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Microsoft and Innovation -- On iTunes, 2003: "We were smoked"

By Pamela Jones et al.

Recently, an ex-Microsoft executive, Dick Brass, in a New York Times Op Ed piece, Microsoft's Creative Destruction, asked the question, why didn't iPad come from Microsoft? Why doesn't it lead the way in innovation?

But the much more important question is why Microsoft, America's most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future, whether it's tablet computers like the iPad, e-books like Amazon's Kindle, smartphones like the BlackBerry and iPhone, search engines like Google, digital music systems like iPod and iTunes or popular Web services like Facebook and Twitter.

Aside from the obvious answer that monopolies don't usually bestir themselves unless they have to, I thought I'd highlight one of the exhibits we been transcribing (or describing) from the Comes v. Microsoft antitrust litigation. That case settled, but not before gifting the world with what can only be described as a true history of Microsoft in the 3,000 or so exhibits the judge ordered made available to the public.

It's Exhibit 7219 [PDF], and it's a flurry of emails from 2003, when the Microsoft top tier executives at Microsoft first heard about iTunes. Bill Gates said that Microsoft was "a bit flat footed again" by Steve Jobs and urged the troops to come up with something matching or better quick. Did they? Jim Allchin asked how in the world Jobs got the music companies to go along, and his assessment of the situation is short: "We were smoked."

Full post as published by Groklaw on February 06, 2010 (boomark / email).