> He doesn't mention anything at all about networking ...
It was a blind spot for Gates and Microsoft in the 1980s. He wasn't alone, of course. People like Marshall McCluhan had laid out a vision for it years before but Gates was really focused on software for devices and not the network. It wasn't until the late 1980s that Microsoft turned its attention to Novell which was making a killing in PC networking. (Gates recruited Jim Allchin from network company Banyan in 1990.) By the mid-1990s there wasn't much left of Novell, but Microsoft's interest and strategy there was purely driven by business and not vision. That was clear when they were clobbered again by the Internet.
It was a blind spot for Gates and Microsoft in the 1980s. He wasn't alone, of course. People like Marshall McCluhan had laid out a vision for it years before but Gates was really focused on software for devices and not the network. It wasn't until the late 1980s that Microsoft turned its attention to Novell which was making a killing in PC networking. (Gates recruited Jim Allchin from network company Banyan in 1990.) By the mid-1990s there wasn't much left of Novell, but Microsoft's interest and strategy there was purely driven by business and not vision. That was clear when they were clobbered again by the Internet.