承诺什么惊天动地的新功能，我们要做的是满足你们当前的需求，成为最具成本效益、以总体拥有成本为导向的系统，让你们和你们的员工都用得顺心。从现在开始，一切都会保持兼容——无论你在企业中做什么修改，或使用并依赖什么软件，我们都不会破坏它。
David: And we will continue to support those versions you are using.
David：而且我们会继续支持你们正在使用的那些版本。
Ben: Enterprises love that. We’re going to put a pin in this right now and we’re going to bring it back toward the end of this episode in a really illustrative way that it can deeply, deeply hold you back if you are Microsoft, and you have built an entire brand and reputation around your backwards compatibility.
Ben：企业对此最为青睐。我们现在先按下不表，稍后在本集末尾我们会再提到这一点，用一个非常有说服力的例子说明：如果你是微软，并且把整个品牌与声誉都建立在向后兼容之上，它也可能严重拖累你。
David: One stat and then one point I want to make to highlight all this, by 2007 analysts estimated that 40%, of all of Microsoft’s revenue, which I think was about \$51 billion that year, 40% of \$51 billion came from multi-year enterprise agreements. These three year agreements that you’re talking about, Ben—that covered Windows, that covered Office, that covered all the products that Microsoft offered except Xbox—40% of all the dollars were flowing from multi-year EAs, and then another 15% of all dollars that Microsoft was earning as revenue were flowing from single year EAs.
David：这里有一组数据和一个要点能说明问题：到 2007 年，分析师估算微软约 510 亿美元的全年收入中，有 40% 来自多年期企业协议（EA）。这些为期三年的协议，正如你说的，覆盖了除 Xbox 之外微软所有产品——Windows、Office 等等——40% 的收入都来自多年期 EA；另外 15% 的营收则来自一年期 EA。
Ben: Wow. More than half the company’s revenue.
Ben：哇，也就是说超过公司一半的收入。
David: Fifty-five percent. Yes, more than half the company’s revenue is all from this.
David：55%。没错，公司的大半收入都源于此。
Ben: By 2007. It was really the first seven years of Steve’s tenure as CEO already tipped the balance into majority.
Ben：到了 2007 年，也就是 Steve 担任 CEO 的前七年，就已让企业协议收入占据了大头。
David: And the vast, vast majority of the rest of Microsoft revenues, the other 45% of the company was the OEM Windows business. That was 30%. If you look at Microsoft revenue in fiscal 2007, 55% is this new enterprise motion, 30% is the old Windows business—Dell and Lenovo and whoever selling laptops to consumers and paying Microsoft for the operating system—and only 15% of the company’s revenue is anything else.
David：至于微软收入的其余部分，绝大多数是 OEM Windows 业务，占 30%。在 2007 财年，微软 55% 的营收来自这套新的企业模式，30% 来自传统的 Windows OEM 业务——如戴尔、联想等向消费者销售笔记本并向微软支付操作系统费用——而只有 15% 的收入来自其他业务。
Ben: It’s funny. I wasn’t going to bring this up here, but since you brought up OEMs, the OEM business model is completely transformational for Microsoft. When they figured out, actually we shouldn’t be just selling software directly to consumers. Instead we should be selling them to the PC maker and the PC maker should do our distribution.
Ben：有趣的是，我本来不打算在这提 OEM，但既然你提到了，OEM 商业模式对微软来说是彻底性的变革。当微软意识到：我们不该只把软件直接卖给消费者，而应该卖给 PC 制造商，让他们负责分发时，一切都变了。
Here are a couple of stats. In the 90s, the box software that Microsoft would use to sell Windows, their gross margin on a copy of Windows was 29%.
再给你几组数据：在 90 年代，微软通过零售盒装软件销售 Windows，每卖出一份 Windows 的毛利率只有 29%。
David: Oof. That’s not good.
大卫：哎呀。这可不妙。
Ben: They had to print the disc, which had actual real costs, especially on floppies. You had to put it in the box, you had to ship it to the retailer, you had to split profits with the retailer, you had to pay the sales and marketing costs. It’s like real material cost. This is not a zero distribution cost, zero marginal costs business in the box software retail world.
本：他们必须制作光盘，这确实要花真金白银，尤其是软盘。你得把光盘放进盒子里，运到零售商那里，还得与零售商分成，并支付销售和市场费用。这可是真正的材料成本。在盒装软件的零售世界里，分销成本不是零，边际成本也不是零。
But when they’re selling through an OEM channel, their gross margin was 75%, because you just ship the bits to the OS once and then the PC manufacturer takes it from there. Not only is it amazing because you get that 75% versus 29% of gross margin, it’s also an amazing way to scale because you do a deal with every OEM, as you’re going down the line, it’s the Visa networks of networks thing that I think we alluded to this last episode too. You just get each of them scaling on their own, can accrue to you without you doing additional work to do the scaling yourself.
但当他们通过 OEM 渠道销售时，毛利率高达 75%，因为你只需把操作系统的比特发给 PC 厂商一次，其余的都由对方完成。令人惊叹的不仅是 75% 对比 29% 的毛利率，更惊人的是这种扩张方式：你和每一家 OEM 都签协议，沿线推进，就像我们上一期提到的 Visa 的“网络中的网络”模式一样。他们各自扩张，而收益可以累积到你头上，而你无需再投入额外工作去实现这种扩张。
David, it’s interesting you’re talking about how 85% of the business by 2007 was either enterprise sales of the EA or OEM. They’d basically kicked the can to the curb on that crappy retail box software model. They’re just doing the whale hunting with their sales force and doing these enterprise agreements, which of course have great margin structures and the OEMs.
大卫，很有意思，你提到到 2007 年，业务中有 85% 是 EA 的企业销售或 OEM 业务。他们基本上把糟糕的盒装零售软件模式扔到一边。公司只专注于由销售团队主导的大客户“捕鲸”式销售以及这些利润丰厚的企业协议和 OEM 业务。
David: And our annual annuities.
大卫：还有我们的年度年金收入。
Ben: Exactly. Way better business model in every way. They pivoted the whole business to the two best ways to sell software, and completely eliminated the bad way to sell software.
本：没错。方方面面都更好的商业模式。他们把整个业务转向售卖软件的两种最佳方式，并彻底淘汰了那种糟糕的售卖方式。
David: One of which they figured out post-DOJ and it became (by 2007) over half of the revenue of the company, which is crazy.
大卫：其中一种是在 DOJ 诉讼之后才悟出的，结果到 2007 年竟占到了公司收入的一半以上，太疯狂了。
Now Ben, when you said put a pin in a minute ago, and I know we’re going to come back to this after all the consumer failures we’re about to talk about, there is a downside to this. When IT becomes your customer, when you become an enterprise business, the quality of the software, especially the user-facing software, is no longer priority number one. This wasn’t a problem for the company until in 2007 with the iPhone. But let’s rewind and talk about everything that happened in consumer software at Microsoft until then.
现在本，刚才你说“稍后再谈”时，我知道在我们要谈的所有消费端挫败之后会回到这一点，但这其中确实有缺点。当你的客户变成了 IT 部门，当你成为一家企业级公司时，软件品质——尤其是面向终端用户的软件品质——就不再是头等大事。直到 2007 年 iPhone 出现前，这对公司都不是问题。让我们倒带，聊聊在那之前微软在消费级软件上发生的一切。
Ben: What was going on with Windows releases during that time. I think through storytelling, the Windows releases, we can then understand the state of the company. Windows XP, why was Windows XP such a big deal? Well, it was a big deal technologically, it was a big deal for users, and it was a big deal because it’s pretty wild that Microsoft amidst all the antitrust stuff we were just talking about during the 1998 to 1999, the rulings in 2000, the settlement proposal in 2001, they developed and released an operating system amidst all of that.
本：那段时间的 Windows 版本发布都发生了什么？我觉得通过讲述 Windows 的迭代历程，我们就能理解当时公司的状态。Windows XP 为什么意义重大？从技术层面看它很重要，对用户也很重要，更重要的是，在 1998-1999 年的反垄断调查、2000 年的裁决、2001 年的和解方案等一系列事件夹击下，微软竟然仍然研发并发布了一个操作系统，这本身就非常疯狂。
David: And an awesome one.
大卫：而且还非常优秀。
Ben: What was Windows XP technically? Well, for the previous better part of a decade, they had two parallel development efforts going on. There was Windows NT for the enterprise and there was Windows 9x—Windows 95, Windows 98—for consumers. Both of these had the same API that developers could write their applications for. But ultimately, the way they were implemented, the way interoperability worked, compatibility worked, user experience, everything about it was actually completely different because It was a completely different implementation of those APIs.
本：从技术层面看，Windows XP 是什么？在之前近十年的时间里，他们一直同时进行两条开发路线。一条是面向企业的 Windows NT，另一条是面向消费者的 Windows 9x——也就是 Windows 95、Windows 98。这两条路线都向开发者提供相同的 API 供其编写应用程序，但在实现方式、互操作性、兼容性以及用户体验等方面却截然不同，因为它们对这些 API 的实现完全不同。
The knock against NT was always, well you need really beefy enterprise-grade PCs to run it, it’s not as nice and intuitive, and the knock against the Windows 9x—call it 95—was that, yeah, it looks pretty, but it’s not powerful. I can’t actually do anything. It was a friendly interface but not a powerful set of functionality that came with the operating system.
人们常常批评 NT 需要非常强大的企业级 PC 才能运行，界面也不够友好直观；而对 Windows 9x——姑且称之为 95——的批评则是，它虽看起来漂亮，却缺乏强大功能，实际可做的事情有限。也就是说，它的界面友好，但操作系统自带功能并不强大。
XP did the impossible where they figured out how to take the ease of use of the 9x interface and make it run on top of NT. The whole thing is built on the NT kernel, and it has the friendly, approachable, ease of use that you are used to in Windows 95 and 98.
XP 完成了看似不可能的任务：它把 9x 界面的易用性移植到了 NT 之上。整个系统构建于 NT 内核，同时具备你在 Windows 95 和 98 中熟悉的友好、易上手的使用体验。
David: Amazing.
大卫：太棒了。
Ben: The lineage of that 9x code base that came all the way from Windows 3.0 or maybe even 1.0 or 2.0, I don’t know how long code lived, but—
本：那条 9x 代码基线的传承可以一直追溯到 Windows 3.0，甚至可能是 1.0 或 2.0，我不知道那段代码究竟存活了多久，但是——
David: Interface Manager.
大卫：Interface Manager。
Ben: Exactly, is now dead. You had the NT lineage of (I guess) maybe even you could say it started with OS/2, but Windows NT, Windows 2000, and then Windows XP. Everybody’s running XP now. There are two additions. There’s Home and there’s Professional.
本：没错，那套代码已经结束了。与此同时，还有一路 NT 的传承（我想甚至可以说从 OS/2 开始），随后是 Windows NT、Windows 2000，再到 Windows XP。现在人人都在用 XP，而且有两个版本：Home 版和 Professional 版。
David: Oh, got to get the Professional. I always got the Professional.
大卫：哦，必须买 Professional。我每次都买 Professional。
Ben: Did you?
本：是吗？
David: Every time I built a new PC. Oh, got to go Pro. I didn’t even know what Pro meant. I definitely didn’t need Pro because I was not a corporate office worker. But got to go Pro.
大卫：每次我装新电脑，都得用 Pro。我甚至不知道 Pro 是什么意思。我并不需要 Pro，因为我不是企业办公用户，但就是要 Pro。
Ben: It came with all kinds of great stuff. They’ve got this great slide. It’s a fun announcement to watch the emphasis on digital photography, digital music, digital video, home networking. It ushered us into this age of you probably have media that you’re using on your computer.
本：它带来了各种很棒的东西。他们有一张精彩的幻灯片。在发布会上，他们大力强调数码摄影、数字音乐、数字视频和家庭网络，这看着很有趣。它让我们进入了一个新时代——你很可能在电脑上处理各种媒体内容。
Apple famously owned this as a corporate identity with their digital hub strategy. But Windows XP, plenty of people were importing digital photos off their camera to Windows XP. That was a big exciting use case for it.
苹果凭借“数字枢纽”战略，把这一点打造成了企业身份的一部分。但在 Windows XP 上，也有大量用户把数码相机里的照片导入 XP，这成为一个令人兴奋的重要应用场景。
David: A lot of Napster clients running on Windows XP machines.
大卫：有大量 Napster 客户端在 Windows XP 机器上运行。
Ben: Like I did for every Microsoft Windows release, I went and watched the keynote. The keynote is extremely strange. Think about what a Steve Jobs keynote was back in the day, or what a WWDC keynote is like today, or a Google IO. This keynote opens with a gospel choir singing America the Beautiful, and is followed by Bill Gates and Rudy Giuliani walking out on stage together and talking about how bad terrorism is.
本：正如我每次有新的 Microsoft Windows 版本发布都会做的那样，我去观看了发布会。这场发布会非常奇怪。想想当年 Steve Jobs 的发布会，或者今天的 WWDC，再或者 Google IO。这场发布会以福音合唱团演唱《美丽的美利坚》开场，随后比尔·盖茨和鲁迪·朱利安尼一起走上舞台，谈论恐怖主义有多么可怕。
David: And of course the thing you need to know about this keynote is the date.
David：当然，你需要了解这场发布会的关键是日期。
Ben: This happens one month after 9-11 in New York City, and it really underscores what a strange time it was in the US. If you had this once in three years product release and it was going to be in New York October of 2001, you probably have this question, should we even do it? Should we make it all about the first responders? It grounds the whole thing in a very specific moment in history when you’re watching it in a way that no other tech event really ever has been grounded in history before.
Ben：这场发布会发生在 9·11 事件后的一个月，地点在纽约市，真正凸显了那段时期在美国是多么奇怪。如果你有一个三年一次的产品发布会，而且计划在 2001 年10 月于纽约举行，你很可能会思考：我们还要办吗？要不要把主题全部放在急救人员身上？当你回看时，它把整个事件牢牢地钉在了一个极其特殊的历史时刻，没有任何其他科技发布会曾如此深刻地与历史联系在一起。
A few other things that jump out during the keynote. Bill Gates is not the CEO, Steve Balmer is, and yet Bill Gates is the one walking out with Rudy Giuliani to kick things off. That’s a strange and somewhat telling element of what Bill’s role at the company was.
发布会中还有一些突出的细节。比尔·盖茨并不是 CEO，史蒂夫·鲍尔默才是，但走上舞台与鲁迪·朱利安尼一起开场的却是比尔·盖茨。这是一个奇怪但颇具意味的细节，说明了比尔在公司中的角色。
Now you could argue he was the public facing figure, he was the founder of the company, it seems very natural. But also at some point, why isn’t the CEO the one doing the keynote? Another thing about Windows XP, there was a new release of Office right at the same time as XP.
你可以说他是面对公众的形象，他是公司的创始人，这似乎很自然。但与此同时，你也会问：为什么不是 CEO 来做主旨演讲？另外，关于 Windows XP，还有一点是 Office 在 XP 推出时也同步发布了新版本。
This is a classic Microsoft move. They are able to create great applications available on day one, which makes the OS more valuable. From the applications perspective, they’re able to ensure that they get great market share since they’re always adopting the latest and greatest Windows platform right away.
这是微软的经典操作。他们能够在首日就提供优秀的应用，使操作系统更有价值。从应用程序的角度看，他们能确保获得巨大的市场份额，因为他们总是第一时间采用最新最好的 Windows 平台。
Windows success begets office success, It’s important to remember that that worked for many, many years. If you remember back to the last episode, Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect smoked Microsoft in Microsoft’s own backyard. During the DOS era, Microsoft’s productivity apps did not get real adoption in DOS, which is crazy.
Windows 的成功带来 Office 的成功，这一策略在很多年里行之有效。如果你回想上一期节目，Lotus 1-2-3 和 WordPerfect 曾在微软的大本营大胜微软。在 DOS 时代，微软的办公套件在 DOS 上根本没被真正采用，这太不可思议了。
When they were making Windows, they basically swore never again. They ensured that they were going to be very early with applications on those platforms. As Windows took off, Office also got huge market share.
当他们开发 Windows 时，他们基本上发誓不再重蹈覆辙。他们确保能在这些平台上极早推出应用。随着 Windows 起飞，Office 也获得了巨大的市场份额。
It’s smart to remember this lesson and carry it forward for years, maybe a decade. But again, they may have bet on this strategy a few years too long. Forever it became gospel at Microsoft. So with Windows goes the company, so you need to do things to make sure that Windows is going to continue to succeed because that is our company’s platform and livelihood. It’s almost like the old Disney adage, so with animation goes the company, and until 2014 Microsoft felt the same way.
牢记这个教训并在未来多年甚至十年坚持下去很明智。但可能他们在这条战略上押注得太久了。这在微软内部成为一条铁律：Windows 的命运就是公司的命运，因此必须确保 Windows 继续成功，因为那是公司生存的平台和依托。这几乎就像迪士尼的老格言——动画兴，则公司兴——直到 2014 年微软始终抱有同样的看法。
David: That is true for all the traditional reasons in the XP timeframe. The reason it was also true in part one of our Microsoft series. It’s even more true as Microsoft becomes an enterprise company because Windows is at the heart of the enterprise agreement. The whole value prop of all of our server technologies is they work great with your Windows devices on your network.
David：这在 XP 时代因为所有传统原因都成立。在我们微软系列第一部分中，这也是成立的。随着微软转型为企业公司，这一点更加真实，因为 Windows 是企业协议的核心。我们所有服务器技术的核心价值主张就是它们能在你的网络中与 Windows 设备完美协作。
Ben: There are strong incentives everywhere for Microsoft to ensure that Windows is the standardized platform that everyone wants to have on their PCs because it makes everything else work.
本：在各方面，微软都有强烈动机确保 Windows 成为所有人都想在个人电脑上安装的标准化平台，因为有了它，一切其他东西才能正常运作。
Of course, they’re going to release a new version of Office that shows off the latest and greatest of Windows. I think this XP timeframe is the showcase moment of when that was a great strategy and we’ll contrast that later.
他们当然会推出新版本的 Office 来展示 Windows 的最新和最出色特性。我认为在 XP 时代，这种策略正好进入最佳展示期，稍后我们会与之后的情况进行对比。
The other thing to know about this XP timeframe is last episode we talked about the incredible secular growth trend of the PC that was this crazy tailwind for Microsoft. One of the greatest tailwinds you could ride in business history, PC shipments, I believe the stat, David, was that they grew 98% per year over the 11 years between the founding and 1975 and the IPO in 1986.
关于 XP 时代还需要了解的一点是，我们在上一期讨论过 PC 的强劲长期增长趋势，这给微软带来了巨大顺风。这可能是商业史上最强的顺风之一——PC 出货量。我记得那个数据，大卫，是说从 1975 年公司成立到 1986 年上市的 11 年里，PC 出货量年均增长 98%。
The crazier thing is even as late as 2001 with Windows XP, they were still riding this tailwind. The US household penetration of personal computers—again, flashing back pre-IPO—was only 8%. That whole doubling year over year over year, by Microsoft’s IPO, they still only got to around 10% of penetrating the US.
更疯狂的是，直到 2001 年 Windows XP 推出时，他们仍在享受这股顺风。在微软上市前，美国家庭个人电脑普及率仅为 8%。尽管连续多年翻倍增长，到微软上市时，美国普及率也才达到约 10%。
By 1997—13 years later—it grew to 37%. After a couple of years of XP being in market 2003, it had grown to 62%. I think the craziest stat is actually that last one, 2003 feels like a modern moment in history, but PCs were still only in 62% of US homes.
到 1997 年——13 年后——这一数字增至 37%。XP 推出两年后的 2003 年，已增至 62%。我认为最惊人的其实是最后这个数据：2003 听起来已经很现代了，但当时美国只有 62% 的家庭拥有 PC。
David: Wow. That’s crazy.
大卫：哇，太不可思议了。
Ben: The PC wave is just one of the greatest secular trends in history, particularly if you have a monopoly share of that market. And as defined by the US government did.
本：PC 浪潮无疑是历史上最伟大的长期趋势之一，尤其是当你在该市场拥有垄断份额时。美国政府也的确这样认定过。
David: Ben, define ‘define’ for me.
大卫：本，替我“定义一下‘定义’”。
Ben: There’s just no question of, as this market grows, are you going to be able to continue to participate in it? It’s like yeah, we basically are a tracker for that market. It grows, we grow with it.
本：随着这个市场增长，我们还能否持续参与其中？这个问题完全不用担心。可以说，我们基本就是市场的“跟踪器”——市场增长，我们就跟着增长。
David: Now might be a good time. Certain Microsoft fans have probably been listening to this episode and gripping their phones with all their strength, like when are you going to talk about Xbox ? We are going to talk about Xbox briefly right now. We will do a whole nother episode on Xbox someday.
大卫：现在或许是个好时机。有些微软粉丝可能听着这一集，紧抓着手机等着我们谈 Xbox。我们现在先简要聊一下 Xbox。未来我们会做完整的一期节目专门讲它。
Ben: Maybe David make your case and then let’s talk about it.
本：也许大卫你先发表下你的观点，然后我们再讨论。
David: My case is I love my Xbox, so.
大卫：我的观点就是——我爱我的 Xbox，就这样。
Ben: Well it’s important to know Microsoft didn’t start in gaming with the Xbox. Windows 95, they shipped DirectX, that changed the world. They became a real gaming platform because of that, is this unbelievably clever set of APIs that went entirely around Windows. Amazing piece of technology. You put Microsoft on the map and you have the whole rise in PC gaming for the next six years, even before the Xbox.
本：但重要的是要知道，微软涉足游戏并非始于 Xbox。早在 Windows 95 时代，他们就推出了 DirectX，这改变了世界。DirectX 是一套极其巧妙、完全绕过 Windows 的 API，让 Windows 真正成为游戏平台。这项惊人的技术让微软一举成名，并在 Xbox 之前的六年间推动了 PC 游戏的蓬勃发展。
David: That’s funny. Microsoft is so huge that this is one of the things that gets lost to history. But you are absolutely right. DirectX was so important in that late 90s era for PC gaming. You have Quake, Counterstrike, everything that happened, Half Life later, that was enabled.
大卫：这很有趣。微软如此庞大，以至于这一段历史常被遗忘。但你说得完全正确。在 90 年代末的 PC 游戏领域，DirectX 至关重要。有了它，才有了《雷神之锤》《反恐精英》，以及后来一切包括《半条命》在内的经典作品。
Doom came before and was really just the genius of Carmack as a programmer to enable a first person shooter to happen on a PC hardware without something like DirectX and hardware acceleration. But yes, everything that came after that, the birth of the first person shooter genre, huge story to tell another day. But you’re right, that leads into Xbox and Microsoft’s entry into the home console.
《毁灭战士》更早面世，那更多是程序员卡马克的天才所致，让第一人称射击在没有 DirectX 和硬件加速的 PC 上成为可能。但之后的一切——第一人称射击这一类型的诞生——都是值得另讲的大故事。没错，这一切最终引出了 Xbox，以及微软进军家用游戏机领域。
Crazy that happened in November 2001. Just a couple of weeks after the XP launch. It was a big time for Microsoft.
这一切都发生在 2001 年 11 月，就在 XP 发布后几周，可谓微软的高光时刻。
Ben: And how crazy is this? They thought they were getting broken up.
本：这有多疯狂？他们以为自己要被拆分了。
David: As they’re launching a video game console.
大卫：就在他们推出一款游戏主机的时候。
Ben: And this operating system that they’ve been working toward for eight years.
本：还有这套他们已经研发了八年的操作系统。
David: This is also part of my argument of Microsoft was such a dominant consumer technology company before DOJ, because even though all this stuff comes out right after, it’s the momentum still from before that’s carrying Microsoft through to it.
大卫：这也印证了我的观点：在美国司法部介入之前，微软在消费科技领域就已占据统治地位。尽管这些产品都是后来发布的，但真正推动微软前行的，仍是此前积累的动能。
Ben: Okay, while we’re in Xbox Land, should we finish our Xbox-iness right now for this episode?
本：好吧，既然我们已经聊到 Xbox，要不要就在本期把所有 Xbox 的内容讲完？
David: Sure.
大卫：没问题。
Ben: Xbox has become an important part of our world, but not an important part of Microsoft’s business.
本：Xbox 已经成为我们生活中的重要组成部分，但它并不是微软业务的重要支柱。
David: Agree.
大卫：同意。
Ben: David and I heard people utter things in our research like Xbox has been a lifetime break-even business or it’s never meaningfully contributed to Microsoft. I tried to figure out as much as I could from financial statements, and I got to thank Alex at The Science of Hitting—it’s a great Substack—for helping me with this.
本：大卫和我在调研时听到有人说，Xbox 这辈子也就勉强打平，或者从未真正为微软做出过显著贡献。我尽力从财报中挖掘数据——在此要感谢 Substack《The Science of Hitting》的 Alex 对我的帮助。
If you look, there was a division called Entertainment and Devices that was part of their old reporting structure. If you look at the E\&D reporting over time—let’s start back in 2006—they generated \$4 billion in revenue, lost \$1.4 billion operating loss. This is five years after the Xbox has come out. Loss-making.
如果查看微软早年的报告结构，会发现一个名为“娱乐与设备”（Entertainment and Devices，简称 E\&D）的部门。以 2006 年为例，该部门营收 40 亿美元，却亏损 14 亿美元——那时距离 Xbox 推出已五年，仍在亏钱。
2008. They do \$8 billion in revenue, \$400 million in profit. Even as it’s becoming a real business at Steady State.
到了 2008 年，营收 80 亿美元，利润 4 亿美元；即便进入相对成熟期，利润依旧有限。
David: Yeah as 360 is coming into…
大卫：对，那时 360 正在……
Ben: Teeny margins.
本：利润率微乎其微。
David: Yeah, totally.
大卫：是的，完全如此。
Ben: 2009, \$8 billion in revenue, \$100 million in operating income. 2010, another \$8 billion in revenue, \$700 million. This is \$700 million to Microsoft. In this timeframe, they do call it \$20 billion of profit?
本：2009 年，营收 80 亿美元，运营利润 1 亿美元；2010 年，再次营收 80 亿美元，运营利润 7 亿美元。对微软而言，这 7 亿美元算什么？那几年公司整体利润大概有 200 亿美元吧？
David: Yeah.
大卫：对。
Ben: What’s \$600–\$700 million?
本：那 6 亿到 7 亿美元又算什么呢？
David: There’s a great quote. Oh bring it up again later. But we got to talk to Steve again, to Ballmer as we were preparing for this episode. He had this amazing quote to us about some of his acquisitions that didn’t go well.
大卫：有一句很棒的话——稍后我再引用。我们在准备本期节目时又去采访了史蒂夫·鲍尔默，他谈到一些没做好的收购时给了我们一句精彩的评论。
He said, “We only lost money. It’s funny, but it’s such an important point in the context of Microsoft. Money is not the scarce resource. The scarce resource is time and talent and focus.”
他说：“我们只是亏了钱。这听着好笑，但在微软的大语境下很重要。钱并不是稀缺资源，真正稀缺的是时间、人才和专注力。”
Ben: That is exactly the right point. Microsoft, since year two or three has never been capital-constrained. Bill Gates says this in an interview, “Anytime we’ve thought about making an investment, it’s just, do we have enough talented people to pull that off? On any given year, I can’t deploy all of the dollars available as a CEO, as a capital allocator because I’m constrained by the amount of smart people we have to pull it off.” That is a much different position than most businesses are in.
本：这正点中了要害。微软自成立第二三年起就从未受过资金约束。比尔·盖茨在一次采访中说：“每当我们考虑投资，唯一的问题就是，我们是否有足够聪明的人来完成？在任何一年里，作为 CEO、资本分配者，我都花不完手里的钱，因为受限于可用的聪明人才数量。” 这与大多数企业所处的境地截然不同。
David: But is absolutely the case, not just for Microsoft, but for all the at scale tech companies these days, the top five market cap companies in the world. Money is not the issue.
大卫：这绝不仅仅对微软如此，如今所有规模巨大的科技公司——全球市值前五的公司——都是这样：资金从来不是问题。
Ben: In fact, you’re making my point for me. If I had to make the case of why Xbox has been somewhat of a folly and perhaps not worthy of a full acquired episode, it would be, there was a lot of Microsoft’s best people worked on Xbox.
本：实际上，你正替我说明这一点。如果我要论证 Xbox 为何多少有些不智、或许不值得我们为它做一整期节目，那原因就在于微软最优秀的一批人才投入到了 Xbox。
This is a group of people that went and created Xbox Live that by 2012 had 40 million subscribers. People who built a core competency of running a big online service. These are some of the best product people. The aesthetics of Xbox from a physical perspective, but also the software.
这群人打造了 Xbox Live，到 2012 年已拥有 4,000 万订阅用户；他们在运营大型在线服务方面建立了核心能力。这些人是微软最顶尖的产品人才，无论从硬件外观还是软件设计上，都赋予了 Xbox 出色的美感。
I just think it was a sinkhole of some of Microsoft’s best product people and just hardest working people. The culture at Xbox was so hard-driving to produce, at least in this point in history up to the 2010 timeframe, very little in the way of contributing to Microsoft’s business, but soaking up a huge amount of the talent. Imagine if that product design sensibility was deployed across the rest of Microsoft.
但在我看来，Xbox 就像一个深坑，吞噬了微软部分最优秀、最勤奋的产品人才。至少截至 2010 年，Xbox 的高压文化并未给微软整体业务做出多少贡献，却占用了大量人才资源。想想如果这种产品设计敏感度能应用到微软其他领域，会是什么效果。
David: Totally. I think Xbox Live is debatable. We’ll come back to this with Azure. Xbox Live was one of the original pioneering internet services, subscription services across any category of software and technology. The DNA and experience that Microsoft built from that served it extremely well.
大卫：完全同意。不过我认为 Xbox Live 的价值还有争议——稍后谈 Azure 时再回到这一点。Xbox Live 是最早的互联网订阅服务之一，为软件和技术行业开创了先河。微软从中积累的基因与经验随后大放异彩。
Ben: I think there are two gigantic benefits. Look, the gaming market is massive and important. If you could try to own one market in the world today, in the world of entertainment, it’s gaming. I’m just saying Microsoft didn’t up until that, at least this point in history. But it’s the right market to go after. They were not successful in capturing value from it at this moment in history.
本：我认为此举带来了两大收益。首先，游戏市场规模巨大且至关重要；若在当今娱乐领域只能选择一个市场去占领，那一定是游戏。只是说，微软当时并没真正把握住——至少在那个阶段无法有效变现，但方向确实正确。
But you’re right. The two big things that they were able to do is build out a core competency of running a big online service, which totally led to Azure, which we’ll talk about later. Two, it really did make Microsoft relevant with a whole new set of consumers when Microsoft was completely irrelevant in their lives.
不过你说得对。他们确实完成了两件大事：一是建立运营大型在线服务的核心能力，直接催生了后来要讨论的 Azure；二是让微软在此前完全无关的消费群体中重新变得重要。
David: Should we talk about Vista?
大卫：我们该聊 Vista 了吗？
Ben: Yes.
本：好。
David:. Oh boy.
大卫：哎呀。
Ben: There’s a little tail off of XP that’ll lead to Vista.
本：在 XP 之后还有一段小插曲，最终引向 Vista。
David: We got to talk about the code names too.
大卫：我们还得聊聊那些代号。
Ben: The Windows XP code name, David, was what?
本：Windows XP 的代号是什么，大卫？
David: Whistler.
大卫：Whistler。
Ben: Of course. Like the beautiful ski mountain, real close to Vancouver. A lot of Seattleites go there. It’s a favorite of many a Microsoft employee.
本：没错，正如那座美丽的滑雪山——Whistler，就在温哥华附近。很多西雅图人都会去，众多微软员工的最爱之地。
David: And Blackcomb.
大卫：还有 Blackcomb。
Ben: The ski mountain right next to Whistler is yes, Blackcomb, which became the name for the theoretical release that they wanted to do just a year or two after Vista. We’re going to follow hot on the heels of that.
本：Whistler 旁边的那座滑雪山就是 Blackcomb，这也成了他们想在 Vista 发布后一两年内推出的假想版本的代号。我们打算紧随 Vista 之后推出它。
David: Oh boy.
大卫：哎呀。
Ben: But Blackcomb started becoming pretty technically hairy, so they decided to push the date out. Another reason they had to push the date out was Windows XP, for all of its usability and reliability, was very insecure. Microsoft had a whole thing where they thought they were going to spend three months putting out a service pack. They spent the better part of two years iterating on Windows XP to come out with a release that really people and enterprises could trust as no viruses, this is safe to deploy your enterprise.
本：但 Blackcomb 在技术上开始变得相当复杂，因此他们决定延后发布时间。另一个推迟的原因是，尽管 Windows XP 易用且可靠，但安全性却很差。微软本以为花三个月做个 Service Pack 就行，结果花了近两年时间不断迭代 XP，才推出一个真正让个人和企业都信任的版本——没有病毒，可以安全部署到企业环境中。
David: This was Service Pack 2, I think, was what ultimately.
大卫：这最终就是 Service Pack 2，我想，是吧。
Ben: Yup. Windows XP SP2 is the stuff of legend. That’s the good one. that pushes Blackcomb data out and it also ties up a lot of the talent that Microsoft needs to start working on the next generation operating system, which again, they thought was going to be a fast follow.
本：没错。Windows XP SP2 简直是传奇版，非常厉害。它把 Blackcomb 的发布日期推迟了，也占用了微软许多本应投入下一代操作系统开发的人才，而当时大家还以为那会是一个快速跟进的版本。
For anyone who skied up there, there’s this great ski lodge restaurant right between the two mountains called the Longhorn Saloon.
对于去那边滑雪的人来说，在两座山之间有一家很棒的滑雪小屋餐厅，叫做 Longhorn Saloon。
David: Yup. Longhorn baby.
大卫：没错，Longhorn，伙计。
Ben: That sounds like a great name for a modest release to follow XP before we get to the big hard changes that are going to come in Blackcomb.
本：这听起来很适合作为 XP 之后的一个过渡版本的名字，等到 Blackcomb 再进行那些大刀阔斧的改动。
David: Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy.
大卫：哎呀，哎呀，哎呀。
Ben: David, the look on your face.
本：大卫，看你那表情。
David: I remember being a teenager in high school at this point in time and reading all about Longhorn, Blackcomb, all the stuff on the Internet, on these new tech sites, these blogs being like, this is going to be amazing. I remember downloading new shells for Windows XP to mimic the Longhorn UI with the sidebar and the clock on the side. Oh man, what a disaster.
大卫：我记得当时我还在高中，经常在网上、在那些新兴的科技网站和博客上阅读关于 Longhorn、Blackcomb 的各种消息，大家都说这会多么惊艳。我还记得我下载了新的 XP 外壳来模拟 Longhorn 的 UI，带侧边栏和旁边的时钟。天哪，简直灾难。
Ben: This was part of the belief behind Longhorn. They wanted to market all the cool stuff they were doing for it through these like developer blogs and fan blogs, even though the product didn’t have a ship date yet. Everyone got really well-versed in what was coming in Longhorn.
本：Longhorn 背后的想法之一就是这样：他们想通过开发者博客和粉丝博客来宣传正在做的那些酷东西，尽管产品还没有发布日期。结果所有人都对 Longhorn 将要推出的功能了如指掌。
Then everyone was sitting on their hands like, where’s Longhorn? They’ve been really telling us about Longhorn in a way that you would never see today. No one’s dripping out the features of something that is potentially still years away from a release. Ultimately then years go by. Five years go by.
然后大家都干等着：Longhorn 呢？他们之前那样不断爆料 Longhorn 的功能，这在今天绝对不会出现。没人会提前几年就一点点泄露功能。于是时间一年年过去，五年过去了。
David: Could you imagine if Apple, on their developer site, were just like, hey, here’s iOS 23. Here are all the great new features we’re building.
大卫：你能想象苹果在开发者网站上直接说，“嗨，这是 iOS 23，我们正在开发的所有新功能都在这儿”吗？
Ben: The funny thing is they actually did that this year with all the AI features. All of those are coming soon over the next year, which I’m not saying that’s a bad strategy in the current environment, but it is a different strategy for Apple.
本：有趣的是，苹果今年真的这么做了，把所有 AI 功能都提前公布，未来一年陆续上线。我并不是说这种策略在目前环境下不好，但这确实是苹果与以往不同的做法。
Anyway, Longhorn is teased for five years. All the David Rosenthals out there are like, what the heck, Microsoft? I’ve been excited for all this crazy stuff you’re showing me. What’s going on?
总之，Longhorn 被吊足了五年胃口。所有像 David Rosenthal 那样的人都在想：微软，你搞什么？你展示的那些炫酷功能我都兴奋了半天，到底怎么回事？
Well, what happened behind the scenes? David, what was the initial technical spark that was supposed to be the cornerstone of Longhorn?
那么，幕后到底发生了什么？大卫，最初本该成为 Longhorn 基石的技术火花是什么？
David: There were three pillars of (I think) it was all originally supposed to be Blackcomb. Then they were like, no, no, we’re going to pare it down to Longhorn. But it all ended up getting added back into Longhorn. The first of which was called Avalon. It was a new graphics engine that used direct hardware acceleration.
大卫：当初有三个支柱（我记得）本来都属于 Blackcomb。后来他们说不行，我们要精简成 Longhorn，结果这些东西最终还是全加回了 Longhorn。第一个支柱叫做 Avalon，一款采用直接硬件加速的新图形引擎。
I think the vision for this was like, hey, we’re going to take DirectX, bake it into the operating system, and allow the operating system to use GPU hardware acceleration.
他们的设想是，把 DirectX 内建到操作系统里，让系统本身就能利用 GPU 硬件加速。
Ben: That’s more or less it. All these code names ended up referring to multiple things because it was emblematic of the organizational disarray inside the Windows development team. But anyway, it sounds great. We can render all these really great graphics as a part of the operating system. because It’s GPU-accelerated.
本：差不多就是这样。这些代号最后都指向了多重概念，反映出 Windows 开发团队的组织混乱。但听起来确实很棒——系统层面就能渲染各种精美图形，因为有 GPU 加速。
David: Who doesn’t want better graphics? Of course, right?
大卫：谁不想要更好的图形表现？当然想，对吧？
Ben: The thing that ultimately happened is the OEMs were all trying to make netbooks. They’re furious at Microsoft about saying the next new release of Windows, which has five years since Windows XP, they really, really are counting on a new version of Windows to drive PC sales, and the one that they’re getting requires pretty good GPUs.
本：问题是，OEM 厂商当时都在做上网本。他们听微软说“下一版 Windows 来了”，距离 XP 已经五年，指望新系统拉动 PC 销量，可结果却需要相当不错的 GPU 才能跑，这让他们气炸了。
David: Like a gaming PC, yeah.
大卫：几乎得配游戏级 PC，没错。
Ben: It was a total miss with what their OEM partners were looking for. But if you did buy an nice PC and you did eventually end up with a copy of Windows Vista, this is why you got to see the new, what what did they call the—
本：这完全和 OEM 伙伴的需求脱节。不过，如果你买了一台好电脑，最终装上了 Windows Vista，那么你就能看到那个新的，呃，他们叫什么来着——
David: Oh, the Aero interface.
大卫：哦，Aero 界面。
Ben: That’s right. The blue shiny sort of thing that was ripping off MacOS Aqua. Call a spade a spade over here.
本：对，就是那个蓝光闪闪、明显抄袭 MacOS Aqua 的东西。咱们实话实说。
David: We could tell where your true loyalty lies.
大卫：看得出来你的忠诚归属在哪儿了。
Ben: I’m just saying if you run a company where you make all your own hardware and your own software, that it’s much easier for you to hardware accelerate all the graphics in the operating system. But when you’re counting on OEM partners, you need really good communication there.
本：我只是想说，如果你是一家既自制硬件又自写软件的公司，那么在操作系统中实现所有图形的硬件加速就容易得多。但当你依赖 OEM 合作伙伴时，就需要非常良好的沟通。
David: That was one. The other one was a new web services framework called Indigo, which, I don’t know. I did a lot of research and I couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be. I think it was a fever dream of let’s stuff the Internet fully into Windows.
大卫：那是一项。另一项是一个名为 Indigo 的新网络服务框架，我也搞不太清楚。我做了很多研究，也没弄明白它到底要实现什么。我觉得那更像是“把整个互联网完全塞进 Windows”这种狂热幻想。
Ben: Ultimately, there was a very fundamental architecture shift that just did not pan out. If you remember from the last episode, we talked about Chicago—Windows 95—and Cairo, this theoretical thing that never shipped, that was going to be the next generation operating system. Well they basically—
本：最终，他们进行了一次非常根本性的架构转变，但并未成功。如果你还记得上一期，我们谈到 Chicago—Windows 95—以及 Cairo——那个从未发布、原计划成为下一代操作系统的理论项目。那么他们基本上——
David: They tried it again.
大卫：他们又再试了一次。
Ben: Did the same thing again, yeah. I think Bill Gates was a big fan of this vision because it was really technically ambitious where they had an object-oriented file system where the file system could specify data types. Then every application would plug directly into the data types that the file system knew about.
本：对，又做了同样的事。我想比尔·盖茨非常喜欢这个愿景，因为这在技术上极具雄心：他们要做一个面向对象的文件系统，文件系统可以指定数据类型，然后每个应用程序都能直接接入文件系统已知的数据类型。
There were these standards, like a calendar invites a calendar invite, and the operating system has its own fields for date and time and notes. That means you’re not always traversing directory trees whenever you’re trying to search through stuff.
有一些标准，比如日历邀请就是日历邀请，操作系统自带日期、时间和备注字段。这意味着当你搜索内容时，不必总是遍历目录树。
Also it meant that the operating system could actually reach into the data within files that were being stored by applications. It was a standard way of storing files in an easy-to-search way.
这也意味着操作系统实际上可以深入到应用程序所存文件的内部数据中，这是一种标准化且易于搜索的文件存储方式。
David: And what you’re talking about here is the third pillar of Longhorn/Blackcomb, which is WinFS, right?
大卫：你现在说的，就是 Longhorn/Blackcomb 的第三根支柱——WinFS，对吗？
Ben: Yes. Ultimately, WinFS, they tried to build it many times. There was a lot of offsites and architecture reviews talking about how great it was, when in practice there was never any pull from application developers that they wanted this in the first place.
本：对。WinFS 他们尝试了很多次。举办了很多外部研讨和架构评审，大家都说它有多棒，但实际上应用开发者从来没有需求想要这个东西。
This was a huge part of the wheel spinning of, well, we can’t do all this other stuff in the operating system until we figure out the spec and the implementation for WinFS. Then once we have that, then we can start to do all this other stuff.
这导致了大量无效空转：在搞清 WinFS 的规范和实现之前，我们没法在系统里做其他事情。一旦搞定它，我们才可以开始做其他所有东西。
Part of the other stuff was the .NET development team wanted to bake .NET directly into the bits of the operating system that shipped in the box and on your PCs, so .NET was everywhere. Ultimately, what happened here is—I heard this from a developer—there were many different groups who were all compiling their own subprojects and they could run them. But when it came time to try to actually do a build of this operating system and say, hey, we’ve had too many offsites and architecture reviews and restarts and this is in, this is out, let’s just try to do like a build of the OS that we could deliver. They never built Longhorn.
其他事情的一部分是 .NET 开发团队想把 .NET 直接烘焙进随盒装系统和你的电脑一起出货的操作系统核心，让 .NET 无处不在。最终，事情变成——我从一位开发者那里听说——许多不同团队各自编译自己的子项目，并且能运行。但当真正要尝试构建整个操作系统时，大家发现“我们已经开了太多外出会议和架构评审，不停重启项目，这个要、那个不要，干脆做一个能交付的系统构建吧”，结果他们从未真正构建出 Longhorn。
David: It did not compile,
大卫：它编译不通过。
Ben: They could not integrate all the different projects into one, and they ended up reforking from an old Windows server version or something and adding things in one by one piecemeal to try to figure out in year four how can we get something shippable out to consumers so we can say this is our next generation operating system, and what is the minimum acceptable set of stuff that we can put in such that it looks and feels new.
本：他们没法把所有不同的项目整合到一起，最后只好从某个旧版 Windows Server 重新分叉，再把功能一点点地往里塞，试图在开发第四年时搞出一个能交付给消费者的版本，好对外宣称“这就是我们的下一代操作系统”，并找出一套最低可接受的功能集合，让它看起来、用起来都像是全新的。
David: Okay. Longhorn, this is truly a disaster for the company.
大卫：好吧，Longhorn 对公司来说简直是场灾难。
Ben: Well, so 100% it is, but they were trying to talk about it like it wasn’t. I watched the launch announcement for this too. They have to. They can’t really say like nobody’s upgraded this. They come out.
本：百分之百是灾难，可他们却硬说不是。我也看了那场发布会，他们必须这么做，不能说没人升级，于是就上台了。
First of all, it’s Bill Gates again in 2006, six years after Steve Ballmer has become CEO. My opinion on this is they clearly had no idea what to talk about in the keynote because the one feature that I can really remember as a flagship feature is that alt-tab switcher that was 3D that kept bringing the windows closer and closer and closer to you.
首先，2006 年又是比尔·盖茨站台，距离史蒂夫·鲍尔默当 CEO 已经六年。在我看来，他们显然不知道主题演讲该讲什么——我唯一记得的“旗舰功能”，就是那个 3D 的 Alt-Tab 切换器，窗口一张张朝你飞过来。
They’ve got the widgets, they’ve got the sidebar, it’s Aero. They had one feature that people hated. There was a revolt called user access control, which the theory makes sense protecting users from running malicious and blah-blah-blah. But in practice, it would just overwhelm you with dialogue boxes all the time. Everyone’s just trying to figure out how do I turn off the dialogue boxes.
他们有小部件，有侧边栏，是 Aero 界面；但也有一个人人讨厌的功能——用户访问控制（User Access Control）。理论上它能防止恶意程序运行，可实际中却不停弹出对话框让人崩溃，大家都在想怎么才能关掉这些对话框。
They’re standing up there at the keynote, the whole thing, the marketing message is the wow starts now.
他们在台上卖力宣传，整个营销口号就是“惊艳从此刻开始”（the wow starts now）。
David:. Oh boy. Oh boy.
大卫：哎呀，哎呀。
Ben: It’s a completely incohesive, incoherent set of things they’re launching, Consumers didn’t like it. Businesses tried not to upgrade. Even as late as 2009, 3½ years after launch, something like that, three quarters of corporate PCs are still running XP and had never upgraded to Vista.
本：这是个支离破碎、毫无章法的产品组合，消费者不买账，企业也尽量不升级。直到 2009 年，也就是发布三年半后，大约四分之三的企业 PC 仍在运行 XP，根本没升 Vista。
David: Oh it’s even worse than that. You may have this in your notes, but Microsoft OEMs were so unhappy because consumers didn’t want to buy Vista machines. Microsoft had to extend the ability for their OEM partners to keep selling XP machines to consumers for another two years after this.
大卫：情况甚至更糟。你可能也记了——微软的 OEM 厂商特别不满，因为消费者不想买 Vista 电脑。微软只好再让 OEM 多卖两年 XP 机器给消费者。
Ben: Just brutal. This was the Windows culture at its worst. I worked in Office, so I have a bias here when I was at Microsoft, but they weren’t super ship date–driven, whereas Office would set a ship date three years in advance and then they would hit it exactly.
本：太惨了，这是 Windows 文化最糟糕的一面。我当年在 Office，所以可能有点偏见——Windows 对发布日期并不执着，而 Office 会提前三年定好发布日期，然后准时交付。
Office had all these really robust procedures for shipping, a triage process, an escalation process, a zero bug bounce, everything was run in this dev test PM triads. The excuse was this general guise that this is too hard to use your processes, like we’re doing alchemy over here. And because we’re doing systems level programming, none of your software development principles work on us.
Office 有一整套成熟的交付流程：缺陷分级、升级通道、零缺陷反弹（Zero Bug Bounce）等等，全部由开发-测试-项目经理三方小组运转。Windows 给出的借口是：我们的东西太难用你们的流程，我们做的是系统级编程，你们那些软件开发原则都不适用。
Ultimately, this was the failure mode of a process that really did work for a while, really did enable technical genius, really did enable solving hard computer science problems. This is effectively the company smoking their own supply, just believing they were smarter than everyone else, and what consumers wanted didn’t matter. If they could come up with some hallucinated, cool technical thing, then that is what they should spend years doing, fighting about, and then force into the market, and the market just didn’t take it one bit.
归根结底，这是一个曾经有效却最终失灵的流程的失败模式——它的确曾成就技术天才，解决艰深难题。可如今公司像吸了自己的货一样，自认为比所有人聪明，消费者想要什么根本无所谓。只要他们幻化出一个自嗨的炫技点，就愿意耗上数年争论开发并强行推向市场，而市场却丝毫不买账。
David: A couple of other things on this. One, when Vista actually shipped, just sort of process-wise, it was, Ben, as you’re saying, a complete reset. Brian Valentine comes over from Exchange, in Windows Server in the enterprise world to take over managing, getting something out the door and just cut all the features, cut all the pillars of the Windows Longhorn vision. It still takes two years in that process to get it out.
大卫：关于这件事还有几点。首先，从流程角度看，Vista 真正出货时，正如本你说的，完全是一次重启。布赖恩·瓦伦丁从 Exchange 团队调到企业领域的 Windows Server，接手负责把产品推向市场，大砍功能，砍掉 Windows Longhorn 愿景中的所有支柱。但即便如此，这个过程仍然花了两年时间才发布。
Then immediately afterwards, Brian leaves the company. Lots of other great engineers leave the company, too. They go down the street to Amazon, and then Brian ends up leading the entire engineering platform team for amazon.com.
紧接着，布赖恩就离开了公司，许多优秀工程师也相继离职。他们去了街对面的亚马逊，布赖恩最后负责领导 amazon.com 的整个工程平台团队。
Ben: Wow. Oh, I didn’t know that’s where Brian went. Interesting.
本：哇哦。我还真不知道布赖恩去了那里，有意思。
David: He went to Amazon. He was a named top senior-level executive at Amazon for a long time. The other thing about this whole process, that this is purely my own speculation, like nobody said this, but just as I’ve been thinking and reflecting on how seminal a moment the antitrust stuff was to Microsoft after the height of their consumer power right beforehand, I think this might be a case where Bill no longer being CEO and just being chief software architect really impacted this process.
大卫：他去了亚马逊，长期担任亚马逊的高级高管。关于整个过程，以下纯属我的猜测，没有任何人这样说过，但当我回顾微软在消费者市场巅峰后遭遇反垄断这一关键时刻时，我认为比尔不再担任 CEO、只当首席软件架构师，可能确实影响了这次过程。
When you’re a CEO, you have to engage with your OEM partners, you have to engage with enterprises, you have to engage with customers. Not that it’s all Bill’s fault by any means, but this Longhorn Blackcomb disaster, Ben, as you say, was a case of getting high on your own supply within the company.
当你是 CEO 时，你必须与 OEM 合作伙伴、企业客户和终端用户打交道。当然这并不全是比尔的错，但正如本你说的，Longhorn/Blackcomb 的灾难就是公司沉迷于自我迷幻。
Ben: And if he’s only spending his time on technical decisions, you need some introduction into that feedback loop, some governor on how deep to go in re-architecting Windows for re-architecting Windows’ sake.
本：如果他把时间都花在技术决策上，就需要在反馈循环中加入某种制衡，限制为了重构而重构 Windows 的深度。
David: Remembering back to part one, too, it’s not just that Bill was a great engineer. He was a great business person. One of the greatest of all time. He trained from birth. It’s like what company am I going to be CEO of.
大卫：回想第一部分，比尔不仅是出色的工程师，还是杰出的商业人物，史上最伟大之一。他从小接受训练，仿佛生下来就知道自己将执掌哪家公司。
Ben: The issue with Microsoft is that there is only one Bill Gates. Bill was the best engineer. Bill was the best lawyer. Bill was the best deal negotiator to figure out what the right BD situations were. Bill was not the best enterprise relationship builder. I don’t think Bill had a passion for empowering the enterprise and making sure that businesses succeeded the way that Steve was. But nobody should ever sell Bill Gates short and say he was just a technical genius. That would be wrong.
本：微软的问题在于比尔·盖茨只有一个。比尔是最佳工程师、最佳律师、最佳商务谈判者，能判断出最佳 BD 时机。但比尔并不是最好的企业关系建立者。我觉得比尔不像史蒂夫那样热衷于赋能企业、确保客户成功。但绝不能低估比尔·盖茨，把他只当作技术天才，那是错误的。
David: Totally. Anyway, this is really bad. At the same time as Vista actually is coming out in late 2006, this is when Apple starts running the Mac versus PC ads.
大卫：完全同意。总之，这真是糟透了。就在 Vista 于 2006 年末发布时，苹果开始播放 “Mac 对 PC” 广告。
Ben: Which is just brutal.
本：那广告太狠了。
David: And oh boy if you’re Microsoft, does that hurt? Mac sales are irrelevant. Even today in 2024, Mac sales are 8% of the market.
大卫：微软看到肯定很难受。Mac 的销量并不大，哪怕到了 2024 年也只占 8% 的市场。
Ben: And what were they at this point in time? Like 2% or 3%?
本：那当时是多少？2% 还是 3%？
David: Zero. I don’t even know. It doesn’t matter. But the point is not that Apple is taking massive amounts of market share from Windows. It’s that they are hitting a nerve with consumers, with enterprises, and within Microsoft itself most importantly of shoot, we are way behind here.
大卫：几乎为零，我都说不上来，但这并不重要。关键不是苹果从 Windows 手中抢走了多少份额，而是它击中了消费者、企业，尤其是微软内部的一根神经——天哪，我们真的落后了。
Ben: And the part that really heard about all those Mac versus PC ads, there are so many were just straight up true. Oh, I’m a PC and I crashed again. To be in the halls at Apple when they’re firing at all cylinders.
本：真正让人印象深刻的是那些“Mac 与 PC”广告中有太多都一针见血。“嗨，我是一台 PC，又崩溃了。” 想想当时走在苹果总部的走廊里，在他们全速运转的情形下会是什么样子。
Steve Jobs is back. The iPod was a smash hit. You’re developing the digital hub strategy. Macs are starting to sell because of that. Your iPod attach rate with Macs is actually working. People are buying Macs. Macs are becoming the option that students are starting to pick as they’re picking their college computer. Market share is rising and Microsoft comes out with Vista? You just have to be besides yourself with this gift you’ve been giving. Like oh my God, look at this opening.
史蒂夫·乔布斯归来，iPod 大获成功，你们正推进“数字枢纽”战略。Mac 因此开始热卖，iPod 与 Mac 的捆绑率真正奏效。人们在买 Mac，Mac 正成为学生挑选大学电脑时的首选。市场份额不断上升，而微软却推出 Vista？这简直是天上掉下来的大礼，你肯定兴奋得不知所措：“我的天，这可是千载难逢的机会！”
David: Here’s where it mattered, and the timing mattered so much, too. This sets the stage for the iPhone because Apple now, in stark contrast to Vista and with these ads, is training consumers with the benefits and the joy of it just works. What did the Mac do? It just worked. What did the iPod do? It just works. What did the iPhone do? It just worked.
大卫：关键就看这里，时机也格外重要。这为 iPhone 铺平了道路。苹果用这些广告与 Vista 形成鲜明对比，向消费者灌输“它就是能用”的好处与乐趣。Mac 做到了什么？就是能用。iPod 呢？就是能用。iPhone 呢？还是就是能用。
Ben: Because there was this pent-up demand. I remember people in 2005 and 2006 when the rumors started. There was this almost like a glint in people’s eyes. What if Apple made a phone? Wouldn’t that be awesome? And it is remarkable, like the iPhone delivered on all that promise. But there actually was, wow, what if we had technology as good as the stuff that Apple makes in the form of a phone? Wouldn’t that be great? Because Phones are so crappy. I think, yeah, you’re right. There’s something there. There was a training of associating the Apple brand with—
本：因为有巨大的潜在需求。我记得 2005、2006 年谣言四起时，人们眼里几乎闪着光：要是苹果造手机会怎样？那会多棒！令人惊叹的是，iPhone 的确兑现了所有承诺。当时就有人想，如果能把苹果那样好的技术做成手机，该多好啊，因为那时的手机实在糟糕。是的，你说得对，这里面确实有东西——人们开始把苹果品牌与…
David: It was really a setting of the Apple brand promise at this moment in time.
大卫：这实际上是在那个时刻确立了苹果的品牌承诺。
Ben: That’s a great point.
本：说得太好了。
David: And I think we got to call it here, the death of Microsoft as a relevant consumer technology company. They never recovered from this as a leader.
大卫：我想我们得在此宣判——微软作为一家有影响力的消费科技公司的终结。从此之后他们再也没能以领导者身份恢复。
Ben: I think that’s correct. There’s a lot to talk about in their consumer technology offerings. I also think this is the death of Microsoft as an interesting platform for developers. Who is writing Vista apps? The Win32 API as a potential target for my new interesting, innovative application is just not a thing anymore. You have to write a Windows desktop app at this point in history because it’s where a bunch of the users are. If you need a desktop app for real for real, but probably you’re just writing a web app. You’ve lost developer hearts and minds, which is the path to losing relevance.
本：我同意。微软的消费科技产品还有很多可谈，但我认为这也标志着微软作为一个让开发者兴奋的平台的终结。谁还会写 Vista 应用？把 Win32 API 作为创新应用的目标已不现实。此时如果真的需要桌面应用，只是因为用户还在 Windows 平台；但你很可能去写 Web 应用。你已经失去了开发者的心，这正是走向失去相关性的必经之路。
David: I think with one exception. I think you were totally right. Nobody is writing Vista apps, but the only people left who are writing Windows apps period are enterprise developers writing custom software for enterprises.
大卫：我认为有一个例外，你完全正确。没人写 Vista 应用，但仍在写 Windows 应用的，只剩下为企业定制软件的企业开发者。
Ben: That’s a great point. That is the exception. And of course, anyone that had big legacy applications for Mac and Windows, so Adobe is a great example of they’re going to keep that up forever. But where these new disruptive software players are coming from, they’re just not going to have Windows apps.
本：说得好，那确实是例外。当然，还有那些拥有大型传统 Mac 和 Windows 应用的公司，比如 Adobe，他们会一直维护下去。但新一代颠覆性软件玩家不会再出 Windows 应用了。
David: Facebook is not writing a Windows Vista app.
大卫：Facebook 并不会为 Windows Vista 编写应用程序。
Ben: Correct. The biggest things to hurt Microsoft coming out of Vista are what we just talked about—losing developers, and losing users. Consumers who are excited to buy a computer, they’re just not excited to buy a Windows Vista PC. But the biggest thing is they lost years of their very best talent.
本：没错。从 Vista 走出来后，对微软打击最大的，就是我们刚才提到的两点——失去开发者，失去用户。想买电脑的消费者不会对装有 Windows Vista 的 PC 感到兴奋。但最大的问题是，他们损失了多年的顶尖人才。
Vista was a black hole. As it just kept growing and growing and growing, it would suck in more teams. As it sucked in more teams, you would get the talent that it would suck in, but then it also would suck in executives and distinguished engineer talent from elsewhere to come fix it.
Vista 就像一个黑洞，不断膨胀，持续吞噬更多团队。它不仅吞掉团队里的技术骨干，还把其他部门的高管级、杰出工程师都吸进去救火。
Microsoft is about to be in a place where they need to compete and understand a changing landscape in social, in mobile, in search. They still have to fight the browser war. IE is peaking and about to start falling off a cliff and are completely consumed by Vista. I think a lot of the consumer stuff can be answered by Steve Ballmer wasn’t really a consumer-oriented technologist. That seems fair.
此时微软正面临社交、移动、搜索等领域的全新竞争格局，还得继续打浏览器之战。IE 正处于顶峰，随后就要断崖式下滑，却被 Vista 完全拖住。我想，很多消费端问题可以解释为史蒂夫·鲍尔默并非以消费者为导向的技术领袖，这说法也算公允。
David: I think that is true. Sure, true. But that’s not the whole answer.
大卫：我认为这没错，确实如此，但这并不是全部答案。
Ben: Vista consumed a bunch of the smartest people, even if they had the right vision to be chasing, and the DOJ had just crippled the culture among many other things. And they were still recovering from that.
本：Vista 把大量最聪明的工程师卷进来，即使这些人本可以去追逐正确的愿景；再加上 DOJ（反垄断诉讼）已经重创了公司文化，他们至今仍在恢复。
David: A hundred percent. In that conversation that we had with Steve, where he made the comment about my acquisitions, my mistakes, we just lost money on the bad ones—the genesis of that conversation was about Vista. He was reflecting. He said that probably was the worst moment, actually, in my tenure as CEO, because all of that best talent, everything you just said, Ben, it was off the field. It wasn’t playing. It was out of commission.
大卫：完完全全同意。我们和史蒂夫聊天时，他提到“我的并购，我的失误，只是赔了钱”——其实话题起因就是 Vista。他回忆说，那大概是他担任 CEO 期间最糟糕的时刻，因为那些最优秀的人才，正如你说的本，都被拖下战场，无法发挥作用，彻底报废。
Ben: Money’s not a scarce resource. Bad acquisitions, whatever—who cares? It’s just money. But consuming a huge percentage of Microsoft’s most talented engineers? That’s company-killing.
本：资金不是稀缺资源，失败的并购赔点钱无所谓，可是把微软大批顶尖工程师都耗进去？那才是真正致命的事。
David: Even taking Brian Valentine off of Exchange. Exchange was freaking killing it in the enterprise. He goes and spends two years getting Vista out the door and then goes to Amazon. Oof. That sucks.
大卫：就连把 Brian Valentine 从 Exchange 项目抽走也是如此。Exchange 当时在企业市场简直横扫千军，他却花两年帮 Vista 上线，然后跳槽去了亚马逊。唉，太惨了。
Ben: Brutal. One other Microsoft exec put it to me: it hurt so bad that a bunch of our best systems people were leaving the company, driving across the lake, going to work for an online bookseller, and then building that online bookseller into the market-leading enterprise compute company. That is a black eye right there.
本：惨不忍睹。另一位微软高管对我说：最痛的是，我们最优秀的一批系统人才离职，跨过湖面跑去一家在线书商工作，还把那家书商打造成了领先的企业级计算公司，这真是微软的一大污点。
David: Oh, I can’t wait to talk about that. Okay, Ben, I’m too excited for Azure. Let’s do search. Let’s do mobile, Windows 8, Zune. Let’s get all that. Then let’s talk Cloud, baby.
大卫：哦，我迫不及待想谈这个了。本，我对 Azure 太兴奋了。先聊搜索，再聊移动、Windows 8、Zune，把这些都过一遍，然后咱们谈云吧，伙计。
Ben: And David, unexpectedly, there is a through line through all of them. There’s a cohesive story that leads to Azure here.
本：大卫，出乎意料的是，这些话题之间其实有一条贯穿始终的主线——它们都汇聚成通往 Azure 的连贯故事。
Okay, search, and the alternate title of this chapter could be an acquisition that wasn’t. I think that’s a lost-to-history moment—the acquisition that almost happened here for \$47 billion.
好，先说搜索，这一章的另一个标题可以叫作“未曾发生的收购”。我认为这段历史几乎被遗忘——一笔原本可能以 470 亿美元成交、却最终流产的收购案。
David: Ooh, okay.
大卫：哦，好吧。
Ben: I’m just actually curious. Do you know the company I’m referring to? Do you know the the deal?
本：我只是很好奇，你知道我指的是哪家公司吗？你知道那笔交易吗？
David: It’s funny. The way you phrase that, I’m thinking like, oh, did Microsoft try and buy Google? I don’t know about it, but the number of course you’re talking about Yahoo.
大卫：有意思，你这么说我还以为微软想收购谷歌呢？我没听说过，但你提到的那个数字当然是指雅虎。
Ben: Yes. Let’s set some context before we get to this 2008 Yahoo attempted acquisition. There were two companies that had developed programmatic advertising technology to serve and target online ads, especially in search. There was DoubleClick the market leader, and there was aQuantive.
本：对。咱们在谈 2008 年微软试图收购雅虎之前，先来了解一下背景。当时有两家公司在程序化广告技术方面处于领先地位，主要用于投放和定向搜索广告：一家是市场领导者 DoubleClick，另一家是 aQuantive。
Microsoft had lost the DoubleClick acquisition to Google. They bought aQuantive and that didn’t go well. It was \$7 billion, and they ended up declaring basically the whole thing a write-off.
微软输给谷歌，没能收购 DoubleClick；他们转而以 70 亿美元买下 aQuantive，但结果并不顺利，最后几乎全部计提减值。
Microsoft is desperate for search market share, and between their internal efforts with MSN search and I believe it was called Windows Live Search, they were not making much progress there. At the same time, Internet Explorer had totally languished. Microsoft had completely taken their eye off the ball of the browser wars from 10 years earlier, and IE was just widely regarded as a garbage browser.
微软急切想争夺搜索市场份额，但无论是 MSN Search 还是后来叫 Windows Live Search 的内部项目都进展不大。与此同时，Internet Explorer 已完全停滞。微软早已忽视十年前的浏览器大战，而 IE 被普遍视为糟糕的浏览器。
Web developers hated it because it made you write a bunch of weird, custom stuff, so randomly things wouldn’t work in IE. Users hated it because basically nothing new was coming. Every time a new version of the operating system would ship, it just felt like it’s the same old Internet Explorer over and over again.
网页开发者讨厌 IE，因为它需要写一堆奇怪的兼容代码，经常导致功能随机失效。用户也讨厌它，因为几乎没有任何新功能。每次操作系统升级，感觉还是那套陈旧的 IE。
And you have Firefox coming on the scene starting around 2007, where it was really making a dent, and Google was the default search from Firefox. Firefox was awesome. It had tabs. IE didn’t have tabs at the time.
2007 年左右，Firefox 崛起并迅速取得市场份额，且默认搜索引擎是谷歌。Firefox 很棒，它有标签页，而当时的 IE 还没有。
David: That’s right. Oh my God.
大卫：没错，天哪。
Ben: I don’t think Safari had tabs either. Chrome wasn’t a thing yet. I know I’m, on the one hand, talking about search, on the other hand talking about the browser, but it’s the same pot of gold.
本：我记得 Safari 当时也没有标签页，Chrome 还没出现。我一方面在谈搜索，一方面在谈浏览器，但它们指向的是同一个金矿。
David: But it’s the same thing. It turned out search was the business for the browser.
大卫：确实是一回事。事实证明，浏览器的核心商业模式就是搜索。
Ben: The thing that you have to realize is the browser is the front door to search. Search is heavily, heavily monetizable. If you’re Google and you can monetize it directly, that’s great.
本：必须认识到，浏览器是搜索的入口，而搜索极易变现。如果你是谷歌，能直接通过搜索获利，那当然再好不过。
But let’s say you’re not Google. Let’s say you’re Firefox or Microsoft or Apple. You don’t have this incredible business model of people bidding on the keywords for search and all the R\&D to go into making search good. But you actually do have the user attention the front door.
但如果你不是谷歌，比如你是 Firefox、微软或苹果，你没有通过关键词竞价和庞大研发来改进搜索的商业模式，可你掌握了用户入口、流量关注度。
Well, you get to monetize it, too. The rumors are that Apple makes something on the order of \$20 billion a year today in 2024 from Google as being the front door to Google, sending all of the iPhone search traffic to Google.
你也可以从中赚钱。据传，到了 2024 年，苹果仅凭把 iPhone 上的搜索流量导向谷歌，每年就能从谷歌获得约 200 亿美元。
David: This is the traffic acquisition cost in Google’s financial statements.
大卫：这就是谷歌财报中的流量获取成本。
Ben: Absolutely. If you can be in the business of operating a scale search engine, or you can be in the business of directing traffic to a scaled search engine who is willing to pay you for that traffic, it’s going to be a great business. David, as you just said, the way to monetize the browser is owning and operating or directing to a search engine.
本：完全正确。如果你能经营一家规模化搜索引擎，或者向一家愿意为流量付费的大型搜索引擎导流，这都会是一门好生意。大卫，正如你所说，浏览器的盈利方式就是自建并运营搜索引擎，或将流量导向搜索引擎。
Search isn’t going well at Microsoft. At first it was because they just didn’t take it seriously enough. When Google first started in 1998, I think there was a lot of skepticism that the auction-based advertising business would really work. Then there was skepticism that it would really scale. And that when it went public, people were looking at it almost freaked out at how profitable it was.
在微软，搜索业务发展并不顺利。起初是因为他们并未足够重视。1998 年谷歌刚成立时，很多人怀疑基于竞价的广告模式真的能运作；之后又怀疑它能否扩张。谷歌上市时，人们几乎被其高盈利能力吓到。
Then even after that, people didn’t really realize that being the market leader at search was way better than being number two. There are these massive, massive returns to scale. The reason for that is just pure marketplace liquidity.
即便之后，人们仍未真正意识到：在搜索市场当老大远胜当老二，规模效应带来巨大的回报，其根源就在于市场流动性。
If you have the most searches, you can create the best data from the searches, and you can return all the best results because you have the most data. On the advertiser side, you have the most advertisers who are willing to come in and bid to the highest possible price. You just get to make the most money by a country mile versus other search engines.
拥有最多搜索量，就能从中积累最优数据，进而提供最优结果；在广告端，你拥有最多愿意出高价竞拍的广告主，因此能轻松把其他搜索引擎远远甩在后面，赚取最多利润。
David: And then it locks in even further because you can spend more CapEx on the data centers, more on R\&D and make the search better, more performant, faster and all that.
大卫：随后这一优势会愈加稳固，因为你可以投入更多资本开支建设数据中心、加大研发，让搜索质量更高、性能更好、速度更快等。
Ben: Google is search as monetized by an ad-based auction is one of the world’s true marvels. It’s one of capitalism’s greatest discoveries.
本：谷歌用广告竞价模式变现搜索流量，这本身就是世界级奇迹，也是资本主义最伟大的发现之一。
David: We may or may not do an episode on Xbox someday, Ben. That’s for Ben and I to discuss privately, for the parents to discuss after the kids go to bed. But we’re definitely going to do an episode on Google.
大卫：本，也许将来我们会不会做一期专讲 Xbox 的节目，这得私下再聊，就像父母等孩子睡后讨论的事。但我们肯定会做一期关于谷歌的节目。
Ben: It’s criminal that we haven’t. So Microsoft is really nowhere to be seen in search. Part of it was just thinking, oh, well search is just a feature of MSN, but there are all these other reasons to come to MSN. Or hey, this is a product in the portfolio of Windows Live. We can do it with the talent that we have here.
本：现在还没做简直说不过去。微软在搜索领域几乎看不到身影，部分原因是他们觉得搜索只是 MSN 的一个功能，人们还有很多其他理由访问 MSN；或者认为这是 Windows Live 产品组合中的一环，我们现有的人才就能搞定。
Ultimately, someone needed to grab leadership at Microsoft early 2002–2003, shake them, and say nothing else matters in the next five years except you figuring out how to meaningfully participate in search revenue, because that is just the next big wave in technology, and it’s a fantastic business.
说到底，2002–2003 年间，微软需要有人抓住高层、摇醒他们：未来五年除了弄清楚如何切实分一杯搜索收入，别的都不重要，因为那将是下一波科技浪潮，而且是一门极佳生意。
David: You needed the equivalent of the J Allard Windows: The Next Killer Application on the Internet, or the Sinofsky Cornell’s Wired memo.
大卫：你需要一份类似 J Allard《Windows：互联网下一个杀手级应用》或 Sinofsky 写给康奈尔的《Wired》备忘录那样的震撼文。
Ben: So in 2008, Microsoft puts a deal on the table that gets bid all the way up to \$47 billion to buy Yahoo. This was effectively their last Hail Mary to become relevant in search. They actually didn’t launch Bing until 2009. Google was started 1998 and went public in 2004. Microsoft got serious about a branded search engine in 2009.
本：于是 2008 年，微软提出以 470 亿美元收购雅虎，可谓在搜索领域最后一次孤注一掷。事实上，微软直到 2009 年才推出 Bing。谷歌 1998 年创立、2004 年上市，而微软直到 2009 年才真正认真打造自有品牌搜索引擎。
But clearly before that they’re starting to realize this is a big deal, we need to participate in it. What do we do? They’d been negotiated by Yahoo 2008 after a bunch of negotiating and flying back and forth. Finally, both David Filo and Jerry Yang fly up to Seattle, Steve Ballmer goes to Boeing Field, and they have a meeting at the airport. This is one of the great ‘what if’ scenarios.
不过在此之前，他们显然已意识到搜索的重要性并急于参与进来。怎么办？2008 年，雅虎与微软多轮谈判、往返磋商。最终，大卫·费罗和杨致远飞赴西雅图，史蒂夫·鲍尔默驱车前往波音机场，三方在机场会面——这是历史上最令人遐想的“如果当初”场景之一。
David: This feels like an episode of Entourage.
大卫：这感觉就像《明星伙伴》的一集。
Ben: It’s totally right. There are conflicting reports of what happened. From what I can tell, Bill and Steve looked the Yahoo guys in the eye and decided these guys are jerking us around. They really don’t actually want to be a part of Microsoft at all.
本：完全正确。关于当时发生了什么众说纷纭。据我所知，比尔和史蒂夫直视雅虎那帮人的眼睛后判断：这些家伙在耍我们，他们根本不想加入微软。
This has gotten so expensive that if we execute the transaction, or God forbid they even try to negotiate up even higher, it’s just not going to go well because it’s going to be an organ rejection here. The deal completely falls apart. It’s interesting to try to look at the deal and figure out, even at that high price of \$47 billion, was it a good deal for Microsoft? So here’s how to pull it apart.
事情已经变得如此昂贵，如果我们真的执行这笔交易，或者更糟的是对方还想继续抬价，结果肯定不好——就像器官排斥一样。交易彻底泡汤。回头看这桩高达470亿美元的收购案，究竟对微软是否划算？下面我们来分解一下。
David: I’m laughing here. I was hoping I could surprise you. It’d be at the end of it, have something to say here. But I think you’re going to take my thunder.
大卫：我正在偷笑呢，我本来想最后给你一个惊喜，说两句，但看来你要抢我风头了。
Ben: Let me know when I do and tell me if it rhymes with schmalibaba.
本：要是我抢了，就告诉我，并告诉我那词是不是和“schmalibaba”押韵。
David: Yes. It’s because I’m just loving, I’m smiling the whole time. I’m imagining, all of you listening being like \$47 billion for Yahoo. What are they smoking? Keep going.
大卫：没错。我全程都在偷笑，想象听众们会说：470亿美元买雅虎？他们抽什么了？继续吧。
Ben: Here’s how to pull it apart. Yahoo had about 15% market share of search, which I think was number two. Google was way, way, way ahead. On the face of it, you’re thinking wait, \$47 billion to buy 15% market share in search? But there are actually two other assets here. There’s Yahoo Japan and there’s a stake in Alibaba,
本：拆开来看，雅虎在搜索领域大约有15%的市场份额，排名第二，谷歌遥遥领先。乍一看，你会想：花470亿美元买15%的搜索份额？但别忘了还有两项资产：雅虎日本，以及在阿里巴巴的股份，
David: Not just a stake.
大卫：不只是随便一小股。
Ben: Which famously is one of the greatest investments of all time.
本：那可是史上最成功的投资之一。
David: 40% stake of Alibaba.
大卫：阿里巴巴40%的股份。
Ben: Collectively, those two assets together are worth over \$30 billion. If you back it out, it’s really only \$15 billion to buy 15% of the search market. David, what is Google’s revenue today?
本：这两项资产加起来价值超过300亿美元。扣掉它们，其实只花150亿美元就能买到15%的搜索市场份额。大卫，现在谷歌的营收是多少？
David: Alphabet’s annual revenue in 2023 was over \$300 billion.
大卫：Alphabet 2023年的年度营收超过3000亿美元。
Ben: Would you want to pay \$1 billion per percent of market share of that market?
本：你愿意为这块市场的每1%份额付10亿美元吗？
David: Yeah, sure. It’s just money. Why not?
大卫：当然啊，只是钱而已，为什么不？
Ben: It’s the craziest thing. This would’ve been ludicrously profitable to spend only \$15 to buy 15% of the search market, which is way bigger than \$100 billion and still growing.
本：太疯狂了。只花150亿美元就能拿下15%的搜索市场份额——这个市场规模远超1000亿美元且仍在增长，这笔买卖将带来难以置信的高利润。
David: This is the thing people just always continually underestimate and underappreciate about the search market, is it’s just so large and so profitable.
大卫：人们一直不断低估、低看搜索市场的一点，就是它规模巨大且利润丰厚。
Ben: Yes. Now, because this is counterfactual and we actually don’t know what would’ve happened, Yahoo completely went away. They sold for \$5 billion in their most recent transaction to be co-owned by Verizon and Apollo. There’s this real question of like, okay, if Microsoft bought all that traffic, would they actually have been able to harness it and build a Google-like business? Or would it have just gone the way that Yahoo was going to go anyway?
本：没错。不过这属于“反事实”讨论，我们无法知道结局。如果看现实，雅虎最终彻底衰落，最近一次交易只以 50 亿美元卖给 Verizon 与 Apollo 共同持有。真正的问题在于：若微软当年真的买下那全部流量，他们能否驾驭并打造出类似 Google 的业务，还是说雅虎本来就注定走向衰败？
But to make the bull case on that, Bing is a good business. It just has a small market share. Microsoft succeeded finally in 2009 at attracting all the right talent, taking it really seriously, and building a super viable search engine that does—I don’t know–something like \$1 billion a year in profit?
不过从乐观角度看，Bing 本身是个不错的业务，只是份额较小。微软在 2009 年终于招揽到合适人才，认真投入，打造出一款非常可行的搜索引擎，据说每年也能赚到大约 10 亿美元的利润。
David: Well, then they do go on and launch Bing and they actually sign a commercial deal with Yahoo to provide the search on the back. They’re not getting the Yahoo traffic. Yahoo’s still monetizing the traffic, but Bing is getting all the data from doing, performing the searches for Yahoo. I know you know this, but most listeners will not remember. You know who the leader of Bing was for a brief period in its early days here.
大卫：后来他们真的发布了 Bing，并与雅虎签了商业协议，为雅虎后台提供搜索技术。他们得不到雅虎的前端流量，雅虎仍自己变现，但 Bing 通过为雅虎执行搜索拿到了全部数据。我知道你清楚，可大多数听众可能不记得——在 Bing 创立早期，有段时间谁负责领导这项业务？
Ben: Satya Nadella.
本：萨蒂亚·纳德拉。
David: That’s right. Other piece of Satya trivia that I very much suspect you do not know. Satya joined Microsoft first in 1992 from Sun Microsystems, and he joined as an evangelist for Windows NT.
大卫：没错。还有一条关于萨蒂亚的冷知识，我猜你可能不知道——1992 年，他从 Sun Microsystems 跳槽到微软，最初的职位是 Windows NT 的技术布道师。
Ben: He joined as an evangelist?
本：他是以布道师身份加入的？
David: An evangelist. And then he got his first product job. Do you know what product, it would never ship, but a product in development that job was?
大卫：对，布道师。随后他拿到了第一个产品岗位。你知道那是什么产品吗？它最终并未上市，只停留在研发阶段。
Ben: Ooh, no, I don’t.
本：噢，不知道。
David: Tiger server, the CableSoft information superhighway fever dream.
大卫：Tiger 服务器，也就是 CableSoft“信息高速公路”狂想里的那个项目。
Ben: Where did you find that?
本：你从哪儿查到的？
David: It’s in his book.
大卫：写在他的书里。
Ben: Oh my gosh.
本：天哪。
David: It’s in Hit Refresh.
大卫：就在《刷新》那本书里。
Ben: I always thought he was in the marketing side. Well at Microsoft, product managers are marketers. They don’t live in the engineering org.
本：我一直以为他在市场线。在微软，产品经理其实就是市场人员，并不隶属于工程部门。
Fascinating. There are so many things about his history that are not a part of the common narrative. Like he (I think) worked in Dynamics, their Salesforce competitor, their CRM for a while.
真有意思，他的履历里有太多不为人知的细节。比如他还曾在 Dynamics（微软与 Salesforce 竞争的 CRM 业务）待过一段时间。
David: Which they had acquired. Then he (I think) ran BizTalk server, which was another one of these enterprise server products. Then Bing.
大卫：那是他们收购来的产品。之后他（我记得）负责 BizTalk Server，这同样是一款企业级服务器产品。然后就是 Bing。
Ben: Wow. And then they plucked him out of Bing to go run Azure, right?
本：哇。然后他们把他从 Bing 调去负责 Azure，对吧？
David: And go run Server & Tools, which we will get to that in a minute.
大卫：并且接手 Server & Tools，这一点我们稍后会谈到。
Ben: Okay, some of the other fun tidbits of this Yahoo deal. Bing powers Yahoo search. Microsoft does the ad sales for both sides. While Microsoft don’t have the direct relationship with the users, they do get to build up their marketplace liquidity on the advertiser side. As you mentioned, there’s a huge data advantage of actually powering the search.
本：好，说说这笔雅虎交易的其他趣事。Bing 为雅虎搜索提供技术支持，微软为双方销售广告。虽然微软没有直面雅虎用户，但却能在广告主端积累市场流动性。正如你提到的，真正驱动搜索带来了巨大的数据优势。
Ben: While Yahoo gets 88% of the revenue in the deal for the first five years, arguably the value from this basically all accrued to Microsoft because they ended up building out not only a proper advertising business, which now is used on a number of different sites—I think even in partnership with Netflix—for their ad supported tier, but also being, once it had all the Yahoo traffic, needed to be a scaled web service. Like a distributed computing system that operated at 24x7 uptime, with super low latency, fast response time, and huge scale.
本：在协议的前五年里，雅虎可拿走 88% 的营收，但可以说真正的价值几乎都流向了微软——微软不仅打造了成熟的广告业务，如今被多家网站采用（甚至与 Netflix 的广告支持版也有合作），而且在接手全部雅虎流量后，必须把 Bing 做成一个大规模的 Web 服务，也就是那种 24×7 运行、低延迟、响应快、规模巨大的分布式计算系统。
David: God, that sure sounds like the cloud.
大卫：天哪，这听起来就是云计算。
Ben: It sure sounds like the cloud. You’ve got Xbox Live where they have 40 million users. You have a scale search engine, which is like the number one most difficult distributed computing problem, that if you get good at that you can get good at lots of other stuff. The ingredients are really starting to come together for the right talent and DNA at the company to do well in building out the cloud.
本：确实像云。你有拥有 4000 万用户的 Xbox Live，还有这样一个大规模搜索引擎——这是分布式计算最难的场景之一，如果你能搞定它，其他很多事情也就迎刃而解。公司内部所需的人才和基因正在逐步到位，为建设云业务打下基础。
David: So funny. The other big piece of it, honestly, maybe even the biggest piece of it from talking to folks was Hotmail. Microsoft had acquired Hotmail back in 1997 and ran it the whole time. It eventually became outlook.com I think. But it’s running a consumer web service for decades at scale.
大卫：有意思的是，另一个关键甚至可能是最大的因素是 Hotmail。据说这是内部很多人提到的重点。微软早在 1997 年就收购了 Hotmail，并一直运营，后来变成 outlook.com。几十年来，他们一直在规模化运行面向消费者的 Web 服务。
David: But oh my God, it’s so unfortunate that they didn’t buy Yahoo just because of the Alibaba stake. Nothing else would’ve mattered. Forty percent of Alibaba at IPO in 2014 when Alibaba IPO stake was worth \$92 billion. Obviously, Microsoft is not a hedge fund, but—
大卫：但是天啊，没买下雅虎真是太可惜了，光是那笔阿里巴巴股份就值回票价，其他都无所谓。2014 年阿里巴巴上市时，40% 的股份价值 920 亿美元。当然，微软不是对冲基金，可是——
Ben: These things are hard because how long would Microsoft have held that?
本：这种事不好说，微软会把那股份持有多久呢？
David: Totally.
大卫：确实。
Ben: But man, if they did, that’d be crazy.
本：但如果他们真持有到那时候，简直疯狂。
David: It’s so funny, yeah. One of the greatest venture investments of all time.
大卫：的确有趣，会成为史上最伟大的风险投资之一。
Ben: Yup. Okay. At the end of all this, you might be wondering why was search so important? How did Microsoft get so obsessed with the search engine? Why are they still running Bing today? Why has it been this white whale for them where they continue to try over and over and over again to do search deals or acquisitions or things like that?
本：没错。说到这，你也许会问，搜索为何如此重要？微软怎么会如此痴迷于搜索引擎？为什么今天还在运营 Bing？为什么搜索成了他们屡败屡战的“白鲸”，不断尝试做搜索交易或收购？
Ben: Well search monetizes incredibly well. Microsoft is sitting there realizing, okay, we’re a technology company. Historically what we’ve done is sell licenses of our software and people have paid us directly. But there’s this new business model emerging that appears to just scale infinitely, where you can make three times or more off of each user, again, using software but not selling the software to them. That’s a much better business.
本：因为搜索的变现能力实在惊人。微软意识到：我们是一家技术公司，过去靠卖软件许可证直接向用户收费。但现在出现了一种似乎可无限扩张的新商业模式：依旧是用软件，却不卖软件，而是从每个用户身上赚到三倍甚至更多的收入——这显然是更好的生意。
Ben: If I could take seven billion people in the world and sell them Windows, or I can take seven billion people in the world and have them use my search engine for free and then make the money from the advertisers, I’m going to make 3x–5x more money from the advertisers that I actually would selling them software. Suddenly this becomes existential where the Windows revenue isn’t going away, but actually the next generation of economics generated from software is not selling the licenses. It is monetizing via advertising.
本：如果我能把 Windows 卖给全球 70 亿人，或者让 70 亿人免费用我的搜索引擎，再通过广告主赚钱，那我从广告主那里赚到的钱要比卖软件多 3 到 5 倍。这一下就成了生死攸关的问题：Windows 收入不会消失，但软件产生的下一代经济价值不在于卖许可证，而在于通过广告变现。
David: It’s funny. I never thought about it this way, but really what Search did and what Google does is you go from selling software as a technology company to selling everything.
大卫：有意思，我以前从没这样想过，但搜索真正做的、也是谷歌所做的，就是让一家技术公司从“卖软件”转变为“卖一切”。
Ben: And offline economy is much bigger than the software economy. Everyone has to acquire customers, whether you make software or tents or airline tickets. There’s only a small set of dollars that goes to software. If I just pull up my credit card statement each month, how much software am I paying for versus how much everything else am I paying for?
本：线下经济远大于软件经济。不管你卖的是软件、帐篷还是机票，人人都需要获客。真正花在软件上的钱只占很小一部分。看看我每月的信用卡账单，我为软件支付的金额和为其他所有东西支付的金额简直不可同日而语。
Ben: Even if you say, well that’s not really fair because it’s advertising for everything else, it’s not everything else directly, even a small percentage of my everything else turns out to be way bigger than my software budget.
本：即使你说，这不公平，因为那只是给其他商品做广告并不是直接卖其他商品——但即便“其他商品”收入只抽取很小一部分，规模也远远超过我在软件上的花费。
Ben: At the end of the day, Microsoft made a browser. They didn’t monetize that browser. They monetized using it to defend an operating system that they sold licenses to. Eventually Google comes along and creates a browser. They also don’t sell that browser, but they monetize all the traffic coming through that browser and they do it way better than Microsoft does at monetizing selling licenses.
本：归根结底，微软造过浏览器，却没有直接靠浏览器赚钱，而是用它保护他们靠卖许可证盈利的操作系统。后来谷歌也造了浏览器，同样不卖浏览器，却把浏览器里的所有流量都变现，而且这种变现效果远胜微软卖许可证的方式。
Ben: Maybe put it more simply, Microsoft built a browser, had a bunch of share, and then looked around and said, we don’t really know what to do with it. I guess we’ll use it for defense. Google built a browser and said, we know exactly what to do with this and they used it for offense.
本：简单说，微软造好了浏览器也拿下大量份额，却不知道拿它干什么，只能当防御工具；谷歌造浏览器时则心里有谱，把它当作进攻武器。
David: Such a good point. Well, while we’re talking about using software to sell everything and not software, that sure makes me think a lot about social and Facebook. Microsoft has some history there during this period too, doesn’t it?
大卫：说得太好了。既然谈到用软件去“卖一切”而不是卖软件本身，这让我想到社交网络和 Facebook。在那段时间微软在这方面也有些经历，对吧？
Ben: They do, David, should we take a brief aside to talk about Microsoft’s intertwined history with Facebook?
本：确实如此，大卫。不如我们插播一下，谈谈微软与 Facebook 千丝万缕的历史？
David: Absolutely.
大卫：当然可以。
Ben: It’s October of 2007. Microsoft is missing search, and they’re realizing social seems to be a wave that’s coming 5–6 years after search. Also a great online advertising business. We now deeply understand and regret not being a bigger player in that business. We can’t let it happen again.
本：时间来到 2007 年 10 月。微软在搜索上落了空，他们意识到社交似乎是继搜索之后五六年即将到来的浪潮，同样蕴含巨大的在线广告商机。我们深知并懊悔没能在搜索领域抢占更多份额，绝不能再错过这一次。
Ben: What do we do? We’re not going to build one of these internally. We know better than to do Google Plus. We are not capital-constrained. We are very willing to try to do large acquisitions because we’ve got money lying around, but we don’t have talent lying around and we don’t have…
本：那该怎么办？我们不会在内部再造一个社交网络——我们可不想重蹈 Google Plus 的覆辙。资金对我们不是问题，我们有钱，愿意做大收购；但我们缺乏闲置的人才，也缺乏……
David: DNA and brand to be able to do this.
大卫：缺乏做这件事所需的基因和品牌。
Ben: Exactly. What do you do? You try to buy Facebook. Microsoft puts an offer on the table. It’s a very complex deal structure, but effectively what it does is it lets Facebook shareholders cash out over a long period of time as the company’s value grew. You’re not taking all your money off the table today.
本：没错，那就去买 Facebook。微软提出了收购要约，结构非常复杂，但核心思路是：允许 Facebook 股东在公司价值增长的多年过程中逐步变现，而不是一次性套现。
Ben: The important thing to take away though is a very big dollar valuation. News outlets reported it to be worth \$24 billion. Again this is way back in 2007, three years after the founding of Facebook.
本：你需要记住的关键点是，当时的估值非常高——媒体报道约 240 亿美元。要知道那可是 2007 年，距离 Facebook 成立才不过三年。
David: We’re not that long after the Yahoo \$1 billion offer.
大卫：这距离雅虎那笔 10 亿美元的收购报价并没有过去多久。
Ben: Exactly. Facebook’s not interested. I’m pretty sure Zuck doesn’t even respond to the offer. Some of Zuck’s lieutenants have been meeting with Microsoft people saying, if you get the number in this range, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, they send in an offer.
本：没错。Facebook 并不感兴趣。我敢肯定小扎甚至都没有回复那份报价。扎克伯格的几位心腹曾和微软的人见面，说如果价格能到某个区间之类的话，他们可以考虑，于是微软就递交了报价。
David: We’ll have to ask Mark about it in the Chase Center.
大卫：我们得在大通中心亲自问问马克这事儿。
Ben: We will. No dice. Instead they work out an investment and a commercial deal. The terms of the deal are in October 2007, Microsoft invests \$240 million for 1.6 % of Facebook. For those trying to do the math at home, that is a \$15 billion valuation on the deal. Microsoft will get the exclusive right to sell banner ads on Facebook internationally until 2011.
本：会的。但谈判没成。最后双方敲定的是投资加商业合作。2007 年 10 月的协议条款是：微软向 Facebook 投资 2.4 亿美元，获得 1.6% 股权，折算估值 150 亿美元；微软还获得 Facebook 国际版横幅广告的独家销售权直至 2011 年。
Again, Microsoft cleverly is using this as a way to bootstrap the advertiser side of their marketplace now that they have all this inventory to sell. Now, it’s interesting to think about, much David like your comment about Alibaba, if Microsoft sold all of it at IPO, which I don’t think it did, that would be a 7×.
再说一次，微软巧妙地借此为自家广告市场的“供给端”打基础——既然手上有这么多广告位可卖。有趣的是，如果像大卫你提到阿里巴巴那样，微软在 Facebook 上市时就把持股全部套现（我猜他们并没这么做），那可是 7 倍回报。
David: That’s a pretty good growth investment in a few years. Not bad.
大卫：几年时间就有这么高的增长投资回报，相当不错。
Ben: From 2007 to Facebook’s IPO in 2012?
本：从 2007 年到 2012 年 Facebook 上市这段时间？
David: Yeah, 5 years, 7×, that’s good for growth investment. That’s great. I’ll take that.
大卫：对啊，5 年 7 倍，这算是非常不错的成长型投资。我完全愿意接受。
Ben: If they held for another 2 years and sold in 2014, that would’ve been a 14×. I actually don’t know when they sold, but I feel like these are helpful guardrails to understand what this appreciation could have been. Either way, it’s not really relevant to Microsoft.
本：如果再多持有两年，到 2014 年再卖，就能拿到 14 倍回报。我其实不知道他们具体什么时候卖的，但这些数字能帮助我们大致了解潜在升值幅度。无论如何，这对微软本身并不算关键。
David: As I said earlier, they’re not a hedge fund and money is the least important thing to them.
大卫：就像我之前说的，微软不是对冲基金，钱对他们来说最不重要。
Ben: They’re constrained by talent, execution ability, DNA to pull it off focus, but they’re not constrained by cash. Who cares a few 10× to your \$240 million over 5–7 years. It seems like the actual interesting part of this deal is the fact that they had the right to sell Facebook’s international ads for four years, and the companies became friendly. Facebook on the pages for businesses would use Bing maps and there was all this reciprocal things that the company did together.
本：他们受限的是人才、执行力、企业基因和聚焦能力，而不是现金。有了钱却缺少这几样，5–7 年赚个十几倍又怎样？这笔交易真正有意思的地方在于，他们获得了为 Facebook 国际版卖广告四年的权利，两家公司也因此交好。Facebook 的企业页面会用 Bing 地图，双方还有许多此类互惠合作。
David: And a lot of Microsoft people went to Facebook, like friend of the show, Vijaye Raji, CEO at Statsy now. A lot of great early Facebook folks came from Microsoft.
大卫：还有不少微软人跳槽去了 Facebook，比如我们的老朋友、现任 Statsy CEO 的 Vijaye Raji。Facebook 早期的许多优秀员工都来自微软。
Ben: Right around this time, June of 2008, Bill Gates leaves the company full-time. It is an actual retirement. I’m no longer a chief software architect, I am still chairman of the board, but I’m going to go be the…
本：就在差不多这个时间点，2008 年 6 月，比尔·盖茨正式全职离开公司，真正退休了。他不再担任首席软件架构师，虽然仍是董事长，但他要去……
David: Full-time at the foundation.
大卫：去基金会全职工作。
Ben: Exactly. At the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
本：没错，就是比尔及梅琳达·盖茨基金会。
David: Which, of course is right at the time the iPhone of course came out in 2007. But 2008 was when, I think it was iOS 2.0 with the app store opening up and the SDK comes out, and the world completely transforms.
大卫：当然，这正好赶上 2007 年 iPhone 的问世。不过真正改变世界的是 2008 年——那时 iOS 2.0 发布，App Store 开放，SDK 面世，一切彻底变了样。
There’s a pretty rough quote in Time Magazine from Bill’s retirement that was obviously written about Bill here, but I think it’s just more applicable to all of Microsoft DNA at this point in time. “Gates is probably getting out of technology at the right time. Funnily enough, it’s not really a business for nerds anymore. Gates was at the center of the personal computer revolution and the Internet revolution. But now the big innovations are about exactly the things he’s bad at. The iPod was an aesthetic revolution. Myspace was a social revolution. Youtube was an entertainment revolution. This is not what Gates does. Technology doesn’t need him anymore.”
在《时代》周刊的一篇比尔退休报道里有段相当刻薄的话，表面写的是比尔，但我觉得放在当时整个微软 DNA 上也合适：“盖茨大概在恰当的时机退出了科技圈。有趣的是，这行业已不再是书呆子的天地。盖茨曾站在个人电脑革命和互联网革命的中心，但如今最重大的创新正好是他不擅长的领域。iPod 是美学革命，Myspace 是社交革命，YouTube 是娱乐革命。这些都不是盖茨的强项。科技已不再需要他。”
Ben: That’s a stupid quote. That’s just too reductionist.
本：这段话太蠢了，过于简化。
David: Yeah, it is totally too reductionist. It’s too personally about Bill and that’s just completely not right.
大卫：没错，确实太过简化，也太针对比尔个人，完全不对。
Ben: But that was the view at the time. This really shows you how irrelevant people thought Microsoft was.
本：但那就是当时的普遍看法，充分说明人们觉得微软已经毫无存在感。
David: That is why we included it.
大卫：这就是我们引用它的原因。
Ben: No one would’ve been saying this about Microsoft in the Windows 95 timeframe. But after the obsession with enterprise, the complete failure in consumer markets, but importantly the complete ignoring of what the exciting developer platforms were at the time—open source, the web. If you think about where all the development efforts were going, it was the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache MySQL, PHP), the stuff Facebook was written on, that’s in a different universe from Microsoft’s enterprise developer customers.
本：在 Windows 95 时代，没人会这么说微软。但公司后来沉迷企业市场，在消费市场彻底失败，更要命的是完全无视当时让开发者激动的开放平台——开源和 Web。回想那时的开发热潮，大家都在用 LAMP（Linux、Apache、MySQL、PHP）栈，也就是 Facebook 用的那一套，和微软面向企业开发者的世界完全不同。
I just think you need developer excitement if you’re going to have consumer excitement. Or you need to develop every interesting app on your platform yourself. But that’s just not how it goes. Consumer and developer excitement goes hand in hand.
我认为，若想点燃消费者热情，首先得点燃开发者热情；否则就得自己为平台开发所有有趣的应用。但事实并非如此——消费者和开发者的热情是相辅相成的。
David: I said to put a pin in the iPhone and the downside of Microsoft becoming the enterprise juggernaut, when we were telling that story. All of the huge advantages in lock-in that Microsoft had built up, the iPhone changed that calculus because the iPhone kicked off shadow IT, bring your own device, and it kicked off the user revolt against IT. This is what this quote encapsulates.
大卫：之前我说要暂缓讨论 iPhone 以及微软成为企业巨头的副作用。微软通过锁定建立的巨大优势，被 iPhone 改写——iPhone 引爆了影子 IT、自带设备潮，也引发了用户对 IT 部门的反叛。这段引文正体现了这一点。
Ben: I think that’s right. I think a set of technologies were breaking through. People are just going to use those devices and that software no matter what. The era today is one where users have way more choice in what they use at work than they did in that early 2000s era, and the iPhone forced that door open.
本：我同意。当时有一系列技术突破，无论如何人们都会用这些设备和软件。如今用户在工作中拥有的选择远超 2000 年代初，而 iPhone 硬是把那扇门推开了。
David: Choice and expectations of what that software and hardware is going to be like. Microsoft for all of its great victory in the enterprise over this period, just fundamentally did not have any of that DNA in the company anymore. That’s what this quote from time is pointing out.
大卫：用户拥有选择权，也对软硬件有期待。虽然微软在企业市场大获全胜，但公司内部已完全缺乏相应的 DNA。《时代》的那段话正指出了这一点。
Ben: They were all over an Xbox.
本：他们全都去折腾 Xbox 了。
David:. Okay, fair enough.
大卫：好吧，说得也对。
Ben: Or they were developing cool new stuff that would then get killed because it’s not a part of the Windows machine. You look at Courier, you look at Kin in mobile, you look at all these things that they would let them get so far, and then they’d be like, ah, you guys don’t get it. Windows is the center of everything. If it doesn’t make Windows look great or it competes with Windows, that’s not what we’re doing. I think that DNA was too strong to overcome disruptive innovations.
本：或者他们在开发一些很酷的新玩意儿，但最终都被砍掉，只因为它们不属于 Windows 体系。看看 Courier，再看看手机上的 Kin，这些项目做到一半就被叫停——“你们不明白，Windows 才是一切的核心。如果它不能让 Windows 更出彩，或者会与 Windows 竞争，那就别做。” 我觉得这种 DNA 强大到足以扼杀颠覆式创新。
David: Exactly. Let’s talk about those things and what’s happening in mobile.
大卫：没错。我们来谈谈那些事，以及移动领域正在发生什么。
Ben: Okay. let’s rewind. What was Microsoft doing in mobile so far?
本：好的，让我们倒回去看看。到目前为止，微软在移动端做了什么？
David: A lot, actually.
大卫：其实做了不少。
Ben: A lot, actually, is right. Microsoft was obsessed with all sorts of things, and particularly Bill Gates for decades before they became true. One of which was Bill Gates was always talking about mobile computing, so much so that in the key slide in the Windows XP presentation, one of the big bullet points is mobile computing. All the way back in 2001. Gates thought natural user interfaces was going to be a thing. Multitouch tablet computing. Pen computing.
本：确实做了不少。微软曾着迷于各种技术，尤其是比尔·盖茨早在它们成真之前就念念不忘的那些。盖茨经常谈到移动计算，甚至在 2001 年 Windows XP 发布会的关键幻灯片里，就把“移动计算”列为重点之一。他认为自然用户界面、多点触控平板、手写笔计算都会成真。
David: I had a Microsoft XP tablet edition I think is what it was called PC in college.
大卫：上大学时我用过一台 Microsoft XP Tablet Edition 的电脑。
Ben: From the early 2000 and sometimes even before that, these were Bill Gates’s visions of the future that he thought were pretty close. In the world of, I suppose they were early smartphones, Microsoft had developed Windows Mobile.
本：早在 2000 年初甚至更早，这些都是比尔·盖茨认为即将到来的未来愿景。在当时算是早期智能手机的领域里，微软开发了 Windows Mobile。
What was this? Is that like iOS? Not really. What Windows Mobile was was an operating system for handset makers to adopt and put on their handsets. These things looked like Blackberries. They’re mostly keys with a little screen.
这是什么？它像 iOS 吗？并不。Windows Mobile 是一款供手机厂商采用并预装到手机上的操作系统。这些手机看起来像 BlackBerry，主要是按键，配一块小屏幕。
When you looked at it, it looked like Windows. It had a little start menu. It was much like the rest of the enterprise strategy, David, designed around all working seamlessly together with your Windows PC, Exchange, and your corporate network. Because surely people at home, consumers were not using smartphones. These were for business people who were issued by their enterprise. So it fits pretty squarely into the enterprise category.
打开以后，它看上去就像 Windows，有一个小小的开始菜单。这跟微软的其他企业战略一样，旨在与 Windows 电脑、Exchange 以及公司网络无缝协作。毕竟当时家用消费者不会用智能手机，这些设备是企业发给商务人士的，因此完全属于企业级产品。
Now, how did Microsoft think about this product? They thought about it as an ingredient into the handset maker’s product. Microsoft was somewhat at the whim of an OEM in the computer ecosystem. The Dell could install some more stuff on top of Windows and customize the installation, but it was still Windows XP no matter who the PC was from. It was a pretty standard thing.
那么微软如何看待这款产品？他们把它当作手机厂商产品中的一个组件。在 PC 生态里，微软多少受制于 OEM：戴尔可以在 Windows 之上再装些东西并做定制，但无论哪家 PC 厂商出货，系统仍旧是标准的 Windows XP。
That really wasn’t the case with Windows Mobile phones. The handset makers could modify the code of Windows Mobile. When you bought a handset, first and foremost, you were trusting the product quality of the people at the handset maker. They had several OSes that they could buy and effectively start from. One of which was Microsoft.
但在 Windows Mobile 手机上并非如此。手机厂商可以修改 Windows Mobile 的代码。用户买手机，首先信赖的是手机厂商的产品质量。厂商手头有多种可选的操作系统，其中之一才是微软的。
We’re handset makers. We make a phone, and we know how to interconnect and do all the carrier stuff with the carriers because they’re our partners. We need it to do a bunch of computer stuff, too, like email and stuff, so can you guys do all that? Then we’ll make sure when we get that from you that we’ll start changing your code to make it work with our phone, and we’ll do all the phony stuff.
手机厂商的思路是：我们造手机，懂得如何跟运营商对接，这是我们的强项。但手机还需要处理邮件等一堆计算功能，你们微软能做吗？做完后我们会改你们的代码，让它配合我们的硬件，其余“手机的事”由我们来搞定。
David: Not an iPhone.
大卫：这可不像 iPhone。
Ben: What was Microsoft’s position in mobile? Yes, they had Windows Mobile. But no, it was nothing like what smartphones would become because of the way that the iPhone reset everything.
本：所以微软在移动端的地位如何？确实有 Windows Mobile，但它与后来在 iPhone 颠覆下成型的智能手机形态根本不是一回事。
David: At some point in this journey here, post-iPhone but still in this weird Windows Mobile era, Microsoft buys Danger, the company that made the T-Mobile Sidekick. You remember that?
大卫：在 iPhone 问世之后、仍处于 Windows Mobile 奇异时代的某个阶段，微软收购了 Danger——就是做 T-Mobile Sidekick 手机的那家公司。你还记得吗？
Ben: Which was awesome. You pushed a button and then it would flip around and suddenly you were on a sideways keyboard.
本：那手机超酷！按一下按钮，屏幕就会旋转，瞬间就能用横向键盘打字。
David: Oh yeah. It was in *Entourage*. I remember watching *Entourage*. Turtle had one, I think.
大卫：对啊，电视剧《明星伙伴》里出现过。我记得剧里 Turtle 好像就用那款手机。
Ben: That’s right. That was Andy Rubin before he started Android.
本：没错。而且 Danger 的创始人之一就是后来做 Android 的 Andy Rubin。
David: Oh you got me. I was hoping I could stump you. I was going to say, do you know who the co-founder of Danger was? It was Andy Rubin.
大卫：哎，被你抢先了！我本来想考你一句：“你知道 Danger 的联合创始人是谁吗？”答案正是 Andy Rubin。
Ben: What do you think I do for a living?
本：你以为我靠什么吃饭的？
David: What do you think I’d do for a living? Amazing. Andy had already left Danger and started Android.
大卫：那你以为我靠什么吃饭？太有意思了。其实 Andy 在那时已经离开 Danger 去做 Android 了。
Ben: Which would be the very thing that would destroy their mobile business. But let’s get there. So 2007 in January, the iPhone is announced. It won’t come out until July. The iPhone comes out. It’s the most spectacular technology demo since “The Mother of All Demos,” the old Doug Engelbart one way back in the day.
本：而 Android 正是后来颠覆微软移动业务的存在。但我们先按时间线来。2007 年 1 月，iPhone 发布，7 月正式开售。iPhone 的发布可谓自“万演之母”——道格·恩格尔巴特那场演示以来最震撼的技术展示。
Consumers are all in awe, the existing mobile industry people can’t really believe it’s real. The founder of BlackBerry basically said— I think his exact quote is—“How did they do that?” Then later says, “We’ll be fine.” You have Palm who was already saying things like— I believe the CEO even before the announcement said— “The PC guys are not just going to figure this out. They’re not just going to walk in.” Famously, David, I know you have it, Steve Ballmer has a quote after the announcement.
消费者惊叹不已，传统手机业者简直不敢相信。BlackBerry 的创始人当时基本上说：“他们是怎么做到的？”随后又表示“我们没问题”。Palm 更早就放话——我记得 CEO 在发布前就说过：“搞 PC 的人没那么容易搞懂手机，他们说来就来？”而著名的， 大卫你也知道，Steve Ballmer 在发布后也有一句名言。
David: Yes, and he says, “It’s never going to work at \$500,” which is the full quote. You could totally see that phones at this point in time, flagship phones were costing like \$100 with carrier subsidies. Steve’s like \$500—that price? Who’s going to buy that?
大卫：没错，他说的是：“卖 500 美元根本行不通。” 当时旗舰机在运营商补贴后大概只要 100 美元左右，Ballmer 觉得 500 美元？谁会买？
Ben: There are actually two quite interesting things about this quote. (1) Steve is being the company salesperson. If a competitor drops this amazing bomb and you’re interviewed and you have a whole bunch of enterprise customers who are looking to you, what do you say? You say, our things are still great; their thing’s really expensive. Of course you say that—you are literally always selling, all the time. (2) Apple legitimately had a business-model innovation there with the carrier subsidy.
本：这句话背后有两点挺有意思。(1) 作为公司“首席销售”，Ballmer 面对竞争对手扔下重磅炸弹，被媒体追问、又有大量企业客户关注时，肯定要说“我们的产品依旧很棒，对方太贵”。他随时随地都在推销自己。(2) 苹果后来真正实现了通过运营商补贴的商业模式创新。
David: But it wasn’t the original. The original iPhone didn’t have it. It was then later, I think the 3G?
大卫：但最初并没有补贴，第一代 iPhone 没有吧？应该是后来 3G 版才开始？
Ben: The mobile industry to this point had been “How do I make the cheapest possible phone?” Certainly not a scaled-down version of a Mac, which is what the iPhone was. That was a completely different paradigm—this is a tiny computer, not a cheap embedded system optimizing for pennies.
本：当时的手机行业逻辑一直是“如何把手机做得尽可能便宜”，绝不会造一台缩小版 Mac——而 iPhone 正是如此：一台微型电脑，而非为几分钱成本斤斤计较的嵌入式设备，范式完全不同。
Apple basically said, “We don’t care if it’s really expensive. We just think this is the user-experience bar, and we will figure the business model out.” Eventually—my God—did they figure the business model out, and the carrier subsidies were that innovation. But Windows Mobile was that old paradigm—embedded systems, cheap-as-possible hardware where a couple of cents either way determines whether your phone’s going to sell or not—so it was pretty shocking.
苹果的态度是：“贵就贵，我们只在乎用户体验达到标杆。商业模式我们迟早解决。” 事实证明他们真的搞定了，运营商补贴就是那场创新。而 Windows Mobile 仍停留在旧范式——嵌入式系统、能省几分钱硬件成本就省几分钱——因此 iPhone 的出现令微软十分震惊。
iPhones start selling. They’re selling well. It’s 2008. Apps start coming out. It’s 2009. Sales start really picking up. Finally, Microsoft decides, hey, what we’re going to do is we have this old asset, Windows Mobile. We can repurpose some of that to make this new thing called Windows Phone.
iPhone 开始销售，且卖得很好。到了 2008 年，App 纷纷上线；2009 年销量真正起飞。微软终于决定：我们手里还有个旧资产 Windows Mobile，可以对其进行改造，做一个新东西——Windows Phone。
Unfortunately, everything we’re optimizing for is different. The new ecosystem expectation is a super-high-quality user experience. There’s this way that we used to work with all of our hardware partners, which basically said, “We will make the software work on whatever. You can come up with the crappiest hardware you can think of and we’ll make it work.”
遗憾的是，新的生态对体验的要求截然不同。过去我们与硬件伙伴的合作模式是：“无论你给什么烂硬件，我们的软件都能跑起来。”
It’s like the Roku strategy, the way that they work with all the embedded-TV makers. The new strategy had to be, “We will dictate really intense hardware requirements,” because now with Windows Phone, we are making a promise to users to compete with the iPhone—Microsoft is backing that up.
这有点像 Roku 对电视厂商的做法。但在新战略下，微软必须强制高规格硬件要求，因为 Windows Phone 要向用户承诺能与 iPhone 抗衡，而这背后是微软品牌作担保。
The Microsoft brand is first. We’re defining a really breakthrough new user interface called Metro that actually came from the Zune, which is funny that that’s its lineage. Now, how did it actually play out? Microsoft tried to use their existing business model: “We will sell you an operating system, we will charge you a royalty.”
微软品牌放在第一位，我们推出全新的突破性 UI——Metro，实际上源自 Zune，很有意思。那结果怎样？微软依旧沿用旧商业模式：“我们卖给你操作系统，按台收授权费。”
David: We will sell you OEM manufacturer an operating system.
大卫：我们会把操作系统卖给你们这些 OEM 厂商。
Ben: Correct. You sell that phone. People want good phones now. You can probably generate some nice margins on that good phone because the iPhone really set the bar.
本：没错。你们去卖那部手机。现在人们想要好手机，因为 iPhone 已经把标准立在那儿，所以你们大概能靠这款好手机赚到不错的利润。
There’s just one problem with trying to maintain your old business model. It’s that you don’t have the same competitive set that you used to. You now have Google. Google has acquired Android. Google has transformed Android from a Blackberry clone into an iPhone clone. The software is open source. Google’s value proposition is they go to all those same manufacturers that Microsoft used to work with—HTC Motorola.
要坚持旧的商业模式只有一个问题——你的竞争格局已截然不同。你现在面对的是 Google。Google 收购了 Android，并把它从 BlackBerry 的克隆改造成 iPhone 的克隆。这套软件是开源的。Google 的价值主张是：他们去找微软过去合作的那些同样的厂商——HTC、摩托罗拉。
David: And say, hey, how about a deal for \$0?
大卫：然后说，“嗨，这个交易怎么样？成本是 0 美元。”
Ben: Yup. Deal point number one, here you go, it’s free. Deal point number two, you can even have the source code. Deal point number three, we aren’t Microsoft. Look at what they did to the PC makers. Do not let them do that to you. You know those PC makers? They make no money. Zero the profit dollars in the value chain accrue to these PC makers, they all accrue to the software vendor. It’s literally the same people who did that to the PC makers. Why would you let them do that to you?
本：对。第一条：这东西免费。第二条：你甚至可以拿到源代码。第三条：我们可不是微软。看看他们当年怎么对 PC 厂商的，千万别让他们也这么对你们。那些 PC 厂商你知道吧？他们根本赚不到钱，价值链里的利润全进了软件商的口袋。现在来找你们的正是当年对 PC 厂商下手的那帮人，你凭什么让他们再对你下手？
And remember, in this mobile world, every cent matters. Microsoft is trying to ask for, whatever it is, some single digit number of dollars for a licensing fee of the OS. I think I’m undershooting, but let’s even say it’s \$5. That is a mountain of difference between \$0 and \$5.
别忘了，在移动行业，每一分钱都重要。微软想收操作系统授权费，不管是几美元，反正是个位数。我可能还说少了，但就算按 5 美元算，0 和 5 美元的差距都是天壤之别。
David: In a low margin business.
大卫：在这种低毛利生意里更是如此。
Ben: In the total bill of materials of these things, exactly.
本：没错，放在整机的物料成本里就更明显了。
David: And Google also only really cares about their services that they monetize through advertising. One of the deal points in there, I think this may be varied by geography, but is oh yeah, you got to use Google services on there too. But by the way, they’re best in class and they’re free. You don’t have to pay anything for that either.
大卫：而且 Google 真正在意的是他们通过广告赚钱的那些服务。协议里还有一条——可能因地区而异——就是你也得在手机里用 Google 的服务。不过没关系，这些服务业界最佳，还免费，你也不用为此付钱。
Ben: I think at first it was, you can have it open source, but you don’t get any of our services. Or you can take the whole thing and you take all of our services, but our services are great and guess what? The Play store is one of our services. if you want all the apps, then you have to take all the other Google services too.
本：起初好像还分两种：要么只拿开源代码却得不到任何 Google 服务，要么整套都用并且必须带上所有服务。但我们的服务很棒，而且别忘了 Play 商店也是我们的服务之一；你要想让用户装到所有应用，就必须同时集成其他 Google 服务。
David: Right.
大卫：没错。
Ben: Now keep in mind, how does Google make money? They make money on search. Google, from the moment they figured out, hey, we can run a call it 2002, when Google’s search business model was really hardened and it was evident this will scale, it’s ludicrously profitable, it’s very high value per user, Google’s going to be the number one at it. It’s almost like if you really thought about it, you could have figured out that Microsoft wouldn’t win in mobile.
本：记住，Google 是怎么赚钱的？靠搜索。早在 2002 年左右，Google 的搜索商业模式就定型了，证明了能规模化、利润惊人、单用户价值极高，Google 会稳坐第一。其实如果当时仔细想想，就能推断微软在移动端赢不了。
It’s a really circuitous path, but if step one is Google makes a ton of money on search, then step two is Google should try to get all the searches. Then step three is Google needs to have the front door to search. You have to count on Google being the actor that figures this all out. Step four is Google figures out what the next platform is and make sure that they are guaranteeing all the search volume comes to Google from them.
这条逻辑链有点曲折：第一步，Google 通过搜索大赚特赚；第二步，Google 应该想办法拿到所有搜索流量；第三步，Google 必须掌握搜索的入口；接下来你得指望 Google 把这一切想明白；第四步，Google 找到下一个计算平台，并确保所有搜索流量都从那个平台流向 Google。
What do they do? They invent or buy a mobile operating system. What do they do after that? The next step, they give it away for free because again, all they care about is all the search volume. Therefore, unless Microsoft adopts Google’s business model, they’re immediately screwed.
于是他们做什么？自研或收购一款移动操作系统。下一步？免费开放给大家，因为他们唯一关心的就是拿到全部搜索量。所以，除非微软改用 Google 的商业模式，否则马上就会陷入困境。
David: This is such a good point. Microsoft’s competitor was not Apple and the iPhone. It was Android.
大卫：说得太对了。微软真正的竞争对手并不是苹果和 iPhone，而是 Android。
Ben: It’s a little bit butterfly flaps its wingsy, but there is a direct line over a 10 year period from Google finds its web-based search business model, and Microsoft cannot employ its traditional business model and win in mobile. Microsoft will lose in mobile.
本：有点蝴蝶效应的味道，但从谷歌找到基于网页的搜索商业模式，到微软无法凭传统商业模式在移动端取胜，这十年脉络非常清晰。微软注定在移动领域败下阵来。
There are some pivots in there. I think the biggest moment when the door really shut is when Verizon freaked out after the Apple and AT\&T deal, and said we need an answer. They decided that answer was Droid and they put like a gajillion dollars behind the Droid advertising campaign.
其中经历了一些转折。我认为真正关门的时刻是苹果与 AT&T 达成独家协议后，Verizon 慌了，表示必须找个对策。他们决定押宝 Droid，并在广告宣传上砸下巨额资金。
David: The Moto Droid, yup.
大卫：摩托罗拉 Droid，没错。
Ben: I think at that point it was a two horse race. Microsoft probably could have figured out a way to get in before that, but it is all related to Google finding that orthogonal business model.
本：从那时起就成了两强争霸。微软在此之前或许还能想办法插足，但一切都因谷歌找到了那条“正交”商业模式而改变。
David: It’s funny. Microsoft did have Bing at this point in time, so they did have a business model that they could have used if they’d been willing to go free on Windows Phone.
大卫：有意思的是，那时微软已经有了 Bing，他们确实拥有一套可用的商业模式——如果愿意让 Windows Phone 免费的话。
Ben: And it would’ve taken a big culture shift at Microsoft to say we’re an advertising company. Microsoft is not a company that is, at least at this point in time, comfortable with their bread being buttered from advertising. They’re the PC company. They want to sell software to people using PCs.
本：但要让微软自称一家广告公司，需要巨大的文化转变。至少在当时，微软并不习惯靠广告吃饭。他们是 PC 公司，想把软件卖给用电脑的人。
David: They’re the software company. They sell software. Might be via enterprise agreements, but they sell software.
大卫：他们是软件公司，卖的就是软件。也许通过企业协议出售，但本质还是卖软件。
Ben: Then if you really believe this step by step by step thing, then actually what Google should keep doing is finding things that Microsoft sells, figure out which ones are the cheapest per user to run, and then give those away for free. Outlook Exchange, geez, Gmail. Word, Excel, PowerPoint. Oh, G Suite Workspace. All they’re doing is they’re just looking at Microsoft’s core value propositions they charge money for, and Google says, would it really be that expensive if we just gave that away for free?
本：如果你真相信这一步步推演，那么谷歌下一步就该继续寻找微软收费的产品，算算哪些人均成本最低，然后免费送出去。Outlook Exchange？那就 Gmail。Word、Excel、PowerPoint？那就 G Suite Workspace。他们做的就是盯上微软最核心、最赚钱的价值主张，然后问一句：我们把它免费送出去，真的会很贵吗？
And the more of those that they do, it’s good for Google’s business model because they just get more data, a closer relationship with you. You’re doing either more queries or you’re interacting on their platforms in ways where they have other ways to show you ads. Maybe while you’re off platform. Now they know a lot about you from data they’ve collected, blah-blah-blah. But even if it doesn’t actually make more money for Google, they make so much money in their core business that if it hampers Microsoft , then it’s a good thing to do.
他们免费提供的服务越多，越有利于谷歌的商业模式，因为这意味着更多数据、更紧密的用户关系——你要么发起更多查询，要么在其平台上进行更多互动，他们就拥有更多投放广告的机会，甚至在你离开平台后也能如此。即便这些服务本身不直接给谷歌带来更多收入，他们在核心业务上赚得足够多，只要能拖慢微软，就是划算买卖。
David: Interesting. That is totally true. I totally buy it in the consumer world. And in the enterprise world, Microsoft lock-in is still as strong as it ever has been.
大卫：有意思，这完全说得通。我完全认同在消费领域如此。但在企业领域，微软的锁定力依旧强大如昔。
Ben: And Google has really not figured out how to be an enterprise company.
本：而且谷歌至今没真正学会怎样做一家企业服务公司。
David: Excel is still the main way that spreadsheets are done around the world. I bet a lot of listeners use Google Sheets. We do too. We love it. Also use Excel. But if you do use Google Sheets, you are in the minority
大卫：全球范围内，电子表格的主流仍是 Excel。我敢说很多听众使用 Google Sheets——我们也用，也很喜欢——但大家同时也用 Excel。如果你只用 Google Sheets，其实属于少数派。
Ben: Globally you think?
本：全球层面也是这样？
David: Yeah.
大卫：对。
Ben: I guess because most consumers don’t actually use spreadsheets.
本：想想也是，大多数普通消费者根本不用电子表格。
David: Enterprise spreadsheet work is done in Excel. Full stop.
大卫：企业级的表格工作都在 Excel 上完成。就这么简单。
Ben: Yup.
本：没错。
David: That brings us to Nokia, but I think let’s save Nokia for the end here.
大卫：这样就说到诺基亚了，不过我觉得我们把诺基亚留到最后再谈。
Ben: Yeah, Nokia is our coda. What it does bring us to is a realization from the very top of Microsoft that the profit pools in mobile are changing. This is a thing that I think Steve Ballmer also doesn’t get credit for.
本：对，诺基亚算是尾声。不过它让微软高层真正意识到：移动领域的利润池正在转移。我认为史蒂夫·鲍尔默在这一点上并没得到应有的认可。
Bill Gates was obsessed correctly with being the software company. It was a brilliant business strategy to be the software platform. Then everything around you had to interoperate with you.
比尔·盖茨当初执念于“做软件公司”是正确的——成为软件平台的商业战略无比高明，周边一切都得与你的平台互通。
Again, the profit pools in the PC world just accrued to software vendors. It was remarkable how the PC manufacturers over time had no profits and Microsoft had tremendous profits.
在 PC 时代，利润几乎都流向软件商。PC 厂商长期赚不到钱，而微软却利润惊人，这一点令人印象深刻。
Steve Ballmer realized pretty early, I think because of the Google Android thing, mobile was going to shake out differently. Future hardware platforms were not guaranteed to have the same profits in the value chain the way that the PC did.
鲍尔默很早就看出（我想是因为谷歌 Android）移动市场的格局完全不同，未来的硬件平台不可能像 PC 那样在价值链上获取同样的高利润。
He was pretty aggressive about actually we need to be in the hardware business. I know that seems really unattractive to us as a company because we’ve been in the software business. There’s this great general rule that it’s really hard for any business to enter a lower margin business than the one they are currently in.
于是他相当激进地提出必须涉足硬件。我知道这对一直卖软件的微软来说并不诱人——有条商业铁律：任何企业都很难跳进一个利润率更低的行业。
David: Amazon can go from ecommerce to AWS.
大卫：亚马逊就能从电商跨到 AWS。
Ben: Amazon can go anywhere. But for Microsoft, you’re selling software licenses, it’s hard to even get into cloud because cloud is a lower margin business. You have to operate those data centers than just selling the licenses.
本：亚马逊哪里都能去。但微软卖的是软件授权，就连上云都难，因为云的利润率更低——你要运营数据中心，而不只是卖许可证。
If you’re Microsoft and you’ve been making software all these years and you’ve been enjoying those margins and suddenly you’re realizing uh-oh, we have to be in the hardware business, or at least if we’re not in the hardware business or the search business, we are not going to enjoy any of the profits in the mobile era. That’s a difficult conundrum. But to Steve’s credit, he acted. They released Surface, they tried to buy Nokia.
微软多年靠软件高利润养活自己，突然发现：糟糕，我们得做硬件——至少说，如果不做硬件或搜索，我们在移动时代就赚不到钱。这确实进退维谷。但鲍尔默值得肯定，他采取了行动：推出 Surface，还试图收购诺基亚。
David: Let’s talk about it. Let’s start with Surface and Windows 8, which we got to talk briefly about Windows 7 before that, because Windows 7 was awesome.
大卫：来细说吧。先从 Surface 和 Windows 8 讲起，不过要先简要回顾一下 Windows 7，因为 Windows 7 非常棒。
Steven Sinofsky ends up running office product management. After the Vista disaster, he gets drafted to come over and run Windows. Ben, like you’re saying, the Office culture was known as we ship product. That’s what you were part of. That was the culture that Steven set
斯蒂文·西诺夫斯基后来负责 Office 产品管理。Vista 惨败后，他被调来掌舵 Windows。正如你说的，本，Office 的文化就是“准时出货”，你当年也身在其中——这正是西诺夫斯基树立的文化。
Ben: Mind-bending that three years in advance, a date is set and then 6000 people ship on that date no matter what.
本：简直不可思议——提前三年定好发布日期，然后 6000 个人无论如何都在那天把产品交出来。
David: Yup. He comes in for Windows 7 and he does that for Windows. We were talking to him, and he had this great analogy of Windows at this point in time, didn’t need technical vision. It was trying to be the Dodge Viper. That’s what Longhorn was. It needed to be the Toyota Camry. He comes in and he makes Windows 7 the Toyota Camry of PC operating systems.
大卫：没错。他接手 Windows 7 时就这么干了。我们跟他聊过，他打了个好比喻：当时的 Windows 不需要炫技式技术愿景——Longhorn 试图做道奇蝰蛇，但真正需要的是丰田凯美瑞。他上任后把 Windows 7 打造成了 PC 操作系统里的凯美瑞。
Ben: I love that analogy. That’s exactly right.
本：我太喜欢那个比喻了，说得一点没错。
David: It’s so good. It’s exactly what it was. It’s exactly what everyone wanted. It’s what the consumers who were still using Windows wanted. They wanted it to just work. Most importantly, it’s what the enterprises wanted.
David：确实如此，完完全全符合实际，也正是所有人想要的。仍在用 Windows 的消费者想要的就是“开箱即用”，而企业更是如此。
Ben: Everyone’s like, hey, it’s like XP but modern. Or it’s like Vista without all that random stuff and all the regressions that Vista had.
Ben：所有人都觉得，“嘿，这就像现代版的 XP”，或者说“这就是去掉乱七八糟东西、没有倒退问题的 Vista”。
David: Do not crash my devices or my network. Thank you.
David：别让我设备蓝屏、别把我的网络搞崩，谢谢。
Ben: Nice easy Start button in the lower corner. Normal predictable menu. Fast search, fast file system. I honestly can’t tell you a feature that launched in Windows 7.
Ben：左下角有简洁好用的开始按钮，菜单一如既往，搜索快、文件系统快。说实话，我甚至叫不出 Windows 7 新增了什么功能。
David: I have no idea. But I remember I had a Windows 7 laptop when I first joined Madrona and it was great.
David：我也想不起来。不过我刚进 Madrona 时用的是一台 Windows 7 笔记本，体验真的很好。
Ben: It ran everything the way you expected it to. The product that Sinofsky shipped there was just as much the new organization as it was the actual product that customers experienced. It was a much more slimmed down team. It was dev test PM, it was ability to hit a ship date. It was a proper planning and vision process.
Ben：它运行任何程序都如你所愿。西诺夫斯基交付的不仅是一款面向客户的产品，更是一支全新的、更加精简的团队——开发、测试、产品经理三位一体，能严格卡住发布日期，拥有完善的规划与愿景流程。
Ben: A lot of what the team was doing with Windows 7 was, yeah, yeah, yeah. We feel like we can do 7 with our arms tied behind our back, but let’s start thinking about the future, about what we’re really going to do now that we have all the infrastructure in place to really ship an interesting product.
Ben：团队在 Windows 7 上做的大量工作都是“好吧好吧，这个版本闭着眼也能做完，但既然基础设施已就位，我们得开始考虑未来，思考下一步真正要推出的更有意思的产品”。
David: And then Apple comes out with the iPad in 2010.
David：然后 2010 年，苹果发布了 iPad。
Ben: Windows 8 vision had kicked off. The planning process for what it’s going to be had kicked off. They’re starting to play, actually, Steven puts these videos on YouTube, they’re awesome to watch the original vision of what Windows 8 should be.
Ben：那时 Windows 8 的愿景已经启动，规划流程也开跑。团队开始“打样”——西诺夫斯基把早期概念视频放到了 YouTube，上面展示的 Windows 8 愿景看着相当震撼。
Ben: They’re out on a limb. They’re saying the future is touch. The future is tablets. We think that’s going to be a dominant computing paradigm. On the one hand, Bill Gates has been saying this for years. There’s a cultural acceptance with the idea. On the other hand, it really hasn’t manifested in the market, so it’s a little bit dangerous to say—
Ben：他们大胆下注：未来是触控，未来是平板，我们认为这将成为主流计算范式。一方面，比尔·盖茨多年一直这么说，文化氛围里能接受这个概念；另一方面，市场上尚未真正体现，所以这样宣称还是有点冒险——
David: But the iPhone has now come out and multi-touch has shown this is the way to do it.
David：可 iPhone 已经问世，多点触控证明这条路行得通。
Ben: But you’re right. The iPad coming out really validates, whoa, big tablets with multi-touch actually might be the computing paradigm for the future. Ph my God, we’ve been in planning, we’ve been in development for a year or two already. This thing hits the market. We’re right, we are so right. We’ve been validated.
Ben：你说得对。iPad 的发布真正验证了“大尺寸、多点触控平板可能就是未来计算范式”。天哪，我们已经规划、开发一两年了，这东西正式上市，意味着我们的方向没错，完全被市场印证了。
David: It validates the product vision and it terrifies Ballmer and Microsoft leadership, because they just watched what happened, what Apple did to the phone market. The iPad sure as hell looks like it’s going to try and come do that to Microsoft’s core PC market.
David：这既验证了产品愿景，也让鲍尔默和微软高层胆寒——他们刚见识过苹果如何颠覆手机市场，而 iPad 看上去显然打算对微软的核心 PC 市场重演这一幕。
David: The original Jobs keynote introducing the iPad lays out his vision of the PC is going to become the pickup truck and the iPad is going to be become the car. That would be a truly terrible thing for Microsoft, especially if that goes into the enterprise as the iPhone is clearly going into the enterprise on the phone side.
David：乔布斯在最初的 iPad 发布会上描绘了一幅愿景：PC 将变成“皮卡”，而 iPad 将成为“轿车”。如果这种情况在企业领域也发生——就像 iPhone 已明显打入企业手机市场——那对微软来说可真是灾难。
Ben: Now, there was a little bit of a folly in believing that the iPad was the PC of the future. Standing here today, we all can look at unit sales and realize, oh, the iPad was not the PC of the future. It had its place, but it did not in any way replace PCs. And it turns out that Apple scaling up the iPhone metaphor was good for tablets, but that never was going to take over most PC use cases today. In fact, the phone has far more replaced the PC than the tablet has.
本：现在回头看，当年把 iPad 视为未来 PC 的想法多少有些荒唐。今天看看销量就知道，iPad 并没有成为未来的 PC。它有自己的定位，但绝对没有取代 PC。事实证明，苹果把 iPhone 的理念放大到平板对平板市场是好事，但它从未、也不可能接管大多数 PC 的使用场景。实际上，手机比平板更大程度地替代了 PC。
David: A hundred percent, yes. But back in 2010, that sure looked pretty terrifying as a prospect to Microsoft.
大卫：完全同意。不过在 2010 年，对微软来说，这种前景看起来确实相当可怕。
Ben: The other thing that’s happening around this time is, I’ve said this a number of times, but Windows, despite having great revenue, great profits, massive penetration in the enterprise, and momentum almost just like staying power in consumers because people were just used to it, it was not relevant for the next Frontier.
本：那时还发生了另一件事。我多次提过，尽管 Windows 收入高、利润厚，在企业端占有率极高，对消费者也有惯性黏性，但它对下一片疆域已经不再重要。
David: Totally not.
大卫：确实如此。
Ben: It did not have hearts and minds. It was not where the excitement was. It was not what people were building for. There’s a two birds with one stone attempt with Windows 8: (1) Touch tablets. We are going to get out ahead of Apple, we’re going to try to out-Apple Apple here, and we’re not going to let what happened in phone happen to us in our core market of PCs. (2) We need a new developer platform.
本：它不受人们喜爱，也不再令人兴奋，开发者也不再以此为目标。Windows 8 想一箭双雕：第一，触控平板——我们要抢在苹果前面，甚至要比苹果更“苹果”，绝不能在核心 PC 市场重演手机领域的失利；第二，我们需要一个全新的开发者平台。
David: We need to bring developers back.
大卫：我们得把开发者拉回来。
Ben: Everyone’s building for the web. Web is agnostic to what operating system it runs on. Can we create a platform that is so exciting for developers that they’re going to use it? And we should lean into the technologies people are already using.
本：现在大家都在为 Web 开发，Web 对操作系统无差别。我们能否做出一个让开发者兴奋到愿意使用的平台？而且要拥抱他们已经在用的技术。
The Windows 8 touch mode Metro UI development environment was HTML5 because all these web developers are already writing their web apps, we want to support that too, and we’re going to build a whole new tool chain so that their HTML5 Windows 8 apps run really well on ARM processors, because these tablets are going to run on ARM processors.
Windows 8 触控模式的 Metro UI 开发环境采用了 HTML5，因为这些 Web 开发者本来就在写 Web 应用，我们也要支持，并构建全新的工具链，让他们的 HTML5 Windows 8 应用在 ARM 处理器上流畅运行——毕竟这些平板将采用 ARM 芯片。
David: And we’re going to make our own the Surface RT.
大卫：而且我们自己要做 Surface RT。
Ben: That’s the two-headed dragon of Windows 8 is new developer platform and touch-first.
本：这就是 Windows 8 的“双头龙”——新的开发者平台和触控优先。
David: And the way the touch first manifests in the operating system itself is the desktop is now just an app. When you boot up Windows 8, you are presented with a tablet tiled start screen. If you are looking for a desktop, oh you got to go find it..
大卫：触控优先在系统中的体现是：桌面现在只是个应用。启动 Windows 8 时，你先看到的是平板磁贴式开始屏；想用桌面？得自己去找。
Ben: Now in practice, it’s not hard to find the desktop. You learn it in five seconds. You’re like, oh, okay, I see. The start screen is actually the Start menu, but full screen. If I click in the bottom left corner, I can collapse it. I can enter the desktop mode and then it’s like it doesn’t even exist. I can run my Win32 apps, blah-blah-blah. But there is a learning curve.
本：实际上找到桌面并不难，五秒就能学会：哦，原来开始屏就是全屏版开始菜单，点左下角可以收起，进入桌面模式后就像不存在一样，可以跑 Win32 应用等等。但确实有学习成本。
David: There’s also just the shock value though of I bought a Toyota Camry expecting it to be a Toyota Camry, and I don’t even know what this is. It’s like a scooter.
大卫：但震撼点在于：我本来买辆丰田凯美瑞，结果开门一看完全认不出，感觉像一辆滑板车。
Ben: It is a little confusing. I used it for a long time when I worked at Microsoft, and figuring out how to app switch between things that are part of the Metro modern UI versus the legacy apps and what’s sitting on my desktop and what’s sitting in the tablet-optimized app switcher, it mixed two metaphors.
本：确实有些混乱。我在微软工作时用了很久，想弄清楚如何在 Metro 现代 UI 应用与传统桌面应用之间切换，以及哪些在桌面、哪些在平板优化的任务切换器里，等于混用了两套逻辑。
Now the question is why did it mix two metaphors? And it took me a while to figure this out. What ended up happening was the original vision for the Windows 8 touch thing that we’re all talking about, these live tiles, that was supposed to only ship for tablets as it was originally dreamed up. There was a version of Windows 8 that did not have that that was going to ship for desktop PCs.
问题来了，为什么要混用两套逻辑？我花了些时间才弄明白。最初的 Windows 8 触控愿景——也就是这些实时磁贴——原本只打算随平板版本发布；还有一个面向台式机的 Windows 8 版本本来并不会包含这些东西。
David: That was going to look like Windows 7 probably.
大卫：那看起来大概会像 Windows 7。
Ben: Word comes down from on high, Windows is Windows. We need to ship Windows across all devices. What happens? All this effort, momentum, political capital, and betting your career has gone into this HTML5 developer community, the Metro UI, that is the desktop version that ships.
本：高层传达的指示是，Windows 只有一个，必须在所有设备上统一发布。于是结果如何？所有投入的心血、动能、政治资本乃至职业赌注，都押在了 HTML5 开发者社区和 Metro UI 上——于是搭载在桌面版系统里就成了它。
David: I see, yeah. There can only be one windows, so we got to put both of these babies in here.
大卫：明白了，也就是说只能有一个 Windows，所以两个东西都得塞进来。
Ben: What you have is not as bad as Vista, but man, the rollout was pretty bungled.
本：最终成品虽不至于像 Vista 那么糟，但发布过程真是一团乱麻。
David: It’s confusing.
大卫：让人摸不着头脑。
Ben: The reception was poor. Interestingly not by the tech pundits. The tech pundits who actually spent some time and figured it out, were trained up pretty quickly, but the cat was out of the bag even before they got to review it on people who were angry. What do the Microsoft people refer to them as? People that…
本：市场反响很差。有趣的是，这并不是因为科技评论家——那些花时间研究的人很快就上手了——而是在他们评测之前，消息就走漏了，惹怒了一批用户。微软内部怎么称呼这些人来着？那些……
David: Oh, the basement.
大卫：哦，“地下室”用户。
Ben: The basement, yes. The 0.001 % power users who are the loudest, of course, on the Internet. That taints the product. OEMs hate it because frankly OEMs weren’t signed up to make these touch devices. But now Microsoft’s putting all this energy behind touch-optimized operating system. There’s this mixed message to consumers. It’s like, are there even good laptops available? Am I supposed to use touch on my desktop?
本：对，“地下室”用户——那 0.001% 的超级发烧友，在互联网上声音最大。这就给产品抹了黑。OEM 们也讨厌它，说实话他们压根没打算出触控设备，可微软却把精力都砸在触控优化的系统上。消费者收到的信号也很混乱：市面上有好用的笔记本吗？我在台式机上也得用触控吗？
David: They have to run ARM. They can’t run x86. They got to run ARM processors, they got to run mobile processors. But you’re asking these devices in 2012 to also be able to function as laptops, and the technology just wasn’t there.
大卫：它们还必须运行 ARM，不能跑 x86，得用移动处理器。可你却要这些 2012 年的设备也能当笔记本用，技术水平根本跟不上。
There’s a reason why the iPad was a scaled up version of the iPhone, not a scaled down version of the Mac. Today, I think it might be a very different proposition and the public might be much more ready to accept something like this.
这也解释了为什么 iPad 是放大版的 iPhone，而不是缩小版的 Mac。换到今天，情况或许会大不相同，大众可能更容易接受类似的形态。
I wish Apple would do this with the iPad. I don’t want to have a MacBook and an iPad. I just want an awesome pane of glass that can do everything. Apple silicon totally can do everything.
我真希望苹果把 iPad 做成那样。我不想既带 MacBook 又带 iPad，只想要一块万事通的神奇玻璃。Apple Silicon 完全能胜任。
Ben: My dream machine is, you know those Lenovo Yogas that can flip all the way around?
本：我心目中的梦幻设备是，你知道联想的 Yoga 吧，屏幕能 360° 翻折那种？
David: Yeah.
大卫：嗯，知道。
Ben: My complete dream machine is my 13-inch M3 MacBook Air that when I flip it all the way around, they do something like a universal binary with the apps, where all the same apps that I had installed on my Mac, they now run their iOS counterpart. They grab all the data that’s stored in the same places. All my apps, it knows which Google Sheet I’m looking for. It has the YouTube videos cached. It does whatever. It just turns into an iPad with an iOS UI. That is the dream.
本：我理想的设备是 13 英寸的 M3 MacBook Air，屏幕翻折过去后，通过类似通用二进制的方式，所有 Mac 上装的应用都能运行各自的 iOS 版本，从同位置读取数据——所有应用都知道我需要哪个 Google 表格、缓存哪些 YouTube 视频——翻过去就变成带 iOS 界面的 iPad。那才是梦想。
I can’t figure out if I’m a super nerd for wanting that, and most people wouldn’t actually want that. But I travel with an iPhone, an iPad, and a MacBook, and I think I could just do two.
我不知道这是不是极客才有的想法，大多数人也许不需要。但我出行得带 iPhone、iPad 和 MacBook，其实只带两台就够了。
David: A lot of people would want it.
大卫：很多人都会想要的。
Ben: One takeaway may just be, hey, it was too early. The other takeaway might be, look, it turns out that tablets should have been a scaled up phone, not a scaled down PC. That was certainly true at the time.
本：一个结论是，它推出得太早；另一个结论是，平板理应是放大的手机，而不是缩水的 PC。当时显然如此。
David: Certainly at the time.
大卫：在当时当然是这样。
Ben: So complete commercial failure. The ecosystem of Windows 8 apps did not really galvanize. Where we’re left is the state of the Windows app developer ecosystem in the 2013–2014 time period is right back where we started. No one’s terribly interested in targeting that as a developer platform. All the energy is actually just going to go into the web app.
本：结果就是彻底的商业失败。Windows 8 的应用生态根本没能被激活。到 2013–2014 年，Windows 应用开发者生态几乎回到原点，没有人真心想把它当作目标平台。所有精力实则都流向了 Web 应用。
David: Then all the energy is going to go into the mobile app, none of which is in the Microsoft ecosystem. This is the death of Microsoft as a consumer company. No doubt. Undeniably.
大卫：接着所有精力又涌向移动应用，而这些都不在微软生态里。这标志着微软作为消费级公司的终结，毫无疑问、不容否认。
Ben: Zune failed, Bing small market share, Windows Phone lost to Android.
本：Zune 失败，Bing 份额微小，Windows Phone 输给了 Android。
David: Lost mobile, Windows 8. This whole thing didn’t work. The stock price has languished, hasn’t moved in 10 years. Stock stuck at \$30.
大卫：移动市场丢了，Windows 8 也不行。整个局面全盘皆输，股价十年不涨，停在 30 美元。
Ben: This is dark. This 2012–2013 time period. This is dark.
本：这太黑暗了。2012–2013 这段时间，真是至暗时刻。
David: And at the same time.
大卫：与此同时——
Ben: Well it’s funny. It’s dark and revenues and profits have grown tremendously. The enterprise motion of Microsoft has basically never had a down year. 2008 in the great recession. Other than that, like chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, even through the bad Windows releases.
本：有意思的是，形势很暗淡，可营收和利润却大幅增长。微软的企业业务几乎年年上涨，连 2008 年大衰退都没掉队，坏 Windows 版本期间也一样稳步前进。
David: It’s dark, and yet the light is shining so bright on the financial statements of this company. What is going on here? Obviously it’s the enterprise, but it’s even more than that. It’s Azure, it’s the cloud, it’s already humming, it’s going.
大卫：局势灰暗，可财报却光芒四射，这是怎么回事？显然靠的是企业市场，但不止如此——是 Azure，是云，已经在高速运转了。
Microsoft did reinvent itself. Microsoft did position itself to be at the forefront of technology. It just did it all within the enterprise context of the company. The Azure story is absolutely incredible. I think nobody knows how it really happened.
微软确实实现了自我重塑，真正站在了科技前沿——只不过这一切都发生在企业业务内部。Azure 的故事异常精彩，我想外界几乎没人知道它到底是如何成形的。
Ben: Yes, as the general public is concerned, Steve Ballmer was obsessed with Windows. He built the enterprise business, he left, Satya Nadella came in and launched Azure, and Azure has been great.
本：对大众而言，剧情似乎是：鲍尔默痴迷 Windows，搭建了企业业务；他离任后，萨蒂亚·纳德拉上台，推出 Azure，一切顺风顺水。
David: Not exactly.
大卫：事实并非如此简单。
Ben: That’s not really what happened.
本：事情并不是那样发展的。
David: When Bill was planning to fully retire from the company, to retire from his chief software architect role—this is all the way back in 2004–2005—he and Steve know that there needs to be a successor in this role. Even Steve will be the first person to tell you he is not a technologist. He can’t do both roles. He needs a Bill, he needs a chief software architect.
大卫：早在 2004–2005 年，比尔准备彻底从公司退休、辞去首席软件架构师职务时，他和史蒂夫就清楚必须有人接班。连史蒂夫自己都承认他不是技术专家，不可能身兼两职，他需要一个“比尔”，需要一位首席软件架构师。
Ben: And realistically, you can’t replace Bill Gates with one person. We need two Bills.
本：现实是，没人能单独替代比尔·盖茨，我们得要两个“比尔”。
David: So they’re casting about. Craig Mundie becomes one of those two Bills internally. They also know who is probably the perfect person to take the other job. That is Ray Ozzie. Ray of course being the author of Lotus Notes. Ray is a legendary developer, and he has great relationships within Microsoft because Ray built Lotus Notes, not at Lotus but at his own software studio startup, and Lotus was just his publisher. He’s known all the Microsoft guys for years.
大卫：于是他们开始物色人选。克雷格·蒙迪成了内部的“一个比尔”。而另一位理想接班人选，他们认定是雷·奥兹——Lotus Notes 之父，传奇开发者；他与微软高层关系极佳，因为 Notes 其实是在他自己的工作室开发，Lotus 只是发行方，多年来他与微软团队一直相熟。
Ben: This is so fascinating. I never put two and two together. But Lotus 1-2-3 and Lotus Notes were not peers together. Lotus 1-2-3 was developed by Lotus. Lotus Notes is actually Ray’s company.
本：这太有意思了。我以前从没把这两件事联系起来。但 Lotus 1-2-3 和 Lotus Notes 并不是并肩开发的。Lotus 1-2-3 由 Lotus 公司开发，而 Lotus Notes 实际上是 Ray 的公司做的。
It’s almost like the way a game studio works. Ray and his company are building it. Their publisher is Lotus. But Ray can have agreements with Microsoft where he’s privy to information that Lotus is not. Ray is really close in the fold with the Microsoft folks. I think he was even a contractor working on, maybe the project was Landman, but he was actively contributing to other Microsoft products.
这有点像游戏工作室的运作方式。Ray 和他的公司负责开发，发行方是 Lotus。但 Ray 可以与微软达成协议，获取 Lotus 无权知晓的信息。Ray 与微软的人非常熟络。我记得他甚至还是微软某个项目——也许是 Landman——的外部承包商，积极为其他微软产品做贡献。
David: Because he had his own software company.
大卫：因为他有自己的软件公司。
Ben: He was almost like Switzerland in the middle.
本：他几乎就像居中的“瑞士”。
David: By this era—now 2004–2005—Ray has a new startup called Groove Networks, and Microsoft just acquires the company and they get Ray. In June 2006, when Bill announces his coming retirement, Ray gets named as his successor and the official chief software architect role.
大卫：到了 2004–2005 年，Ray 创办了一个名为 Groove Networks 的新初创公司，微软直接收购了该公司，也就把 Ray 请了进来。2006 年 6 月，比尔宣布即将退休，Ray 被任命为他的接班人，正式担任首席软件架构师。
Ben: Essentially, what’s going on is Bill and Steve look at Ray and they say, you figure out the vision. We’ve got all these assets, we’ve got a killer business. Got all this great talent. In the coming world, the next generation of technology, why don’t you figure out how Microsoft fits in and what our play is?
本：事情本质上是这样：比尔和史蒂夫对 Ray 说，你来制定愿景。我们有这么多资产、有一门杀手级业务，还有这么多优秀人才。下一个技术时代到来时，你来思考微软应该如何定位、我们的打法是什么。
David: Ray writes the Internet services disruption memo in October 2005. to quote from it, this is Ray writing, “The environment has changed yet again. This time around services. Computing and communications technologies have dramatically and progressively improved to enable the viability of a services-based model.
大卫：Ray 在 2005 年 10 月撰写了《互联网服务颠覆》备忘录。引用其中内容，Ray 写道：“环境再次发生变化。这一次，焦点是服务。计算与通信技术的持续重大进步，使基于服务的模式成为可能。
The ubiquity of broadband and wireless networking has changed how people interact. They’re increasingly drawn toward the simplicity of services and service-enabled software that just works. Businesses are increasingly considering what services-based economics of scale might do to help them reduce infrastructure costs or deploy solutions as needed and on a subscription basis.”
“宽带与无线网络的普及改变了人们的互动方式。他们越来越倾向于‘开箱即用’的服务及服务化软件。企业也越来越在考虑，服务化规模经济能否帮助他们降低基础设施成本，或按需、以订阅方式部署解决方案。”
Ben: Wait, David. You’re telling me that businesses may want to basically rent capacity from big data centers to just deploy their applications, not worry about the CapEx of buying the servers and racking them all, maintaining the data center, handling the privacy and blahdi-blahdi-blah?
本：等等，大卫。你的意思是企业可能想简单地租用大型数据中心的算力来部署应用，而不用操心购买服务器、上架、维护机房、处理隐私等等资本开销？
David: I’m telling you that, and I’m telling you, they might not even just want to buy the infrastructure. They might just want to buy the solution as a service hosted by us.
大卫：我的意思正是如此，而且他们甚至可能不仅仅想买基础设施，他们还想直接购买由我们托管的“解决方案即服务”。
Ben: All right, so this is Ray in 2005.
本：好吧，这就是 2005 年的 Ray。
David: In January 2006, Ray with Steve Ballmer’s full blessing, goes and starts recruiting for a secret project within Microsoft incubated outside any of the existing divisions. This is super important. This should have come within server and tools, like that whole big new business that we talked about that was the key linchpin of Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer era enterprise strategy. Of course, Azure should have come from within there.
大卫：2006 年 1 月，Ray 在史蒂夫·鲍尔默的全力支持下，开始为微软内部一个秘密项目招兵买马，这个项目孵化于所有现有部门之外。这点至关重要。照理说它应该属于服务器与工具部门——那就是我们提到的、在鲍尔默时代企业战略中起关键作用的新业务。但 Azure 最终却并非从那里诞生。
Ben: Microsoft has a group that produces a product called Windows Server. That is an operating system that runs on other people’s servers. That group is not the group that produced Azure, the cloud service that runs at the time Windows Server.
本：微软内部有一个团队负责一款名为 Windows Server 的产品，它是一套运行在他人服务器上的操作系统。但生产 Windows Server 的团队并不是后来打造云服务 Azure 的那个团队，尽管当时 Azure 也是跑在 Windows Server 之上的。
David: The reason for that is that this is completely disruptive to the whole Windows Server and server and tools business model. Their go-to-market and their business model is we sell these solutions to be operated in your data centers, in your infrastructure, where Accenture and all the consulting firms and all the value-added resellers, they’re all our partners, they’re all our go-to-market. They’re all going to go implement that on-prem for you.
大卫：原因是云模式会彻底颠覆 Windows Server 以及“服务器与工具”业务的整体商业模式。他们过去的市场打法是把方案卖给客户，由客户在自己的数据中心、本地基础设施中部署；埃森哲等咨询公司以及各类增值经销商都是我们的合作伙伴与渠道，他们会替你把系统部署到本地。
If we were now to say like, wait a minute, all of a sudden we’re going to do that as a service and we’re going to sell it to you separately, that is a huge issue risking a lot of my go-to-market motion.
如果我们现在突然说：等一下，我们要把这一切改成在线服务，再单独卖给你，那就会严重冲击现有的渠道与市场体系。
Ben: Not to mention these end enterprises in some ways are actually the OEMs customers. Yeah, these Dell servers are running Windows Server, but Dell sold a bunch of servers probably through Accenture to the end customer. There’s that whole issue of upsetting the Apple cart.
本：更别提最终企业客户在某种意义上也是 OEM 的客户。没错，这些戴尔服务器上跑着 Windows Server，但戴尔大概是通过埃森哲把一堆服务器卖给最终客户的。贸然改变模式就会打乱整条产业链。
There’s also the internal rewards issue and KPI issue. Everyone in Windows and enterprise land, ultimately their KPI is how many copies of Windows can we sell to end customers and generate the licensing revenue on Windows. This new thing, if we actually pursue a cloud strategy is how can we spend a whole ton of money building out a data center, buying other people’s servers, generating zero licensing dollars, and hoping people use the servers so we can charge them later?
此外还有内部激励与 KPI 的问题。Windows 和企业业务线的关键指标始终是：我们能向终端客户卖出多少份 Windows 授权、获取多少授权收入。而如果真搞云战略，就变成：我们要砸巨资建数据中心、买别人的服务器，先不产生任何授权收入，只能指望未来客户用得多再按用量收费？
David: Windows is nowhere in this equation.
大卫：在这套逻辑里，Windows 本身根本派不上用场。
Ben: We’re going to build out a gigantic server firm and rent usage to people. That doesn’t fit into anyone’s current KPI or compensation.
本：我们要自己搭建庞大的服务器农场，再把算力租出去——这跟任何人现有的 KPI 或薪酬体系都对不上号。
David: Ray’s recruiting for this project code named Red Dog. He brings in the biggest of big guns. That’s right. The legend himself, Dave Cutler.
大卫：Ray 正在为代号“Red Dog”的项目招兵买马，他请来了重量级大神——没错，传奇人物 Dave Cutler 本人。
Ben: No one builds hardcore, enterprise-ready, close-to-the-metal code than Dave. Dave was the architect on Windows NT.
本：在编写硬核、面向企业、贴近底层的代码方面，没有人比 Dave 更强。Dave 曾是 Windows NT 的总架构师。
David: We talked about him a lot on part one. Also another guy named \[...]. \[...] had also come from DEC, which is where Dave came from. Total beast of an engineer. He had experienced both in the enterprise server and tools products. \[...] was also a big part of getting Vista out the door with Brian Valentine before Brian left for Amazon. The two of them recruit a team and they build Azure.
大卫：我们在第一部分里已经多次提到 Dave。还有另一位叫做 \[…] 的工程师，他也来自 DEC——和 Dave 同门，技术怪兽级人物——既做过企业服务器也做过工具类产品。Brian Valentine 去亚马逊前，他还协助 Brian 把 Vista 推向市场。他俩联手组建团队，最终打造了 Azure。
Cutler builds a new hypervisor that Azure runs on from scratch without using open source like himself. Hypervisor, of course, is the piece of software that virtualizes underlying hardware and allows multiple software tenants to run on a single piece of hardware. It’s like VMware was a hypervisor company, it was a whole company building hypervisors. Dave just like, yeah, I got this.
Cutler 亲自从零开始写了一款全新的 Hypervisor 供 Azure 运行，完全没用任何开源代码。Hypervisor 是虚拟化底层硬件的软件，让多租户能在同一台物理服务器上运行。就像 VMware 专门做 Hypervisor 一样，而 Dave 的态度是：“没问题，我来搞定。”
Ben: It’s crazy.
本：这太疯狂了。
David: So great. Steve Ballmer supported this whole thing, pushed it all through, despite heavy pressure and incentives from inside the company, from Windows, from partners, from the whole go-to-market motion that he built, Microsoft’s enterprise go-to-market motion.
大卫：太棒了。尽管来自公司内部的 Windows 部门、各合作伙伴以及鲍尔默亲手建立的整套企业销售体系都施加了巨大压力，Steve Ballmer 仍力挺此项目并推动落地。
Steve didn’t get it right away, but he started talking to enough customers and realizing that this was the future of enterprise computing, that he just flipped a switch and said, I’m all in. We’re doing this. Whatever resources we need. We’re talking billions and billions of dollars of capital expenditure to build up these data centers. This is not just a like, oh, some little incubation project. Sure. We’ll see what happens. This is like, no, we got to like bet the company on this.
一开始 Steve 并未立刻明白，但在与足够多的客户交谈后，他意识到这就是企业计算的未来，于是果断拍板：“全力以赴！必须做！需要什么资源就给什么资源。” 这意味着要投入数十亿美元的资本支出建设数据中心。这绝不是“小试牛刀的孵化项目，看看结果再说”，而是要动真格地“押上整家公司”。
Ben: Well it’s funny, I disagree that it’s a bet the company move because of two reasons: (1) It’s only money that they’re spending. Cash is never a resource constraint. The bigger concern is Ray Ozzie and Dave Cutler are working on this. That is why it would be bet the company.
本：有趣的是，我并不同意这是“押上全公司”。原因有二：(1) 他们花的只是钱，而资金从来不是微软的瓶颈。真正的大赌在于 Ray Ozzie 和 Dave Cutler 投入其中，这才算“押上公司”。
(2) In its initial incarnation, Azure did not threaten the Windows-centric approach. If you remember, when Azure launched it was Windows Azure, and it ran Windows Server. It was Platform as a Service, and Microsoft in no way changed its tune on open source.
(2) 最初的 Azure 并未威胁 Windows 为核心的路线。还记得 Azure 刚发布时叫 Windows Azure，跑的是 Windows Server，定位是 PaaS，微软在开源问题上也绝无松口。
To this point in history, Microsoft thought that open source was a complete cancer. And for good reason. At the end of the day, basically Microsoft charged for things that open source was giving away for free From operating systems to programming languages to development environments to servers. Everything about it, it was like, oh my God, is there a future where everyone just expects all of our value to be free?
在当时，微软认为开源完全是“毒瘤”，理由也充分——毕竟微软向客户收费的东西，从操作系统到编程语言、开发环境、服务器，开源社区都在免费提供。微软会担心有一天所有人都理所当然地觉得这些价值应该免费。
They managed to combat that and build a great business despite that, but they never embraced open source. They never at all wanted to be a part of anything that open source developers were doing until.
尽管如此，微软还是成功抵御了冲击并建立了庞大业务，但他们始终没有拥抱开源，完全不愿参与开源开发者正在做的任何事情，直到后来——
David: A couple of years into Azure.
大卫：直到 Azure 推出几年之后。
Ben: Not until 2014–2015.
本：直到 2014–2015 年。
David: And why I would say this is bet the company, you’re right. They didn’t go full Infrastructure as a Service and embrace open source and let people use Azure to run Linux in the LAMP stack on top of it. That was not day one, but they knew they had to and they were going to. It was just a, hey, we’re not going to do this right away because the company would organ reject this so hard, but we are moving in that direction and we will be AWS. We will offer everything they offer and more to our enterprises who trust Microsoft.
大卫：我之所以说是“押上公司”，原因在此：没错，他们最初并未一上来就做 IaaS、拥抱开源，也没让用户直接在 Azure 上跑 Linux 的 LAMP 栈，但他们清楚迟早得这么做。他们只是暂缓，以免公司出现“器官排斥”；但方向已定——要成为 AWS 式的平台，为信任微软的企业客户提供 AWS 能提供的一切，甚至更多。
Ben: That’s a fair pushback. But Azure came in with an aggressive point of view. We are Platform as a Service, which was distinctly different than AWS, which was we are Infrastructure as a Service.
本：这反驳合理。但 Azure 当时确实主打激进定位：我们是 PaaS，与 AWS 的 IaaS 路线截然不同。
David: Now, interestingly, Office and applications and Software as a Service actually came pretty quickly thereafter, too. Famously they did a pilot program with Energizer, the battery company, selling just sort of, I don’t think it was the Office productivity suite, but it was SharePoint and stuff I think as a service, as Software as a Service.
大卫：有意思的是，Office 等应用以及 SaaS 模式随后也很快跟进。有名的案例是他们与电池公司 Energizer 做了个试点项目，出售 SharePoint 之类的服务（我记得不包含完整 Office 套件），以 SaaS 形态交付。
In 2010, Ray Ozzie actually leaves the company. But as he’s doing, he and Steve roll Red Dog—by this point in time renamed Azure—back into the server and tools business. Two of them go to the University of Washington. Steve gives a speech at the University of Washington. We are all in and we are betting the company on cloud and on Azure. The intended audience of course was Microsoft internally of like, hey, we are sending a message to the server and tools team, this is the future.
2010 年，Ray Ozzie 实际上离开了公司。但在临走前，他与 Steve Ballmer 将已更名为 Azure 的 Red Dog 项目并入“服务器与工具”部门。两人前往华盛顿大学，Steve 在那里发表演讲：“我们全力投入云，押注 Azure。” 目标受众显然是微软内部特别是“服务器与工具”团队：这就是未来。
After that, Steve replaces the division head of the whole server and tools division, who was Bob Muglia at the time. Bob would later go on to be the CEO of Snowflake before Frank Slootman came in; he did fine.
在那之后，Steve 撤换了当时整个“服务器与工具”部门的负责人 Bob Muglia。Bob 之后去当了 Snowflake 的 CEO（在 Frank Slootman 上任前），干得也不错。
Bob was great. Bob was crushing it as head of server and tools. Revenue was growing, I don’t know, 30%–40% a year. It’s a $12 billion business. But the reason that Steve made the change was he said, we need a new leader who’s going to come in, change this organization, and make it a cloud-first organization
Bob 的业绩很棒，带领“服务器与工具”收入每年增长三四成，业务规模达 120 亿美元。但 Steve 更换领导层的原因是：我们需要一个新领袖，把整个组织变成“云优先”型团队。
Ben: And not carry the baggage of all the success from the previous iteration.
本：而且不用再背负上一代成功带来的包袱。
David: And the person that Steve taps to do that from Bing is none other than Satya Nadella. To come in and lead that transformation.
大卫：于是史蒂夫从 Bing 挑中的人选，正是萨蒂亚·纳德拉，让他来主导这场转型。
Ben: And from what I can tell, it’s just as motivated by Azure is the future and it needs a new leader as it is Satya is a really talented rising executive in this company and needs to be put on an important project.
本：在我看来，这既是因为 Azure 代表着未来、需要新的领军人物，也因为萨蒂亚是公司里极具才华、正在上升期的高管，需要被放到重要岗位上历练。
David: Absolutely.
大卫：完全正确。
Ben: Almost like Bing’s not enough for this guy. Where can we put him?
本：感觉 Bing 已经无法发挥他的全部能力了，我们该把他安排到哪里？
David: It was let’s get this guy the right exposure to the right important things, that he could be CEO of this company someday and not very distant future. To say that this goes well is an understatement obviously. But just to put some numbers on this, Microsoft has three reporting segments. Productivity and business process AKA Office. That includes Office 365 as part of that segment. The more personal computing segment, that’s Windows and Surface and their hardware efforts. Then the Intelligent Cloud segment, and that’s Azure. I think LinkedIn is part of the Office segment, if I have that right.
大卫：想法是让他接触真正关键的业务，这样将来——也许用不了多久——他就能成为公司 CEO。说这一切进展顺利都算轻描淡写。给大家列几个数字：微软有三大财报分部。第一是“生产力与业务流程”，也就是 Office，包括 Office 365；第二是“更多个人计算”，涵盖 Windows、Surface 及硬件；第三是“智能云”，也就是 Azure。我记得 LinkedIn 也归在 Office 那一分部。
Ben: I think that’s right.
本：我觉得没错。
David: I don’t think LinkedIn is in the cloud segment. Intelligent Cloud today is by far the largest segment in the company by both revenue and profit, and by very, very far the fastest growing within the company. Windows is declining.
大卫：LinkedIn 应该不在云分部。如今“智能云”已是公司收入和利润最大的分部，而且远远是增长最快的。相比之下，Windows 正在下滑。
Ben: It’s the largest business now and the fastest growing.
本：它现在既是最大的业务，也是增长最快的业务。
David: Largest business, most profitable, fastest growing. In fiscal 2023, Intelligent Cloud did \$88 billion in revenue.
大卫：规模最大、利润最高、增速最快。2023 财年，“智能云”营收高达 880 亿美元。
Ben: Wow. Crazy. It is worth not to pour cold water at all because I think the high level point stands.
本：哇，太夸张了。当然，我可不是想泼冷水，大方向确实没错。
David: I was going to say this too. I know where you’re going.
大卫：我也正想说这一点，我知道你接下来想讲什么。
Ben: Intelligent Cloud includes SQL Server and Windows Server. These are big legacy businesses.
本：“智能云”分部里还包括 SQL Server 和 Windows Server，这些都是传统的大型业务。
David: I think that is both, especially in the early days when Microsoft and Satya was hyping up how much cloud revenue the company was doing, being able to report the legacy server business as part of that revenue helped a lot. On the other hand, the counter argument to that is this is actually Microsoft’s competitive advantage versus AWS.
大卫：这一点确实存在——特别是在微软和萨蒂亚早期宣传云收入时，把传统服务器业务计入云营收确实帮了大忙。另一方面，也可以说这正是微软相较 AWS 的竞争优势。
Ben: Totally agree.
本：完全同意。
David: Microsoft can go to enterprises and say we are hybrid cloud. Less so today, but in the earlier days of the Azure transition saying like, hey, you need to be on on cloud? We have a world-class public cloud for you. It works great with our on-prem server offerings, and we can be hybrid for you.
大卫：微软可以对企业客户说，我们提供混合云。如今或许感觉不那么突出，但在 Azure 转型早期，微软可以说：想上云？我们有世界级公共云，与本地服务器产品完美结合，随时为你打造混合云方案。
Ben: Totally agree.
本：完全赞同。
David: We’ll talk about this a little more in conclusion. We have one more chapter in Nokia in the end of Steve’s tenure to talk about here. But it turned out actually that the cloud market was so big that nothing else really mattered. All the missteps, all the losses, it makes sense. Cloud powers everything. Cloud powers tech. cloud powers all the consumer services. They all run on the cloud. Every consumer service that is not owned by Microsoft or Meta or Google or Amazon runs on one of their clouds, and some portion of that revenue accrues to Microsoft.
大卫：我们在总结时还会再谈一点。斯蒂夫任期末尾还有诺基亚这一章要讲。但事实证明，云市场大到其他一切都变得无关紧要。所有失误、所有损失都说得通——云驱动一切，云驱动科技，云驱动所有消费级服务。这些服务全都运行在云端。凡是不归微软、Meta、Google 或 Amazon 所有的消费服务，都运行在他们的某朵云上，而其中一部分收入最终会流向微软。
Ben: And increasingly the offline economy is becoming some sort of cloud-dependent service. It’s crazy to just see cars rely on the cloud and restaurants rely on the cloud. Anything that you interface with in the physical world, you expect to have some digital component. At the very least, take credit cards, point of sale systems. All of these things are routed through the cloud at some point.
本：而且离线经济也越来越依赖云服务。看到汽车依赖云、餐馆依赖云，真让人惊叹。现实中的任何事物，如今都被期望具备数字化组件。至少刷信用卡、POS 系统这些最基本的环节，最终都会经过云端。
Ben: David, I think you’re making the same point about the cloud today that I was about Microsoft in the PC era. Microsoft was lucky to own 90% market share, and in cloud they own meaningfully less than that. But it’s still basically a tracker on the growth of an insane secular tailwind that is just an inevitability in the world. It’s probably a 30–40 year wave that they get to keep riding.
本：大卫，我想你今天对云的论述，正如我当年谈微软在 PC 时代的地位。微软当时幸运地拿下了 90% 市场份额，而在云领域份额要小得多。但它依旧在跟随一个疯狂且不可逆转的长期顺风——一个可能持续 30 到 40 年的大浪潮。
David: And again, this is outside the scope of this episode, but it’s sure looking like to the extent AI is the next computing wave that is also happening in the cloud in the data center. That’s just going to turbocharge everything.
大卫：再说一句，这虽然超出本期范围，但如果 AI 真是下一波计算浪潮，它同样发生在云端的数据中心里，这将进一步给一切加速。
Ben: To review how it came to be, interestingly it was Ray Ozzie in an incubation group doing it outside the bounds of the business units.
本：回顾这一切的起点，有趣的是，最初是雷·奥兹在一个孵化组里、跳出各个业务部门框架来做这件事。
David: Beginning in 2006.
大卫：始于 2006 年。
Ben: With Steve’s buy-in and the air cover from Steve to make it happen organizationally. You look at where all the talent came from. Bing taught them how to do distributed systems. Xbox Live was a always-on cloud service, realtime, zero latency with 40 million subscribers. MSN was a super high traffic web property with 750 million registered users. Hotmail was a web application that hundreds of millions relied on. They had SharePoint and Exchange. There was knowledge of how to do server-based application software for the enterprise.
本：得到史蒂夫的认可和保护伞后，他们在组织层面顺利推进。看看这些人才的来源：Bing 教会了他们如何做分布式系统；Xbox Live 是始终在线、零延迟、拥有 4000 万订户的云服务；MSN 是拥有 7.5 亿注册用户的超高流量网站；Hotmail 是数亿人依赖的网络应用；还有 SharePoint 和 Exchange——他们深谙企业级服务器应用软件的开发之道。
There was some conflict business model-wise with Windows Server since Azure would be an orthogonal business model, but the technical chops were there. These are hardcore server OS people. Of course that group is going to be capable of doing things like hypervisors.
确实与 Windows Server 的商业模式存在冲突，因为 Azure 采用了完全不同的模式，但技术实力在那里——这些人都是硬核服务器操作系统专家，搞出 Hypervisor 之类的东西自然不在话下。
I just think the ingredients were remarkably there from all these other things that Microsoft had been doing over the years. They were kind of the only one who could pull this off at this scale with this set of enterprise relationships to migrate all these people to the cloud as they built out the product suite.
我认为，微软多年来在其他领域积累的所有元素恰到好处地汇聚在一起。凭借这一规模的企业关系网，他们几乎是唯一能在打造云产品套件的同时，把这么多客户迁移到云上的公司。
David: Really like we got, I don’t know, halfway-ish through our research for this, and this just hit me of holy crap, this era for Microsoft that everybody thinks of is like the loser era. This is the era where they won or they built the foundation to win.
大卫：说真的，当我们研究到大概一半时，我突然意识到：天哪，大家以为这是微软的“失败时代”，其实这才是他们赢得胜利、或至少奠定胜利基础的时代。
Ben: There was seven years before Steve Balmer handed the reins to Satya where Azure development was happening under him. That is nowhere near the public narrative.
本：在鲍尔默把帅印交给萨蒂亚之前，有整整七年 Azure 都在他的领导下开发，这一点与公众叙事完全不符。
David: And Steve is the one who handpicked Satya to lead it, get all the credit, the narrative, the win, and then become the CEO.
大卫：而且正是史蒂夫亲手挑选了萨蒂亚来领导 Azure，让他赢得所有功劳与口碑，最终成为 CEO。
Ben: Pretty wild.
本：太疯狂了。
David: That is definitely not the public narrative out there.
大卫：这绝不是外界普遍流传的说法。
Ben: I could see if you were an Azure doubter and you were sitting there at the top of Microsoft enjoying the Windows monopoly, the tremendous business that is Windows and Office and thinking, why would I do anything to jeopardize this?
本：我可以理解，如果你是一个 Azure 怀疑论者，身处微软高层、正享受着 Windows 的垄断以及 Windows 和 Office 带来的巨大商业成功，你会想：我为什么要做任何可能破坏这一切的事？
Windows has self-reinforcing network effects everywhere. Huge switching costs for the enterprise. Super profitable, high margin, one of the greatest businesses of all time. Now, there’s this idea that you want me to spend the money to run servers. People can run their own software on my servers, even if it’s open source, so it’s not feeding into my, Windows-centric ecosystem. There’s a chance they’re not paying for Windows licenses.
Windows 在各处都拥有自我强化的网络效应，对企业来说切换成本巨大，利润丰厚、毛利极高，堪称史上最伟大的业务之一。现在却有人让我砸钱去运行服务器，让别人把自己的软件（甚至开源软件）跑在我的服务器上，这并不能反哺以 Windows 为核心的生态，甚至有可能他们不再为 Windows 许可买单。
David: There’s a chance they’re not even paying for my enterprise software services like Exchange or Windows Server or whatever. Like you’re saying, Ben, they might be running Linux on there or my competitor’s products.
大卫：还有可能他们连我的企业级软件服务，比如 Exchange 或 Windows Server 等都不付费。正如你说的，本，他们可能在上面跑 Linux 或竞争对手的产品。
Ben: It’s not even as good a business. It’s not zero marginal costs. Running servers, running these big data centers has huge costs. Even if you say, oh, those are fixed costs to rack them and you amortize them over a course of year, but energy has a real cost. It’s shocking that they eventually did embrace this very unproven new business that could potentially be way worse than their current business.
本：这门生意甚至没那么好做，它不是零边际成本。运营服务器、建设这些大型数据中心成本高昂。即使说机柜等是固定成本，可以按年摊销，但能源是实实在在的费用。令人震惊的是，他们最终居然接受了这种未经验证、可能比现有业务差得多的新模式。
David: Without taking anything away from Satya, because I think he does absolutely deserve a ton of credit for knocking it out of the park on execution, I think all of the credit for the vision for it and the championing it for the initial seven years within Microsoft goes to Steve and to Ray.
大卫：并不是要削弱萨蒂亚的功劳——他在执行层面确实功不可没——但我认为，这一愿景的提出及最初七年在微软内部的推进，都应归功于史蒂夫和雷。
Ben: Yup. Now I will say the company stayed the Windows-centric company for too long.
本：没错。不过我要说，公司在“以 Windows 为中心”的路线上坚持得太久了。
David: Oh, for sure. Yeah, no doubt.
大卫：确实，毫无疑问。
Ben: Azure was being built, so it was successful enough that it erases everything else. A lot of listeners know this. I worked at Microsoft from 2011 to 2014. My internship in 2011 was on the Word web app in the Office 365 Suite, before it was called 365. Then my real job was I worked on, when I came back, Office for iPad, which was super secret at the time.
本：Azure 在那时正被打造，成功到足以掩盖其他一切。很多听众知道，我在 2011 到 2014 年就职于微软。2011 年的实习项目是 Office 365 套件里的 Word Web App（当时还不叫 365），正式入职后，我负责的是真正回归后参与的 iPad 版 Office，当时这是高度保密的项目。
It was really counter strategy because we were the Windows company. But at the same time, what users wanted in this world in 2012 was I want to access my documents on any device that I’m on. We have moved to a world where I have multiple devices, I just want to be able to use your application on my device, please.
这在战略上其实是反常规的，因为我们是一家 Windows 公司。但 2012 年的用户想要的是：我想在任何设备上访问我的文档。如今已是多设备时代，我只想在自己的设备上使用你的应用。
Absolutely 100%, something that happened is all 200 of us worked for multiple years to get these things ready. We had a ship date. Well, we had what we thought was a ship date. Actually what happened was we were told that actually we’re going to shelve it. Instead of a ship party, we had a shelf party because the product got canceled.
可以肯定地说，我们 200 个人花了数年时间把产品准备就绪，还定了发布日期——至少我们以为定了。结果最后通知我们：要搁置。于是没开“发布派对”，而是开了“搁置派对”，因为产品被取消了。
David: Ooh. Oh, that’s brutal. Oh, I’m sorry.
大卫：噢，这太残酷了，真遗憾。
Ben: Canceled.
本：取消了。
David: What timeframe is this?
大卫：这是什么时候的事？
Ben: 2013.
本：2013 年。
David: Okay.
Ben: And basically it was, hey, we just released Windows 8, we just released the Surface, and we want the marketing message for those things to be, that Office is first and best on Windows, and the only tablet in the world that can run real Office is the Surface.
本：基本情况是这样——我们刚发布了 Windows 8，也刚发布了 Surface，我们希望向市场传递的信息是：Office 在 Windows 上率先、表现最佳，世界上唯一能运行完整 Office 的平板就是 Surface。
I of course am too biased and too personal to really think through this, but I was like, oh, this company has its head in the sand. This is ridiculous. What users want is we have a good version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint that people can run on their iPads and we’ve decided not to ship it to try and advantage Surface and other Windows 8 devices.
当然，我的看法难免有偏见，带着个人情绪，但我当时觉得：公司简直固步自封，太荒唐了！用户真正想要的是能在 iPad 上使用优质的 Word、Excel、PowerPoint，而我们却为了给 Surface 和其他 Windows 8 设备抬轿，决定不发布 iPad 版。
A year later, we did ship it, actually right after Satya became CEO. That was one of the first things he did. Ultimately, that decision didn’t happen that much later than it would’ve otherwise, and kind of an open question of whether it was a mistake. Did Microsoft ever lose a dollar for deciding to hold office for iPad another year? Probably not.
一年后，我们确实发布了——就在萨蒂亚成为 CEO 之后，这是他上任后的首批动作之一。结果证明，推迟发布并没有拖太久，也很难说这是错误。微软因为多等一年才推出 iPad 版 Office 而损失过一美元吗？大概没有。
At the time I held this belief, we have stayed the Windows company for far too long and need to embrace users where they are. Now, with all this hindsight, I understand why you wouldn’t make the decision when you feel like the iPad could be the end of you. Why would we go all in on that now and put our finest products to advantage that thing when we don’t know if that thing is going to kill us or not?
当时我坚信，公司过于固守 Windows，需要主动到用户所在的平台上去。现在事后诸葛亮一下，我能理解：如果觉得 iPad 可能终结自己，就不会选择立即投向它。在不确定 iPad 会不会“要你的命”时，为什么要把最好的产品主动拱手送给它？
There’s the big downside. There’s not much upside to launching it. What? Am I going to renew a few more enterprise agreements because of it? Probably not. Perhaps young Ben working at Microsoft at that period of time failed to understand how important it is to think like an incumbent when you are the incumbent. And this was a low upside to doing it right away. Plenty of downsides to doing it right away. Really no risk on sitting on it.
立即发布的潜在收益并不大，也就多续几个企业协议？可能也没有。而我那个时代在微软工作的年轻本，或许没意识到：身为既得利益者，就必须用既得利益者的思维看问题。马上发布收益有限，代价不少，反而按兵不动几乎没有风险。
David: It really did. It was an easy win for Satya during his first year to say culture has changed here. We are shipping Office on iPad.
大卫：的确如此。对萨蒂亚而言，上任第一年就宣布“公司文化已变，我们要在 iPad 上发布 Office”，这是一场轻松的胜利。
Ben: We have shifted from a devices and services company to a cloud-first, mobile-first company. I believe that was the message.
本：我们已从“设备与服务公司”转型为“云优先、移动优先公司”。我想当时传达的就是这个信号。
David: That was the message, and that was the great supporting point to example of the message.
大卫：是的，这就是当时的口号，而 iPad 版 Office 正是对这一转型最有力的注脚。
Well, speaking of transitions and transitioning, I think it is time to wrap up our history of this period of Microsoft and mobile and everything and Steve’s tenure, and talk about Nokia as we end things here.
说到转型，我想该把微软在移动端这一时期的历史、以及史蒂夫任期内的一切收个尾了。最后，我们来聊聊诺基亚。
Ben: Who bought Nokia?
本：是谁买了诺基亚？
David: Oh, that’s a good question. Okay. In 2011, after Microsoft had released this Windows Phone, which like we said was really doomed to fail against Android, like you just couldn’t compete with free. I think Bill Gurley had a blog post about Android back in the day about the less than free business model and why you can’t compete with it.
大卫：好问题。这样吧——2011 年，微软推出 Windows Phone，我们之前说过，它对上免费的 Android 注定失败。我记得 Bill Gurley 当年写过一篇博文，谈到 Android 的“低于免费”商业模式，以及为什么无法与之竞争。
Ben: In fact, it’s not that they were giving away for free. They were willing to pay people to take it. If you think about it, I’m sure there was money that they spent on the Droid marketing campaign. I’m sure there was money that they paid to the carriers to pay to their salespeople, to incentivize people to buy it versus the iPhone in stores. That was a common practice in the mobile industry. I think less than free is actually the correct way to frame Android.
本：实际上他们不只是免费，还愿意“倒贴钱”让你用。想想看，他们肯定砸了不少钱做 Droid 的营销，也肯定向运营商支付补贴，让销售去推销 Droid 而不是 iPhone。这在移动行业是常见做法。我觉得用“低于免费”来形容 Android 的确精准。
David: Totally. There was one phone OEM that was willing to play ball with Microsoft and Windows phone. And that was Nokia.
大卫：完全正确。只有一家手机厂商愿意支持微软的 Windows Phone，那就是诺基亚。
Ben: Well sort of. Nokia basically had Symbian as its OS. They tried to start another OS because Symbian was reaching the end of its life. That wasn’t going well, so they were left without a platform. They either needed to pick Windows Phone or Android as their platform of the future despite being what used to be the dominant phone maker for all cell phones.
本：也算是吧。诺基亚当时的系统主要是 Symbian，但 Symbian 已经走到生命末期，他们尝试开发另一套系统却进展不顺，结果就没有了可用的平台。作为曾经的全球手机霸主，他们只能在 Windows Phone 和 Android 之间选一个作为未来的平台。
David: And the then CEO of Nokia was a guy named Stephen Elop. Folks will almost surely remember that name. He was a former Microsoft guy, and he had come over to run Nokia, so there were deep relationships there.
大卫：当时诺基亚的 CEO 叫斯蒂芬·埃洛普，大家应该都记得这个名字。他之前在微软任职，然后去掌管诺基亚，所以与微软之间关系很深。
In February 2011, Nokia agrees to adopt the Windows Phone operating system as its primary smartphone OS for its devices. Like you said, Ben, it didn’t have a lot of options and it wasn’t willing yet to go Android.
2011 年 2 月，诺基亚同意将 Windows Phone 作为主要智能手机操作系统。正如你所说，本，他们选择余地不大，也还不愿意转向 Android。
愚蠢中带着忠诚，后来很多基于Android的手机都做的很好。
Pretty quickly, though, as we get into 2012–2013, it’s clear Windows Phone isn’t really working and Android is the future.
然而很快，到了 2012–2013 年，大家便看清：Windows Phone 的表现并不好，未来属于 Android。
As we get into 2013, Nokia comes to Microsoft and says, hey, we got to talk. We’re going to go Android unless you make it worth our while, or something happens here and changes, and as Steve put it to us, it was only money.
到了 2013 年，诺基亚找到微软说：我们得谈谈。如果你们不给点诚意，或者没有重大变化，我们就转向 Android。正如史蒂夫对我们说的，这事归根结底只是钱的问题。
Ben: That is actually the right way to think about it. We’ve been joking about it’s only money, but honestly, what was Microsoft’s market cap at this time?
本：其实这样想没错。我们一直在开“只是钱”的玩笑，但说真的，当时微软市值多少？
David: Call it \$300 billion.
大卫：大约 3000 亿美元。
Ben: And what was the forthcoming acquisition offer for Nokia?
本：那微软打算以多少价格收购诺基亚？
David: \$7 billion.
大卫：70 亿美元。
Ben: So that is 2.3% of the company. You’re willing to give up 2.3% of your company for some particular bet. I actually think that’s a very reasonable way to think about this. aQuantive, Skype, which we didn’t talk about, which actually was a pretty good deal especially because of the tax treatment, Yahoo, Facebook, you should think of these things as a percentage of market cap. And sometimes things could go really, really right.
本：也就是说只占公司 2.3%。你愿意拿出 2.3% 的公司市值去下注，我觉得这种思考方式很合理。aQuantive、Skype（凭借税务处理其实挺划算）、雅虎、Facebook——都该按市值百分比来看。有时结果会非常好。
David: It’s even less consequential than that. It’s not even a percentage of market cap at all. Microsoft’s operating income in 2013 was \$27 billion. It’s \$7 billion out of \$27 billion in just cash that they don’t know what to do with and that they aren’t getting credit for.
大卫：影响甚至没那么大，这根本不是市值的问题。2013 年微软经营利润是 270 亿美元，70 亿不过是他们手里不知花向哪、且市场并未给估值的现金。
Ben: Well, but your cash is valued as a part of your market cap.
本：但现金其实也计入市值啊。
David: Sure, but Microsoft stock is in the dumps here. The cash flow geyser is not appreciating the stock price here. Wall Street does not appreciate what’s going on.
大卫：没错，可微软股价当时低迷，现金流“喷泉”并未推高股价，华尔街并不买账。
Ben: It’s funny. I delivered you a technically correct answer and you delivered me back a very pragmatic one.
本：有意思，我给了你一个技术上正确的回答，你回我一个非常务实的答案。
David: Yes, right.
大卫：对，没错。
Ben: Which is, that’s not accruing to your market cap anyway, so you may as well spend it.
本：也就是说，那些钱反正不会计入市值，你干脆花掉好了。
David: And I think it was probably in Steve’s mind here of like, I’m not getting any credit for this, all this cash I’m generating. Eff it.
大卫：我想史蒂夫当时心里大概想的是：“我赚了这么多现金却没人认可，管它呢，花了算了。”
Ben: When it doesn’t cost you focus or your best people or whatever the scarce resources are and it only costs you cash, then you should totally think about it as, am I willing to bet 2.3% of my company or whatever percent of the cash that I’m not getting any credit for if something could go really right? It’s a venture capital bet.
本：当这件事不会占用你的注意力、不耗费最优秀的人才或其他稀缺资源，只是花点现金时，你完全可以这样看：如果事情进展顺利，我是否愿意拿出公司 2.3% 的价值，或那笔根本没被市场认可的现金来下注？这就是一笔风险投资式的赌注。
David: And Nokia is basically holding a gun to my head.
大卫：而且诺基亚基本上是架着枪逼我。
Ben: There’s actual downside to it also.
本：这其中确实也存在真实的风险。
David: There’s actual downside here. So that’s how the deal comes together. It was super controversial within the company and on the board, obviously. At one point, as Satya talks about in the book, there’s a straw poll taken of all the division heads, all the top leaders in the company, whether they’re for or against the acquisition, the majority are against the acquisition. Satya is against the acquisition. The board basically says to Steve clearly there’s not support for this.
大卫：确实有风险。交易就是这样谈成的，在公司内部和董事会都引起了巨大争议。正如萨蒂亚在书中提到的，有一次公司对各业务部门负责人和高层做了非正式表决，看大家是支持还是反对收购，结果大多数人反对，萨蒂亚也反对。董事会于是明确告诉史蒂夫：这笔收购得不到支持。
Ben: My understanding of the timeline is there’s a \$7.5 billion offer on the table. Steve mulls it over, plays with it, is for it, proposes it to the board, and exactly the board comes back and says, hey, there’s not support for this.
本：据我了解的时间线，桌面上有一份 75 亿美元的收购报价，史蒂夫反复斟酌后赞成并提交给董事会，而董事会回话就是：嘿，这事儿没人支持。
David: After that happens, a series of discussions start and culminate. We’re in late summer, early fall 2013 when all this goes down. On August 23rd, 2013, Microsoft and Steve Ballmer announced that he is retiring within the next 12 months, and that the board and the company have started the search for a successor as CEO. That was August 23rd, 2013.
大卫：之后展开了一连串讨论，最终拍板。时间来到 2013 年夏末初秋。2013 年 8 月 23 日，微软与史蒂夫·鲍尔默宣布，他将在 12 个月内退休，董事会和公司已开始寻找下一任 CEO。这是 2013 年 8 月 23 日。
On September 3rd—10 days later—Microsoft agrees to buy Nokia’s mobile unit for \$7 billion. We heard a bunch of different stories. How it went down, we don’t know exactly, but the fact pattern is Steve announced that he was leaving. Ten days later, Microsoft agreed to buy Nokia.
大卫：10 天后的 9 月 3 日，微软同意以 70 亿美元收购诺基亚手机部门。关于过程我们听到很多版本，具体细节不得而知，但事实是：史蒂夫宣布离职，10 天后微软就决定收购诺基亚。
Ben: The question remains, who bought Nokia?
本：问题仍然是：到底是谁买下了诺基亚？
David: We don’t really know. In any event, here’s what happens next. February 4th, 2014, Satya Nadella is introduced as the next CEO of Microsoft. Steve Ballmer steps down. On that same day, Bill also steps down as chairman of the board, and John Thompson becomes chairman of the board. It’s a wholesale changing of the guard within Microsoft, Bill, Steve, the original folks we’re retiring. We’re done, it is a new day, and that needed to happen.
大卫：我们并不真正知道答案。无论如何，接下来的事情是：2014 年 2 月 4 日，萨蒂亚·纳德拉被宣布为微软下一任 CEO，史蒂夫正式卸任。同一天，比尔也辞去董事长，由约翰·汤普森接任。微软内部实现了全面的新老交替，比尔、史蒂夫等元老相继退休，一切翻开新篇章，这是必须的。
The office for iPad discussion we had a minute ago, I think was emblematic. There is truth to what Satya wrote in his book that we said at the very beginning of the episode of, hey, this company culture needed a reset. It’s like a bigger version of Brad Smith’s presentation to the board of it’s time to make peace. It’s time to make peace internally and there just needed to be a reset.
大卫：刚才提到的 iPad 版 Office 讨论，我认为正是一个缩影。萨蒂亚在书中写到、我们在本期一开始引用的那句话确实有道理——公司文化需要重启。这就像布拉德·史密斯向董事会所做的“该和解了”演示的放大版：内部需要达成和解，需要一次彻底重启。
Ben: There was a lot of baggage. It’s just what? Forty years of baggage—Bill, Steve, old wars, antitrust, bad releases of windows. You just got to get it out to move on. It was Bill and Steve leaving in one fell swoop to clear the path.
本：包袱可太多了，对吧？长达四十年的包袱——比尔、史蒂夫、往日恩怨、反垄断官司、糟糕的 Windows 版本。要往前走，就得把这些统统甩掉。于是，比尔和史蒂夫选择一举退场，为公司扫清道路。
David: And at the same time everybody knew, hey, there is a huge win that we are sitting on right here. A huge, huge, huge win in Azure. It is going to be really good for everybody’s personal net worth, if nothing else. If we can just let that be appreciated and let a new day dawn here.
大卫：与此同时，大家都明白，我们脚下正踩着一个巨大的胜利——Azure，真的、非常、极其巨大！即便不谈别的，它也将让所有人的个人财富水涨船高。只要市场认可，微软就能迎来全新的黎明。
On February 4th, 2014, on that day, Microsoft stock price was \$30.50. As we said a minute ago, the market cap was, I don’t know, call it \$300 billion, slightly below. Today, 10 years later…
在 2014 年 2 月 4 日那天，微软股价为 30.50 美元。正如我们刚才说的，市值大概不到 3,000 亿美元。十年后的今天……
Ben: Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is volume three, David. Don’t.
本：哇哇哇，别剧透，大卫。这可是第三卷的内容。
David: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well just to…
大卫：好好好，我只是想……
Ben: Foreshadow.
本：埋个伏笔。
David: Show that this was the right decision. Ten years later, stock is at \$465. Market cap is \$3.5 trillion. Probably, I don’t know, I haven’t done a sum of the parts analysis, but I think you can say probably at least half is Azure propping up that market cap.
大卫：只是想说明当年的决定是正确的。十年后，股价已达 465 美元，市值 3.5 万亿美元。或许吧，我没做分部估值，但至少有一半市值应该归功于 Azure。
Ben: They are currently the most valuable company in the world.
本：微软如今是全球市值最高的公司。
David: The once and future king, Microsoft. That’s our story for part two. We still have a lot to talk about in analysis.
大卫：昔日王者、未来王者——微软。这就是第二部分的故事。接下来分析环节还有很多要聊。
Ben: I’m sure someone’s looking down at their podcast player right now. Like why are they acting like they’re done? There’s so much time after this. Are they just going to like play some music or…
本：我敢说此刻肯定有人低头看播客进度条，心想：他们怎么好像要结束了？后面还有这么长时间，是要放音乐吗，还是……
David: Lots to talk about.
大卫：内容还多得很。
Ben: Okay, I have got some start and finish stats on Steve’s tenure as CEO.
本：好，那我来看看史蒂夫任 CEO 期间的起止数据。
David: Ooh, great.
大卫：哦，太好了。
Ben: This episode we started a little bit before Steve took over because we wanted to put the Internet chapter in and the antitrust chapter in, but I think everyone feels it by this point. The question really is like what happened when Steve was running the company?
本：本期我们从史蒂夫接任前略早的时期讲起，因为要涵盖互联网篇和反垄断篇。到这里大家应该都感受到了，真正的问题是：史蒂夫执掌微软期间发生了什么？
Here are the numbers, and this is the timeframe from 2000 when he was announced as CEO until 2014 was Satya was announced, so a 14-year period. Revenue went from \$23 billion to \$84 billion, that’s a 3.5 over 14 years. Operating income went from \$12 billion to \$30 billion, so almost a 3x. Important to pay attention to is the price-to-earnings ratio. When Steve was announced as CEO was a 75x.
以下是数据：时间跨度从 2000 年他被宣布为 CEO 到 2014 年萨蒂亚上任，共 14 年。营收由 230 亿增长到 840 亿，14 年增长 3.5 倍；营业利润由 120 亿增至 300 亿，接近 3 倍。还有一个重要指标——市盈率。史蒂夫刚上任时，微软市盈率高达 75 倍。
David: That’s high.
大卫：那真是太高了。
Ben: It was real close to an all-time high, which was in the month prior at an 80×. It is worth pointing out, it still has not been that high to this day. Even today with all the excitement around Microsoft, AI, everything going on — 40×.
本：那几乎是历史最高点——就在前一个月，市盈率达到过 80 倍。值得指出的是，到今天都没再回到那个高度。哪怕如今微软因 AI 等各种利好而备受追捧，市盈率也就 40 倍左右。
David: Steve comes in at an all-time high multiple and right before the DOJ verdict and the breakup of the company.
大卫：史蒂夫接任时，估值在历史高位，且正赶上美国司法部裁决、公司面临被分拆之前。
Ben: The dot-com bubble is exploding, and you’re taking over from Bill Gates.
本：互联网泡沫正在崩裂，而你要接替比尔·盖茨掌舵。
David: All the things.
大卫：各种糟心事齐聚一堂。
Ben: Essentially, if you’re doing an analysis of what happened in Steve’s tenure and you’re trying to grade that, you are implicitly saying, did Steve make a good investment? To be honest, I think Steve took one for the team in taking over as CEO in that moment. He was handed a bit of a…
本：本质上，如果你要评估史蒂夫任期的表现，你其实是在问：他做了一笔好投资吗？坦白讲，我觉得当时他接任 CEO 算是为团队扛下了麻烦。毕竟他接手的是一份……
David: Impossible situation.
大卫：几乎不可能完成的任务。
Ben: Garbage sandwich, inheriting something when it is valued that highly.
本：一份“垃圾三明治”——在估值如此高的时候接盘。
David: Not to mention as we talked about during that period, all the frankly shit going on at the company.
大卫：更别提那段时间公司内部还乱成一团，我们刚才也说过了。
Ben: Completely. I worked at Microsoft during this period. I was a big open-source guy. I was a big Apple guy, I was all these things, and I hated Steve’s Windows strategy. Frankly, I didn’t like using any Windows products. I felt like they were all crap. It is still true that it’s totally insane to evaluate how did someone do with an asset that they were forced into buying at 75× earnings.
本：完全同意。我那时候就在微软。我是开源拥趸，也是苹果粉，对史蒂夫的 Windows 战略很反感。说实话，我不喜欢用任何 Windows 产品，感觉都很烂。要衡量一个人如何经营一项以 75 倍市盈率“被迫买入”的资产，本身就是件疯狂的事。
At the end of his term it was 14×, the P/E multiple went from 75× to 14×. The market cap when he was announced went from \$600 billion to when he left at \$330 billion. A lot of that is basically the price-to-earnings multiple rationalizing in that first year. Then after it did that, the stock price was basically flat for his entire tenure, no matter how much the revenue or the profits grew. One crazy stat on this is you could have bought Microsoft in 2009 for 2.1× annual revenue.
到了他任期末，市盈率只剩 14 倍——从 75 倍跌到 14 倍。宣布接任时市值 6,000 亿美元，离任时变成 3,300 亿美元。这主要是上任第一年市盈率回归理性所致。此后无论营收、利润怎么增长，股价基本原地踏步。有个狠数据：2009 年你可以用 2.1 倍年营收的价格买下整家微软。
David: Oh my God. Everything was on sale back then, but wow.
大卫：天哪，当时一切都在大甩卖，但还是令人震惊。
Ben: Listeners, a sleight of hand here. We switched from earnings to revenue. But David, I thought that too. I was like 2009. Come on. In 2013 you could have bought Microsoft stock for 3× revenue.
本：听众们，这里稍微变了下口径，我们从市盈率切换到了市销率。但大卫，我也这么想，2009 年太夸张了吧？可到了 2013 年，你依然能以 3 倍年营收的价格买到微软股票。
David: Oof. Wow.
大卫：哎呀，哇。
Ben: The question is why? Why did investors give Steve zero credit for any of this growth. Cut off that first year when the multiple was coming down. Why is it that effectively what happened from 2001 to 2014 is for any gains that they got in revenue or profits, it was offset by multiple compression coming down and saying the asset’s still worth the same thing?
本：问题是为什么？为什么投资者对史蒂夫取得的增长毫不买账。撇开市盈率回落的第一年不谈，为什么从 2001 到 2014 年，微软收入或利润的任何增长都被估值倍数的下压抵消，结果资产价值看起来还是原地踏步？
One is very legitimately the investors had little belief in Microsoft’s long-term relevance. Not the place for user excitement, not the place for developers. They doubted that there was real vision from leadership.
首先，很合理的一点是，投资者对微软的长期相关性缺乏信心。用户不兴奋，开发者也不兴奋，他们怀疑高层是否真有远见。
You went from Gates, this guy who created it all to someone that everyone was chalking up to be the sales and marketing guy. There are the product strategies all over the place, and Windows isn’t getting any more relevant. They’re trying all these new things that are failing. Search passes you by, social passes you by, blah-blah-blah.
公司从缔造一切的盖茨变成了大家眼中的“销售市场型”掌门。产品策略东一榔头西一棒子，Windows 逐渐失去相关性；他们尝试的新东西频频失败——搜索被超越，社交被超越，等等。
But the interesting thing is investors basically didn’t think Windows and Office businesses were sticky, and they were only valuing the newer bets, which was super wrong. Windows and Office have proven to be these ridiculously durable franchises generating more revenue today than ever.
有趣的是，投资者根本不认为 Windows 和 Office 粘性足，只给新赌注估值——这大错特错。事实证明 Windows 和 Office 极其持久，如今产生的收入比以往任何时候都高。
It is ultimately on the CEO to help shareholders understand where the value is. But shareholders obviously did not price in the retention and growth within the existing Windows and Office customers through a new era of technology. I think people were just betting that Microsoft would lose it and they didn’t. They held onto these durable franchises.
最终，CEO 的职责是让股东明白价值所在。但股东显然没有把新技术时代里 Windows 和 Office 客户的留存与增长计入估值。我想大家当时下注微软会失守，但事实并非如此，他们牢牢守住了这些长寿资产。
David: You know? It’s funny. When you asked this question a minute ago, I hadn’t prepared for it ahead of time because as listeners know, we don’t share notes. The first thing that popped into my mind about why Wall Street did not appreciate the revenue and profit growth during this time was just simply Microsoft did not do a good job telling its story.
大卫：你知道吗？有意思的是，你刚刚问这个问题时我并没提前准备，听众都知道我们不共享笔记。我脑海里蹦出的第一个原因就是：华尔街不认可那段时间营收和利润的增长，只是因为微软没有把故事讲好。
Ben: It was horrible.
本：讲得糟透了。
David: I think you’re saying the same version here. It’s so funny. It’s part of why I love doing Acquired, part of why I think the show resonates with people. Telling stories is the most important thing. If you cannot tell your story right and in a compelling fashion, this is what’s going to happen to your stock price. Even if you triple revenues and profits and build Azure and all these things.
大卫：我觉得你说的其实也是这个道理，太有意思了。这也是我喜欢做《Acquired》的原因之一，也说明了节目能引起共鸣的原因。讲好故事最重要，如果你不能把自己的故事讲得正确而又引人入胜，股价就可能这样——哪怕收入利润翻三倍，Azure 等全线开花也救不了。
Ben: Consumers had no idea what Microsoft’s strategy was and neither did developers, so neither did investors.
本：消费者不知道微软的战略是什么，开发者也不知道，投资者就更不知道。
David: CIOs probably did.
大卫：或许 CIO 们知道。
Ben: Sort of, but they were probably like, what’s going on in search and what’s going on? Sorry, what’s Zune? Is it winning against iPod? What’s losing? Oh, mobile. What’s losing too? Huh?
本：算是吧，但他们恐怕也会想：搜索领域咋样了？呃，Zune 是啥？它赢了 iPod 吗？什么又输掉了？哦，移动也输了吗？嗯？
David: And it’s for another episode, but it really was brilliant what Satya did and the company did when he came in of they got the story right.
大卫：这值得另开一集来谈，不过萨蒂亚上任后与公司一起做的最聪明之处就在于——他们把故事讲对了。
Ben: The messaging reset.
本：信息重置。
David: This is a mobile-first, cloud-first company. That was it. That was the key. Just saying those words over and over and over again.
大卫：我们是一家“移动优先、云优先”的公司——就是这一点，这就是关键。不断重复这句话。
Ben: Anyone who’s listening, who’s a leader at a company right now knows that the right amount of repeating yourself to do is about 10 times more than you think it is. You need to just keep delivering the same message over and over and over again, and that wins.
本：任何正在听节目的企业领导都知道，你认为重复一次就够了，其实要再乘以 10。你必须不断传递同一个信息，才能获胜。
Ben: The other way to look at Steve Ballmer’s tenure is comparing against what else was going on in technology from 2000 to 2014. On the one hand, like we’ve been talking about, you have the rise of Google in search, and you have social networking with Facebook. And yes, you absolutely can compare a CEO to these category-defining startups that are in adjacent fields.
本：评估史蒂夫任期的另一种方式是，与 2000–2014 年科技圈的其他事件做对比。一方面，搜索领域有谷歌崛起，社交领域有 Facebook。当然，你完全可以把 CEO 拿来和这些定义品类的邻近新创公司比较。
Ben: But that’s a little bit of an odd way to evaluate A CEO. They aren’t even really competitors of yours in your exact market. By the way, they created the best businesses in history that were also the fastest growing and capital-efficient. How did you do versus those two particular related outliers? I think this is a funny measure, even though this is the measure we all use.
本：但这其实有点奇怪，他们并不是你所在细分市场的直接竞争对手。而且他们创立的是史上最佳、增长最快、资本效率最高的生意。拿你跟这两个特殊的“离群点”比表现，我觉得这尺度有点搞笑，尽管大家都这么做。
Ben: But if you actually just look at the peer set, what other big companies were there in 2000 and tech? You had Yahoo, AOL, the whole cable and media sector. You had HP, Nortel, so many of the great companies of the previous era completely fell apart. The three who actually survived and potentially thrived were Microsoft, Dell, and only Apple after Microsoft bailed them out and Steve Jobs came back personally.
本：可如果只看同辈公司，2000 年的科技大公司还有谁？Yahoo、AOL、整支有线和媒体板块，HP、北电…… 上一代的很多明星公司全线崩塌。真正存活甚至兴盛的只有微软、戴尔，还有被微软救过并且乔布斯回归后才复活的苹果。
David: I would throw Oracle in there too, but yeah.
大卫：我会把甲骨文也算进去，但你的意思我懂。
Ben: Yeah, Oracle. But, surviving puts you in the top 5% against the pure set of that era. Even if you overlook all the revenue and profit growth and you just look at pure enterprise value and relevance, there is actually a success in that the core asset was preserved.
本：对，甲骨文也算。但能存活下来，就已处于同辈公司中前 5%。哪怕忽略营收和利润增长，只看企业价值和市场相关性，能保护住核心资产本身就是成功。
Ben: This whole notion you have, David, that Satya came in and we were great and then we sucked for a while and then we were great again. Even just setting up, we preserved the talent asset and that we had continuity in our businesses for another 15 years on what is already a 30-year-old business. I don’t know. That’s way better than anybody else does.
本：大卫，你的那个观点——萨蒂亚上任后，我们先伟大、然后低迷一段时间、再度伟大——即便如此，微软也保住了人才资产，让这家已有 30 年历史的公司再延续 15 年。我觉得这比任何其他公司都强。
整体上比苹果的韧性更强一些，苹果如果不是乔布斯回归就完了，微软始终保持了有钱、有人的状态。
David: Totally.
大卫：完全同意。
Ben: Anyway, this is all analyzing the tenure from a business perspective. I am very amenable to the idea that products completely languished. I had no interest in using any Microsoft products during this period.
本：总之，这些都是从商业角度分析他的任期。我完全接受“产品一蹶不振”的观点——那期间我对任何微软产品都没兴趣。
David: Despite being an employee of the company?
大卫：即便你当时是微软员工？
Ben: Yeah. I’m very amenable to arguments of yeah, but they didn’t make anything good.
本：是的。我很能接受“他们没做出好产品”这种说法。
David: And that is I think particularly resonant to me, at least in my history because they used to.
大卫：这一点让我特别有共鸣——至少从我的经历看，因为他们过去可不是这样。
Ben: They totally used to.
本：他们过去确实做得到。
David: They used to be the consumer technology leader. Windows 95, Windows XP, everything we talked about at the beginning of the episode, Internet Explorer, the browser wars, they were the leaders.
大卫：他们曾经是消费科技领域的领军者。Windows 95、Windows XP，还有我们在本期开头谈到的 Internet Explorer、浏览器大战——他们都是行业领袖。
Ben: They did make some good. Xbox is good. I actually thought Windows Phone, particularly Windows Phone 8 was a beautiful new crack at what does a phone look like. I thought it worked well. But I guess what I’m saying is the products that ended up being their big profit drivers were never their good products.
本：他们确实做过一些好东西。Xbox 就不错。我其实觉得 Windows Phone，尤其是 Windows Phone 8，是一次对手机形态的精彩新尝试，用起来也不错。但我想说的是，最终给他们带来最大利润的产品从来都不是这些真正优秀的产品。
David: Well, they were their good products. Just the enterprise products. They weren’t the good consumer products.
大卫：倒也算优秀产品，只是那些是企业级产品，而不是出色的消费级产品。
Ben: They weren’t good for me as a user. They met the needs of customers. All right. Move into analysis.
本：对我这个用户来说它们并不好用，但满足了客户需求。好了，进入分析环节。
David: Great. Let’s do it.
大卫：好的，开始吧。
Ben: Seven powers. Listeners, this is the part of the show, analysis broadly where we analyze the business after we’ve completed the story. The first one is a section called Seven Powers, which is named after Hamilton Helmer’s book.
本：“七种力量”。听众朋友们，这一部分是分析环节——在讲完故事后，我们会对业务进行拆解。第一节叫“七种力量”，名字源自 Hamilton Helmer 的那本书。
The question that he poses is what is it that enables the business to achieve persistent differential returns, or put it another way to be more profitable than their closest competitor and do so sustainably?
书里提出的问题是：究竟是什么让一家公司能够持续获得超额收益？换句话说，如何长期比最接近的竞争对手赚得更多？
There are seven different powers, sort of categories that it can fall into. There’s counter positioning, scale economies, switching costs, network economies, process power, branding, and cornered resource.
他把这种能力分为七类：反向定位、规模经济、转换成本、网络效应、流程能力、品牌力和受限资源。
脑残的分析框架，提出方法的人有没有取得像样的成绩？
David: I think on part one, we said Microsoft in that era had all of these, right?
大卫：我记得在第一部分里，我们说过那一时代的微软这七种力量全都有，对吧？
Ben: I feel like there were one or two that I was shaky on, but most yeah.
本：有一两项我有点拿不准，但大部分确实具备。
David: Well in this era they definitely don’t have counter positioning, that’s for sure.
大卫：而在这个时代，他们肯定没有反向定位，这一点毫无疑问。
Ben: That’s the interesting thing. Once you’re an incumbent, you can almost never have counter positioning.
本：这就有趣了。一旦你成了既得利益者，几乎就不可能具备反向定位。
David: Actually, I would say they had some of it in the development of Azure because they could say to Fortune 500s, we will do hybrid cloud with you and we can be your trusted partner in a way that AWS couldn’t.
大卫：其实在 Azure 的开发过程中，他们多少有点反向定位——他们可以对《财富》500 强说，我们能和你一起做混合云，以 AWS 做不到的方式成为你可靠的合作伙伴。
Ben: Counterposition against AWS, yeah.
本：对，针对 AWS 的反向定位。
David: But broadly as a company, no way.
大卫：但若放眼整个公司，绝对谈不上。
Ben: They were getting counterpositioned in mobile. Google was saying, we’ll give it to you free.
本：在移动端，他们反而成了被反向定位的一方——谷歌说，我们免费给你。
David: Less than free, yup.
大卫：还不到免费，是“低于免费”。
Ben: Perhaps the single greatest asset they have is scale economies with the number of users and customers they have. Any investment that they make gets amortized over such a massive user base that it’s worth it. If they can charge a dollar more on EAs, they should do almost any amount of incremental R\&D or acquisitions.
本：也许他们拥有的最大资产就是规模经济——庞大的用户和客户基数。任何投资摊到如此巨大的用户群上都值得。如果他们在企业协议里能多收一美元，就几乎可以为此投入任何额外的研发或并购成本。
David: And that translates directly into the cloud era too.
大卫：这在云时代同样直接奏效。
Ben: The cloud era even more. I think there are crazy returns to scale on cloud economics.
本：在云时代更是如此。我认为云业务的规模效应带来的回报简直惊人。
David: I think process power, I would argue they actually lost during this era. The Blackcomb, Longhorn, Vista thing illustrates that.
大卫：我觉得“流程能力”这项，他们在这一时期实际上丢失了。Blackcomb、Longhorn、Vista 的经历就说明了这一点。
Ben: They went from knowing how to ship the most beloved operating system of all time with Windows 95, managing to pretty much do it again even during the antitrust thing with Windows XP with I think zero blunders in between. They had ME, but that wasn’t a blunder as much as a, I don’t know, fresh coat of paint that wasn’t really real. Then yeah, with Longhorn and Windows 8, separate problems but completely forgot why those franchises have economic value.
本：他们曾成功推出史上最受欢迎的操作系统 Windows 95，即便在反垄断风波中仍能凭借 Windows XP 再创佳绩，中间几乎没有失误。Windows ME 算不上失误，充其量是一次表面翻新。而到了 Longhorn 和 Windows 8，就出现不同的问题，完全忘记了这些产品线何以具有经济价值。
David: I think they also definitely lost branding power in the consumer world.
大卫：我认为他们在消费领域的品牌力也确实衰退了。
Ben: The question is, did they become more trusted by the enterprise, where if you’re offered the exact same service from Microsoft and AWS, are you more willing to pay Microsoft for it?
本：问题在于，他们是否在企业界赢得了更多信任？如果微软和 AWS 提供完全相同的服务，客户是否更愿意为微软买单？
David: Definitely yes, they gained it in the enterprise world.
大卫：答案显然是肯定的——在企业领域他们确实赢得了信任。
Ben: Microsoft has unbelievable switching costs. The EA, you just can’t switch now. You have to switch sometime in the future. Then that time comes, you’re probably not going to switch then either because the next EA is going to offer even more value.
本：微软的转换成本高得惊人。企业协议让你现在根本换不了，将来也很难换。等到期限到了，你大概率还是不会换，因为下一份企业协议能提供更高的价值。
David: It’s funny to the extent that the DOJ and governments were concerned about Microsoft being a monopoly when it came to product tying on the consumer side. They really should have been concerned about product tying.
大卫：有趣的是，司法部和政府当年担心微软在消费端绑定产品构成垄断，其实真正该担心的也是这种绑定——
David: On the enterprise side where you pay us a dollar amount per device on your network and you get all of our software, for sure there would be way better point solution software for any one of the hundreds of things that Microsoft is providing for you, but there’s no way you’re going to switch.
大卫：在企业端，你按网络中每台设备向我们付费，就能获得我们所有软件。市面上当然有一些在某个点功能更好的替代品，但你根本不可能为了它们而更换整套系统。
Ben: You’re so right. It’s so funny you reflected it back to the DOJ. It’s been so long now since we covered that hours ago. I forgot about it. In that era, there were literal switching costs to getting a different browser. The one that came with your computer was the one you were going to use because a different browser was going to take 5–24 hours to download over your internet connection in the dialup days. It was good for consumers to receive a browser with their computer because getting another one was almost prohibitively difficult.
本：你说得太对了。真有意思，你又把话题拉回司法部。我们几个小时前讲到那个时代时，我都快忘了。在拨号上网的年代，换浏览器真的有转换成本——电脑自带什么，你就用什么，因为下载另一个浏览器得花 5 到 24 小时。电脑预装浏览器对消费者是好事，否则换一个难如登天。
Ben: Network economies, it’s actually a little thin.
本：至于网络效应，这方面其实有点弱。
David: They had the great network economies with Windows that we talked about last time, but that starts to erode here.
大卫：我们上次说过，Windows 拥有强大的网络经济效应，但在这里这种效应开始被削弱。
Ben: As interoperability becomes a thing, as file format standardized and I can open the same documents on Macs and PCs. It’s like, okay, file formats stop being a network economy that accrues only to the operating system.
本：随着互操作性成为常态、文件格式被标准化，我可以在 Mac 和 PC 上打开同样的文档。也就是说，文件格式不再是只对操作系统有利的网络经济来源。
I’m trying to think. Are there any other, like if you are an enterprise and become a Microsoft customer, and I’m an enterprise and I become a Microsoft customer, do we really benefit from each other being?
我在想，还有别的例子吗？比如你是一家企业成了微软客户，我也是一家企业成了微软客户，我们彼此之间真的能因为对方也是微软客户而获益吗？
David: I don’t think so.
大卫：我觉得不会。
Ben: I don’t either. That just leaves cornered resource. No, I don’t think they have that meaningfully.
本：我也不这么认为。那只剩受限资源这一项了，但我觉得他们并没有真正具备。
David: No, I don’t think so.
大卫：是的，我也不这么认为。
Ben: The fact that we came up with, they don’t really counter position, they have great scale economies, they have a lot of switching costs, and that’s it, that’s pretty illustrative of why you feel like this is the lost era of Microsoft.
本：我们总结发现，他们并没有真正的反向定位，只是拥有巨大的规模经济和高昂的转换成本，仅此而已——这很好地说明了为什么你会觉得这是微软的“失落时代”。
David: And I think it also illustrates that sounds like an enterprise company to me.
大卫：我也认为，这听起来更像是一家典型的企业级公司。
Ben: Yup. Okay, playbook?
本：好的，那么，行动手册？
David: Playbook.
大卫：行动手册。
Ben: The first one that talks to mind that I want to address a little bit more specifically is this idea of a cultural shift. Because we’ve mentioned it many times on the episode. Oh, with the DOJ there was a cultural shift. Oh, with the new leadership there was a culture shift. But what does that actually mean and how do you go about quantifying that?
本：我最先想到、想要更具体讨论的，是“文化转变”这个概念。我们在节目里多次提到它：司法部事件带来了文化转变，新领导层上任也带来了文化转变。但这到底意味着什么？我们要如何量化它？
The thing that I kept hearing in all the research interviews we were doing was that when the stock price was flat and flat for a long time, people became convinced it’s just going to stay flat. Basically, whatever the cause of that was, it created a zero-sum environment. Nothing I do is going to make the company more valuable. Therefore my value, the only way to grow value accruing to me is to win at the expense of someone else at this company.
在我们做的所有调研访谈中，我不断听到这样一种说法：当股价长期横盘，人们就确信它只会继续横盘。不管原因是什么，这都会造成零和环境——我做什么都无法让公司更有价值，于是要提高自身价值，唯一办法就是以牺牲同事为代价赢过他们。
I’m going to get promoted over them, my product’s going to eat their product, my team’s going to eat their team. I get kudos and at the expense of them looking like an idiot. That’s the incentive.
我要升职超过他们，我的产品要吞掉他们的产品，我的团队要吃掉他们的团队。于是我得奖，他们看起来像傻子——这就是激励机制。
David: This is the cartoon org chart of all divisions of Microsoft pointing guns at one another?
大卫：这就是那幅著名的微软组织结构漫画——各部门互相拿枪指着对方？
Ben: Right. And of course it’s amplified by stack ranking, which I don’t have a problem with stack ranking generally, but famously at the company, everybody was ranked one to five. Every manager was only allowed so many ones and so many twos. Ultimately, it was an environment where everyone, every 6 or 12 months, sometimes there were midyear check-ins was being baked off against your immediate peers in your group. And because the company wasn’t growing in value, you had to outcompete your friends to win.
本：没错。而且这种情况被“强制分级”放大了。我对分级本身没意见，但公司里人尽皆知的做法是，所有人被评为 1 到 5 级，每位经理只能给出有限的 1 和 2。结果就是每 6 个月或 12 个月，甚至有时年中还会复盘，大家都要和同组伙伴比个高下。由于公司价值不增长，你只能击败朋友才能取胜。
David: The pie was not growing.
大卫：蛋糕并没有变大。
Ben: So why was the pie not growing? We talked a lot about that. There are a lot of reasons. You could argue why it wasn’t, but the culture is an effect of that.
本：那为什么蛋糕没变大？我们讨论过很多次，原因很多，可以各执一词。但文化正是这种状况的结果。
There’s a big one I’ve been thinking on, which is how to go about placing your bets for the future as a company. I think in the 2000s, Microsoft was viciously trying to fight against the tide. There was open source, there was the web, there was all these things people wanted to do.
我最近一直在想一个大问题：公司应该如何为未来下注？我认为 2000 年代的微软极力逆势而行——有开源、有互联网，还有用户想做的各种事情。
Ultimately, over time, you cannot fight what people want to do as a company. You can put up all these barriers, you can steer them back into your ecosystem. But ironically, the playbook that Satya is now running is a return to a classic Microsoft one—embrace and extend.
归根结底，公司无法长期对抗用户真正想做的事。你可以设置重重壁垒，把他们拉回自家生态。但讽刺的是，萨蒂亚现在采用的策略，恰恰回归了微软经典的“拥抱并扩展”手册。
Rather than fight what users are doing—I want to use open source software, whatever. I want to make web apps, I want to host a web app—you just figure out what people want, you embrace it, and then you figure out what product you can build with a business model that extends that existing user behavior. But it does require you to be clever and outcompete a lot of other people to invent that new business model that is created on top of new user behavior.
与其抗拒用户行为——“我就想用开源软件”“我想做 Web 应用、托管 Web 应用”——不如先了解他们想要什么，然后拥抱它，再思考在这种现有行为之上，如何构建产品和商业模式来扩展它。但这需要你足够聪明，要胜过众多竞争者，去发明那种建立在新用户行为之上的新商业模式。
David: I just want to double underline and highlight this one because I think also this same dynamic played out in the building and evolution of Microsoft’s enterprise business. Really IT just wanted to control the network and prevent users from messing it up.
David：我想在这一点上再三强调，因为我认为这种动态同样出现在微软企业业务的建设和演进过程中。事实上，IT 部门只是想控制网络，防止用户把它搞乱。
Eventually when the iPhone came out, that dam broke and IT could no longer hold back users within their company from doing what they want and having what they wanted.
后来，当 iPhone 横空出世时，这道堤坝被冲垮，IT 部门再也无法阻止公司内部的用户去做他们想做、得到他们想要的东西。
This is where the shift to the cloud was another reason it was so strategically important. Shifting to the cloud is what enabled IT to say okay and become a partner to their users in a way that they paid lip service too before but they were really antagonistic to their users. And it works exactly with what you’re saying for Microsoft as a company and its products too. You want to use an iPhone? Great. You want to use open source? Great. We can still serve you.
这也是转向云端为何在战略上如此重要的另一个原因。迁移到云端让 IT 能够说“好吧”，以一种以前只流于口头、实际上对用户颇为敌视的方式，真正成为用户的合作伙伴。这也与您所说的微软及其产品的定位完全契合：你想用 iPhone？没问题。你想用开源？也没问题。我们照样可以服务你。
Ben: The trick is figuring out how to make money when you lean into what people want. Because ultimately, if you just reduce it all to economics, what people want is free value, but you can’t actually build a business on giving away free value.
Ben：关键在于，当你迎合人们的需求时，怎样才能赚钱。因为归根结底，如果只从经济学角度简化，人们想要的是免费的价值，可你没法靠免费价值来建立一门生意。
I can give you \$1 for 90¢, but ultimately I’m just going to go out of business. I need to figure out some way that you’re happy from value creation and willing to pay me more than it costs me them.
我可以用 90 美分给你 1 美元的价值，但最终我只能破产。我得想办法让你对创造的价值感到满意，并愿意支付高于我的成本的价格。
David: Anyway, the trick is getting the business model right.
David：总之，关键在于把商业模式做对。
Ben: There’s this other one of what was going on, given that the ideas were good. This is going to sound harsh, but timing, implementation, and taste at Microsoft from, call it Windows 98 on, were just terrible. Or maybe put another way they had the right ideas, but late timing and bad execution. Strategically correct, but tactically misguided.
Ben：另外一件事是，虽然点子很好，但当时发生的事情——这听起来苛刻——从 Windows 98 起，微软在时机、实施和品味上都糟透了。换句话说，他们有正确的想法，却行动得太晚，执行得太差。战略方向正确，但战术失误。
Bill was super right that touch computing was going to be a thing. He referred to this idea of a natural user interface very often. Bill was super right that interactive TV was going to be a thing. Think about how I watch Netflix. I will watch Netflix tonight after we record on my Apple TV upstairs. Bill was right on mobile, that that was going to be a huge part of the computing landscape.
比尔非常正确地预见到触控计算会成为趋势。他经常提到“自然用户界面”这一概念。比尔同样准确地预见到交互式电视会出现。想想我看 Netflix 的方式吧。今晚录完节目后，我会上楼用 Apple TV 看 Netflix。比尔还在移动领域押对了宝，认为移动会成为计算版图中的重要组成部分。
Yet all of these started at Microsoft 5–20 years before the tech was actually ready, and they would often bet on the wrong standard or paradigm. Touch computing ended up being capacitive, not resistive with a stylus. Tablets have proven to be a cousin of phones scaled up, not PCs scaled down. Interactive TV came after the Internet, not before.
然而，上述所有项目在微软启动时，技术真正成熟还需要 5–20 年，他们常常押错了标准或范式。触控计算最终采用电容式，而不是配手写笔的电阻式。事实证明，平板电脑是放大版的手机，而不是缩小版的 PC。交互式电视是在互联网之后才出现，而不是之前。
Only once there was a tremendous amount of bandwidth. Think about how much more bandwidth it consumes for all of us to ad hoc start Netflix streams versus there’s one broadcast happening and we all just tune in when we tune in and we just catch whatever part of the broadcast is over anyway.
只有在带宽极其充裕之后，交互式电视才成真。想想看，我们临时开启 Netflix 流媒体会消耗多少带宽，而传统广播只需要一次播出，我们各自调到频道就行，即便只看到剩余部分也无妨。
David: Not to mention interactive TV looked like YouTube and Netflix and not like a layer on top of Comcast.
David：更不用说，交互式电视最终看起来像 YouTube 和 Netflix，而不是叠加在 康卡斯特 之上的一层。
Ben: Totally. Mobile was five years early and it was more akin to embedded devices than it was to scale down PC OS. Something was off in Microsoft’s ability to leverage their future predicting into creating the right products. Which is weird because historically they had been good at it.
Ben：完全同意。微软的移动战略早了五年，更像是嵌入式设备而不是缩小版的 PC 操作系统。微软虽然能预见未来，却没能把这种预见转化成合适的产品，这很奇怪，因为历史上他们在这方面一直做得不错。
Well they at least employed the, one Microsoft employee referred to it as bracketing. You basically develop two products concurrently, one aimed below what the current technical capabilities are and one aimed above. As you get closer to shipping or as you get closer to letting the market play out, you pick whether you’re going to make the low end one better or you’re going to start reducing functionality of the high end one.
至少他们用过一种微软员工称为“包围式（bracketing）”的方法。基本做法是并行开发两款产品，一款低于当前技术上限，另一款高于上限。临近发布或市场成熟时，再决定是提升低端产品，还是削减高端产品的功能。
In the IBM days, you had Windows and OS/2. In the Internet era you had the web browser versus all the interactive TV stuff. Or Longhorn which was supposed to be little and iterative versus Blackcomb, which was so ambitious it actually got canceled.
在 IBM 时代，有 Windows 与 OS/2 并行；在互联网时代，有网页浏览器与各种交互式电视项目并行；又比如原本应该小步迭代的 Longhorn 与雄心勃勃却最终被砍的 Blackcomb。
跟很多人的投资组合一样，说到底是碎片化的脑子，巴菲特要求80%的资金放在前5个项目是防止碎片化的策略。
David: The problem was during this era that optionality in multiple bets collapsed down to now we’re going to make one bet in each of these.
David：问题在于，这个时期多重押注的可选性崩塌成了每条赛道只押一个注。
Ben: Or the bets somehow couldn’t continue to flourish internally. I don’t really know why, but it seems like for some reason bracketing worked well for a while, and then eventually their ability to take a good idea and implement it at the right time, the right way fell apart.
Ben：或者说这些押注在内部无法持续发展。我也说不清原因，但似乎包围式策略奏效了一段时间，随后他们把好点子在合适时机以正确方式落地的能力就崩盘了。
My next one is the idea of positive sum leadership. This one’s a little bit more personal than our playbook themes typically are, but I think it’s an important takeaway. Bill Gates plus Steve Balmer in the right roles with the right level of respect for each other and who made which decisions when that was all humming, that was way more valuable than Bill alone or Steve alone. It was like one plus one equals five.
下一个主题是“正和型领导”。这比我们常说的策略话题更偏个人，但我认为非常重要。当比尔·盖茨和史蒂夫·鲍尔默各居其位、相互尊重、分工明晰时，其价值远超两人单打独斗，简直是一加一大于五。
David: They were so great together.
David：他们配合得太棒了。
Ben: This is actually pretty common among teams that most high performing teams are so much better together than they could possibly be apart.
Ben：事实上，这在团队中很常见。大多数高绩效团队的合力远强于成员单独行动。
David: Well hell look at you and me, right?
David：呃，看看你我不就是例子吗？
Ben: I totally agree. I was going to make that analogy but it’s too much \[...].
Ben：完全同意。我本来也想拿我们来打比方，但那就太……
David: There is no way we could do this on our end. Too much navel gazing, but yes,
David：我们单独做绝对不可能。自我剖析太多了，但没错，
Ben: Bill alone, at least in this era, was totally at risk of getting too excited about theoretical technologies like WinFS. That’s the perfect illustration of this. Steve needs a great technology partner and one who has the extreme loyalty of the thousands of brilliant engineers at the company. They’ll align and follow the vision.
Ben：就至少在那个时期而言，仅靠比尔本人完全有可能过度沉迷于像 WinFS 这类理论性技术。这正是这一点的最佳例证。史蒂夫需要一位出色的技术伙伴，而且这位伙伴必须能赢得公司数千名才华横溢工程师的高度忠诚，让他们同心协力追随共同愿景。
Steve also needed someone willing to change their mind in the face of new data. Bill was constantly processing new information and as new things came in, he would say, I don’t care how in motion things are, if you’re right—which is rare, usually Bill’s right—and you’re arguing something to me like screw it, we got to change everything. New data, new thing. The Internet Tidal Wave.
史蒂夫还需要一个能够面对新数据时愿意改变观点的人。比尔持续不断地处理新信息，一旦出现新情况，他会说：“我不管当前进程推进到哪一步，如果你是对的——虽然这种情况不常见，通常是比尔对——那就全盘推翻重来。新数据，新方案。”正如那封《互联网浪潮》备忘录所示。
Steve was much more like we have to align an entire aircraft carrier in the company and then all the aircraft carriers outside the company. We are going to make a decision and that we are going to implement and execute. I think together there was some magic where there was just the right amount of sticktoitiveness versus adaptability.
而史蒂夫更像是在说，我们必须让公司这艘航母及其外围所有航母都对齐航向；一旦做出决定，就要执行到底。我认为两人合作时，恰到好处地结合了毅力与适应性，产生了神奇的化学反应。
My next one is being extremely partner-focused is a gift and a curse. Microsoft is an extremely partner-oriented company. There are far more profits who have accrued to Microsoft’s independent software vendors, resellers, retail partners than just to Microsoft itself. But it basically makes it impossible to reset.
我接下来想说的是，极度以合作伙伴为中心既是福也是祸。微软是一家高度合作伙伴驱动的公司，微软的独立软件开发商、经销商和零售伙伴们赚到的利润远超微软自身。但这几乎让微软无法按下“重启”键。
Apple, when jobs came back, hit a full reset. All new developer tools, all new products, all new software, all new platforms. But when you have all these externalities depending on you, you actually can’t really hit a reset button to adapt for a new era. You have a whole ecosystem to preserve. I think this is the more nuanced view of the idea that well if you miss one wave then you’re actually well suited for the next wave.
乔布斯回归苹果时，彻底重启了一切：全新的开发工具、全新的产品、全新的软件、全新的平台。但当你有这么多外部利益相关者依赖你时，你实际上很难按下重启键来适应新时代，因为你需要维护整套生态系统。我认为，这才是“错过一波反而更适合下一波”这一观点的细致解读。
People often say the only reason Apple was able to win in mobile is because they totally lost in desktop or whatever. I think really what the answer is, the more externalities you have depending on you, the more difficult it is to reset, and usually a next generation…
人们常说，苹果之所以能在移动端取胜，仅仅因为他们在桌面端彻底失败。我认为真正的答案是：外部依赖越多，想要重启就越难，而下一代技术往往……
David: The more switching costs you have.
David：切换成本越高。
Ben: Right. A next generation technology requires you to hit a big reset button. That’s all I had for my playbook.
Ben：没错。下一代技术往往需要按下一个彻底重启的大按钮。我的心得就这些。
David: Great. I have just one big one, but I’m going to save it for takeaway and landing the plane.
David：很好。我还有一个重要观点，但我想留到总结收尾时再说。
Ben: Let’s do that now. Listeners, we’ve been trying out this new way of ending episodes. How do we land the plane? What is the one takeaway that is really sitting with me after having done all this research, talked through it with David, hardened our thinking by bouncing ideas off of each other, what is the thing that you can’t get out of your mind?
Ben：那就现在来吧，听众朋友们，我们一直在尝试一种新的节目收尾方式。如何让飞机顺利降落？在完成所有研究、与 David 讨论、互相碰撞想法、不断打磨思考之后，有哪一条核心收获始终萦绕在我脑海中，令我无法忘怀？
David: For me, this only came to me just a few minutes ago, but I think is the right and most complete version of what I’ve been been feeling about this part of the Microsoft story for a long time since we’ve been doing the research, and the feeling started with as we were talking to people and digging in, we were just like, this story is not understood right. This narrative about these were the losing years of Microsoft. Yes, there were a lot of Ls during this time, but that’s not complete by any stretch of the imagination.
David：对我来说，这个想法就在几分钟前才浮现，但我认为它最准确、最完整地表达了我长期以来对微软这段历史的感受。我们做研究、采访他人时就发现，这段历史一直被误解。外界常说这几年是微软的“失利期”，没错，当时确实有很多失败，但绝不是全貌。
As we were preparing, I really felt a lot of weight on this one of like man, we really have a responsibility to try and get this right here. I think what I realized a few minutes ago as we were talking is this was the biggest failure of the company during this period. They did not tell their story right. So much of what we think of as the losses from this timeframe and certainly everything baked into the stock price not moving was because of that.
在准备节目的过程中，我深感肩负重任：我们必须把这件事讲清楚。我刚刚意识到，这段时期微软最大的失败就是没有把自己的故事讲好。我们今日视为“失利”的许多事件，以及股价长期原地踏步，很大程度上都源于此。
Yes, Steve came to the CEO role at an all time high multiple, it was the tech bubble and all that stuff. Sure, that’s a big thing. But why did the stock price stay in the 30s for his whole tenure? They just couldn’t tell the story right. There are all sorts of reasons for that, but the story does not have to be so negative because there is so much positive that happened during this time, and yet the narrative became this self-reinforcing Microsoft sucks narrative.
没错，史蒂夫接任 CEO 时市盈率处于历史高位，又赶上科网泡沫，这当然影响巨大。但为何他任内股价始终徘徊在 30 多美元？就是因为他们没能把故事讲好。原因固然很多，但这段时光并非一无是处，发生了许多积极事情，可叙事却自我强化为“微软不行”。
Ben: Irrelevant, failing, can’t do consumer. The counterfactual is Amazon. If they had a consistent message that they went forward with such as, we are a company who invents and wanders. Amazon has failed at so many things.
Ben：被视为边缘化、失败、做不好消费业务。反例是亚马逊——如果微软当时也能持续地传递一个清晰信息，比如“我们是一家发明并探索的公司”，也许情况会不同。亚马逊也失败了很多项目。
David: So many things.
David：太多了。
Ben: Publicly huge bets that have totally failed and yet—
Ben：公开的大赌注，彻底失败，却依然——
David: Huge consumer failures. The phone.
David：在消费领域大败，比如手机。
Ben: People are like, what a beautiful thing that Jeff Bezos has imbued into this company. This idea that we invent and wander, we make these bold bets, we embrace failure. Kindle Fire or I guess Kindle Fire counts, certainly the phone.
Ben：但公众却说，杰夫·贝索斯为公司注入了多美好的精神——发明与探索、勇敢下注、拥抱失败。Kindle Fire——姑且算成功吧——但手机绝对失败。
微软、Google、亚马逊都是没有品味只懂抄袭的企业，但亚马逊更愿意承认自己的不足，专注于抄袭，微软和Google不怎么认同自己的本质，很容易跳出自己的能力圈。
David: At this point I feel like standing here today we can say Alexa.
David：到今天我觉得还可以把 Alexa 算进去。
Ben: Maybe if LLMs hadn’t become a thing I’d be with you. It turns out it might be good distribution for a good LLM if they actually—
Ben：如果没有大语言模型的兴起，我可能同意。没准 Alexa 还能成为 LLM 的良好分发渠道，如果他们真能——
David: Yes, sure. But the thing itself anyway.
David：是，当然。但就 Alexa 本身而言嘛。
Ben: It’s an option on LLMs.
Ben：算是押注 LLM 的期权吧。
David: There are so many. There’s too many to count.
David：类似的例子太多，多到数不过来。
Ben: There’s grocery, Amazon Go, local, all the restaurant stuff, it’s a narrative problem.
Ben：还有生鲜、Amazon Go、本地业务、各种餐饮项目，这都是叙事问题。
David: And yet the narrative about Amazon is what a beautiful thing Jeff imbued in the company. And the narrative about Microsoft was they can’t get anything right.
David：然而关于亚马逊的叙事是：杰夫为公司注入了多么美好的文化；而关于微软的叙事却是：他们什么都做不好。
Ben: Yup, you’re right. I think yours is better than mine. Now that’s my new land the plane. Do you want to hear what mine was before?
Ben：是的，你说得对。我觉得你的总结比我的好。现在这就是我新的收尾方式。想听听我之前的想法吗？
David: Yeah. Tell me what was on your mind?
David：好啊。跟我说说你之前在想什么？
Ben: All right. Ultimately Bill Gates is right. Technology companies are always extremely at risk of disruption. Even if you won the battle today, even if you’re the most dominant company today, it is so easy for you to lose and become irrelevant tomorrow.
Ben：好的。归根结底，比尔·盖茨是对的。科技公司始终极易遭到颠覆。即便你今天赢得了战斗，即便你今天是最具支配地位的公司，明天也很可能迅速失去领先地位、变得无关紧要。
You may keep a great business because these things are sticky. As we know, IBM made a lot of money for a long time. But even without the whole DOJ thing, Microsoft probably would’ve visited themselves. Microsoft almost certainly would’ve missed mobile because there’s no chance they would’ve realized that the business model that Google had meant that they were going to win in mobile when they came in from the side and gave away the software for less than free. Microsoft was going to have these huge downstream misses because technology moves so fast and is such a dynamic landscape.
你或许能维持一家出色的业务，因为这些业务具有黏性。正如我们所知，IBM 曾长期赚取巨额利润。但即便没有美国司法部那一摊子事，微软大概率也会自曝其短。微软几乎肯定会错过移动浪潮，因为他们不可能意识到，谷歌那种“低于免费”赠送软件的商业模式将让谷歌在移动端取胜。由于技术演进如此迅速而且充满变数，微软在下游终将遭遇这些重大错失。
David: I think this is why I feel so adamant that Microsoft during this era, and Steve deserves so much more credit than they get because Microsoft is not IBM today. It is not large but irrelevant. It is very relevant. And what they have done with Azure and in cloud and now with AI is, hell, they’re the most valuable company in the world.
David：这也是为什么我如此坚定地认为，在那个时代微软以及史蒂夫理应获得远超现在的赞誉。今天的微软并不是一个“大而无当”的 IBM，而是仍具关键影响力的公司。他们在 Azure、云计算以及如今 AI 领域的成就——天哪——让他们成为了全球市值最高的企业。
Ben: If all this era did was give them a free option to play in the cloud and AI era or even just say the AI era, that would’ve been great. But also what they did was they tripled revenue and profits.
Ben：如果那段时期仅仅给了他们一个在云和 AI 时代（甚至只说 AI 时代）下注的免费期权，那已经非常了不起。更何况他们还把营收和利润提升了三倍。
David: Yeah, they did that while building this whole new great business.
David：没错，他们在打造这项全新且卓越的业务的同时完成了这一切。
Ben: It’s a great takeaway. Carve outs?
Ben：这是个绝佳的结论。接下来聊“Carve outs”？
David: Let’s do it. Okay, I have two hardware technology products. One is a re-carve out from you, past carve out. The RayBan Metas. Finally got a pair. They’re great, they’re awesome. The use case of the audio, ambient audio in my ears without earbuds is great, particularly for a baby monitor when I am talking to my wife or other family members or friends or whatnot, and I want to be able to hear what is going on in the baby crib and not wear earphones in my ears. That is great. They’re also just a great product in general.
David：来吧。我这次有两个硬件科技产品推荐。第一个是你之前提到过的 Ray-Ban Meta 智能眼镜，我终于入手了一副，真的非常棒。它的音频功能尤为出色——无需入耳耳机即可在耳边播放环境音。比如我与妻子或家人朋友交谈时，可以同时监听婴儿监视器里婴儿床的动静而不用戴耳机，非常方便。此外，这也本身就是一款极佳的产品。
Another related hardware carve out is a startup called Oslo and the Oslo Sleep Buds. In the last couple of years I have slowly and then pretty much every night gotten into using some form of audio to help fall asleep, or if I wake up in the middle of the night, get back to sleep. I used AirPods for years and years and they’re great, but if you sleep on your side or do anything you know you got the AirPod jamming into your ears. These are little sleep buds that are made for sleeping. If you lie on your side, on your ear, they don’t stick out, so you can lie.
另一个相关硬件推荐是一家名为 Oslo 的初创公司推出的 Oslo Sleep Buds。过去几年里，我逐渐养成了每晚用音频辅助入睡、或半夜醒来再度入睡的习惯。我多年一直用 AirPods，它们确实不错，但侧睡时耳朵会被压痛。Sleep Buds 是专为睡眠设计的小耳塞，侧睡时它们不会突出耳廓，能让你安心躺下。
Ben: Oh, text me a link. I’m buying this immediately.
Ben：哦，把链接发给我。我立刻下单。
David: Yeah, they’re great. This is the team that was at Bose that made the Bose, I don’t even know what the product was called, but Bose had this product. They killed it. The team left, started a startup, so it’s all Bose engineering. Anyway, it’s great. I love them.
David：对，真的很棒。做这款产品的是原 Bose 团队，当年他们开发过 Bose 的某款产品，后来被砍掉。团队离开后创办了这家公司，因而整套工程水准都延续了 Bose 的品质。总之，非常好用，我很喜欢。
Ben: I’m buying this as soon as we get off.
Ben：节目一结束我就立刻买。
David: They’re fantastic.
David：真的非常好。
Ben: Awesome. I have two and they’re the most absolutely basic products of all time, and I’m okay with that. The first I mentioned earlier, M3 MacBook Air. It’s the finest computer I’ve ever owned, which I say every time I get a new Mac.
Ben：太棒了。我有两个产品，而且它们绝对是有史以来最基础的产品，我对此完全没有意见。我之前提到过第一个，M3 MacBook Air。这是我拥有过的最好的电脑——每次换新 Mac 我都会这么说。
David: If only you could turn it around and touch the screen.
David：要是你能把它翻过来触摸屏幕就好了。
Ben: I know. I’m rocking the M1 MacBook Pro at home. It’s a 16-inch and gosh that thing is just a beast to fly with. For all the travel we’ve been doing recently, David, it has been awesome to have this incredibly lightweight, incredibly fast, just beautiful machine for flights and all sorts of travel stuff.
Ben：我知道。我在家用的是 M1 MacBook Pro，16 英寸的，那玩意儿坐飞机简直就是庞然大物。最近我们旅行这么多，David，能有这台超轻、超快、外观漂亮的机器在飞机上和各种旅行场景使用，真是太棒了。
David: Nice.
David：不错。
Ben: So it’s my on the go. Then sticking with this theme of staying incredibly basic and predictable, the Tesla model Y is an awesome car.
Ben：所以这是我的出行设备。继续保持极度基础且可预期的主题，特斯拉 Model Y 是一辆很棒的车。
David: Oh yes, that’s right. You are finally doting the club.
David：哦对，对的。你终于加入俱乐部了。
Ben: We just took a weekend and drove up to Orcas Island, and it was so sweet. I never once charged it, drove multiple hours, took a ferry, we’re on an island that’s sparsely populated, hung out for the weekend, drove all over the island, did the whole thing back, got back with 18% battery.
Ben：我们刚花了一个周末开车去了奥卡斯岛，旅程太甜蜜了。我一路都没充电，开了好几个小时，还坐了渡轮。我们在一个人口稀少的岛上，周末四处闲逛，开遍整个岛，原路返回时电量还有 18%。
David: And had you needed to charge it, there’d be a supercharger network.
David：如果你需要充电，还有超级充电网络。
Ben: Yeah. it’s unbelievably fast and fun to drive. I finally get the, it’s an iPhone with wheels. Whenever I drive my other car, it feels icky and this one feels clean.
Ben：是啊，开起来快得难以置信，也很有趣。我终于明白了，这就是一台有轮子的 iPhone。每当我开另一辆车时都会觉得黏腻，而这辆车让人感觉干净。
David: It’s perfect.
David：完美。
Ben: Yeah, it’s amazing. I get it. I get it Tesla people.
Ben：是的，太惊艳了。我懂了，我懂你们特斯拉粉。
David: All right. We got a lot of thank yous here.
David：好了，我们要感谢很多人。
I was trying to count, David. It’s definitely over 20 people that we talked with this time. On my end, thanks so much to Brad Silverberg. Brad led Windows for a while, notably the development of the Windows 95 product and that team.
我刚才在数，David。这次我们谈过的人绝对超过 20 位。就我这边，非常感谢 Brad Silverberg。Brad 曾领导 Windows 一段时间，尤其是 Windows 95 产品及其团队的开发工作。
Thomas Reardon, who was one of the original team members on Internet Explorer and actually went on years later to start CTRL-Labs, which sold to Meta and is a part of Meta’s effort now to do the neural interface. You can twitch your hands and I don’t know, we haven’t actually seen a product yet, so we’ll have to see what that looks like. But that was Thomas Rearden in his next act.
Thomas Reardon 是 Internet Explorer 最初团队成员之一，后来几年他创办了 CTRL-Labs，随后卖给了 Meta，如今成为 Meta 开发神经接口的一部分。你可以扭动手部实现操作，不过我们还没真正见到产品成形，所以得拭目以待。这就是 Thomas Reardon 的下一站。
Steven Sinofsky who led Windows in Windows 7 and 8 and led office before that. David, you read quite a bit of Steven’s words to prepare for this.
Steven Sinofsky 曾领导 Windows 7 和 8，也曾在此之前领导 Office。David，你为了准备节目阅读了大量 Steven 的文字。
David: His blog, hardcore software he published in book form. It’s a thousand-page book. It’s a textbook sitting on my desk. It’s awesome. We talked to Steven for a few hours, he’s great. He’s a board partner in Andreessen Horowitz now. that was super fun.
David：他把自己的博客《Hardcore Software》结集成书，那是一本长达一千页的巨著，像教科书一样放在我桌上，太棒了。我们和 Steven 聊了好几个小时，他真是个了不起的人。现在他是 Andreessen Horowitz 的董事合伙人，那次对谈特别有趣。
Ben: Julia Larson-Green was also great. She worked closely with Steven in Office and also on Windows.
Ben：Julia Larson-Green 也非常出色。她曾在 Office 和 Windows 团队与 Steven 紧密合作。
My old coworker, Anna and Raja \[…] who worked with me on Office for iPad, helped refresh my memory on what the blow-by-blow was like in those days, where we almost shipped the product then didn’t, then got a new CEO then did.
我的前同事 Anna 和 Raja \[…] 与我一起做 iPad 版 Office，他们帮助我回忆起当年那段跌宕起伏的过程——我们几乎发布产品却又被叫停，随后换了新 CEO 才最终推出。
A huge thank you to Fritz Landman, who worked in some strategy and corp dev roles at Microsoft. Just an awesome guy. Actually, now he is the CEO of the combined company, ClassPass and Mindbody, and talk about a person with multiple lives and careers. He was great.
非常感谢 Fritz Landman，他曾在微软负责战略和企业发展工作，是个非常棒的人。如今他担任合并后的 ClassPass 与 Mindbody 的 CEO，可谓多段职业人生的典范。
Someone that he worked closely with at Microsoft, Charlie Songhurst, Charlie’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. That could go for a lot of people on this list.
他在微软的密切同事 Charlie Songhurst，也是我遇到过最聪明的人之一——其实这份名单上很多人都堪称如此。
David: Didn’t Charlie do the best interview with Patrick a couple of years ago?
David：Charlie 不是在几年前和 Patrick 做过那场超棒的采访吗？
Ben: Did he? Oh I got to go listen.
Ben：真的吗？那我得去听听。
David: I think he did, yeah.
David：我记得是的，没错。
Ben: Absolutely brilliant mind expanding person. Jon Rubinstein who led engineering at Apple and actually went on to lead Palm. It was fun talking with him about what was it like from the Apple side, from the competitive perspective competing against Microsoft all these years.
Ben：他绝对是个见识广博、启迪心智的人。还有 Jon Rubinstein——他曾主管苹果工程，后来执掌 Palm。和他聊聊苹果视角、以及这些年与微软竞争的体验，非常有趣。
Huge thank you to Ray Ozzie, who David and I both spoke with. Ray is so damn delightful.
非常感谢 Ray Ozzie，David 和我都与他交流过。Ray 真是太迷人了。
David: He’s such a legend. Delightful the right way to put it. Ray is now running another startup, a new one called Blues Wireless and was just so generous to give us a couple of hours. He had some amazing, things that belong in a museum in his office that he showed us over Zoom, like old computers and hardware from the 70s, the 80s, the 90s. It was super cool.
David：他真是传奇人物，用“迷人”来形容再合适不过。Ray 现在在运营一家新创公司 Blues Wireless，他慷慨地抽出几个小时与我们交流。他在办公室里收藏了许多堪比博物馆展品的珍贵物件，通过 Zoom 展示给我们看——70、80、90 年代的老电脑和硬件，酷毙了。
Ben: More on my side, to Rob Glaser who worked at Microsoft in the 90 and founded and ran Real networks.
Ben：再说几位我要感谢的人：Rob Glaser，90 年代在微软工作，后来创办并运营 RealNetworks。
To Joe Belfiore who played a large role in Windows and Windows Phone. Actually, he demoed Windows XP the way back 2001 in the launch announcement to Regis Philbin. That’s how the second half of the keynote works is Joe is demoing features to Regis.
还有 Joe Belfiore，他在 Windows 和 Windows Phone 项目中扮演了重要角色。早在 2001 年，他就于发布会上向 Regis Philbin 演示 Windows XP 的功能——发布会下半场就是 Joe 给 Regis 做演示。
David: It was Jay Leno for Windows 95 and Regis for Windows XP.
David：Windows 95 的发布会请来的是 Jay Leno，Windows XP 则是 Regis。
Ben: Yes. Joe’s got this beautiful long history of Microsoft and was just really great.
Ben：没错。Joe 与微软有着悠久而精彩的渊源，他本人也非常出色。
To Vivek Varma who was at Microsoft, deeply involved in the comms and legal stuff during the antitrust era.
感谢 Vivek Varma，他在微软任职，曾深度参与反垄断时期的公关与法律事务。
Of course to Steve Ballmer being very generous with his time and helpful in helping us sharpen some of our thinking.
当然还要感谢 Steve Ballmer，他慷慨地抽出时间，帮助我们打磨思考。
David: And especially being generous with his time as we were entering free agency here. He’s got a busy day job these days at the Clips.
David：尤其是在我们关键时期他仍能腾出宝贵时间，他如今在快船队可相当忙碌。
Ben: That’s right. Our good friend who runs the science of hitting. It’s a great substack that does investment analysis and just was very generous sharing a large spreadsheet of historical data from Microsoft. It’s very easy to parse and look things up live while we’re doing the episode.
Ben：没错。还有我们的好朋友——“The Science of Hitting” 的作者，那是个出色的投资分析 Substack。他慷慨分享了一大份微软历史数据的电子表格，让我们在录节目时能即时查询，十分方便。
Finally, last one from me. To Todd Bishop at GeekWire. Todd has these unreleased recordings from when he was covering Microsoft at the Seattle PI way back in the early 2000s, and he sent me the raw recordings, when he was standing there with Bill and Steve just being a reporter. It’s very fun to hear their voices in ways that I don’t think were ever released or publicly heard.
最后我要感谢 GeekWire 的 Todd Bishop。他保存着 2000 年代初在《西雅图邮讯报》报道微软时未曾公开的录音，并把原始文件发给了我。那是他作为记者与 Bill 和 Steve 同在现场的录音，听到他们那些从未公开的声音，十分有趣。
David: Super cool. A few more on my end. Terry Myerson, the CEO of Tru Veta in Seattle. Terry ran Windows and Windows Phone at Microsoft for a long time.
David：太酷了。我这边还有几位要感谢。Terry Myerson 是西雅图 Tru Veta 的 CEO，曾长期负责微软的 Windows 和 Windows Phone。
To Soma Somasegar, who is a managing director at Madrona but is a legend in the server and tools business at Microsoft. Soma, we talked about him on part one, but he’s wonderful.
致 Soma Somasegar，他现在是 Madrona 的董事总经理，也是微软服务器与工具业务的传奇人物。我们在第一部分提到过他，他真的非常出色。
To Mary Jo Foley. It was so fun to talk to Mary Jo. Mary Jo dedicated her career at probably the last 20-plus years to solely covering Microsoft, and she is the best in the business. Today, she’s the editor in chief at Directions on Microsoft. It’s a research firm like Gartner, except it only covers Microsoft. She is super kind and generous.
致 Mary Jo Foley。与 Mary Jo 交谈十分有趣。过去二十多年里，她将职业生涯完全投入于报道微软，是业内翘楚。如今她担任 Directions on Microsoft 的主编，这是一家类似 Gartner 但只研究微软的机构。她非常友善且慷慨。
Then the last one, Dave Marquardt. It was so fun to talk to Dave. Dave was a 33 year board member at Microsoft.
最后一位是 Dave Marquardt。与 Dave 的对话非常有趣。他在微软董事会任职 33 年。
Ben: The only outside capital.
Ben：唯一的外部资本。
David: The only outside capital into the company before IPO from TVI. Then Dave went on to co-found August Capital where he is a partner emeritus these days. I think Dave was the longest-serving Microsoft Board member besides Bill Gates. Three decades plus.
David：在公司 IPO 之前，来自 TVI 的那笔融资是唯一的外部资本。后来 Dave 联合创立了 August Capital，如今是该公司的荣休合伙人。我想除比尔·盖茨外，Dave 是微软任期最长的董事，超过三十年。
Ben: Wow. Oh and I have one more. Thanks to good friend Arvind at Worldly Partners for some of the research that he provided as well. So thanks Arvind.
Ben：哇。我还有一位要感谢。感谢 Worldly Partners 的好友 Arvind，他为我们的研究提供了不少资料。谢谢你，Arvind。
Well with that, you should check out our previous episode, Microsoft Volume I. If you’ve already heard that, check out our AWS episode. We also recommend our Nvidia series. Part one intersects nicely with this era of Microsoft and we tell some of the PC gaming story from the Nvidia angle.
好了，话说回来，你可以先收听我们之前的节目《Microsoft Volume I》。如果已经听过，那就去听我们的 AWS 特辑。我们还推荐英伟达系列，第一部分与微软这一时期精彩交叉，我们从英伟达视角讲述了 PC 游戏的故事。
Lastly, of course, if you are sitting around right now and you’re thinking, oh no, what should I do next? The answer is acquired.fm/sf. We cannot wait to see you at the Chase Center. Mark fricking Zuckerberg is going to be there. It’s going to be the event of the century in the acquired world.
最后，当然，如果你此刻正想着“哦不，接下来该做什么？”答案就是访问 acquired.fm/sf。我们迫不及待想在大通中心见到你。马克·扎克伯格都会到场，这将是 Acquired 世界的世纪盛会。
If you’ve always thought like, oh, I’ve always wanted to go to something like Omaha, for the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting where I’ve just wanted to celebrate with other business and technology nerds who also like Acquired, this is going to be the greatest way you could have ever imagined to do that.
如果你一直想参加像奥马哈伯克希尔哈撒韦年度股东大会那样的活动，想与其他热爱 Acquired 的商业和技术极客一起狂欢，那么这将是你能想象到的最佳方式。
David: If you are wondering what you should be doing on September 10th, 2024, there is only one acceptable answer and that is to be in San Francisco at the Chase Center celebrating with us. It’s going to be awesome.
David：如果你在想 2024 年 9 月 10 日该做些什么，唯一正确的答案就是来旧金山的大通中心与我们一起庆祝。这一定会很棒。
Ben: Yup. With that listeners, we’ll see you next time.
Ben：好的，各位听众，我们下次再见。
David: We’ll see you next time.
David：我们下次再见。
Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.
注意：Acquired 的主持人与嘉宾可能持有本期节目讨论的资产。本播客不构成投资建议，仅供信息与娱乐之用。在考虑任何金融交易时，你应自行研究并做出独立决策。