- In the '90s, we're gonna revolutionize
human communication using these desktop computers.
- You've got mail.
- What is the World Wide Web?
- In the world of computers,
it's kill or be killed.
- Please welcome Bill Gates!
- Do you agree or disagree that you have a monopoly?
all: ♪ Check out Windows 95 ♪
- This is iMac.
- It's a technological revolution
that's changing the way we do everything,
from making friends to falling in love.
- When the new millennium arrives,
so will a technological tidal wave.
all: Three! Two! One!
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- So, you've just bought your first personal computer.
You've brought it home from the store,
you're unpacking it, and then comes
the moment of truth.
If you've just bought your first personal computer,
this show is for you.
- Computers were, in 1990, a disconnected device.
It was a brick, right,
that sat in your house and let you do amazing things
that you'd never been able to do before,
but it was essentially a productivity tool.
- Now that we have all these very powerful tools,
we're still islands.
And we're still not really connecting
these people using these powerful tools together.
- Apple was in a period of decline.
Steve Jobs quit in kind of a temper tantrum
in 1985.
And he went off and started a company called NeXT.
After he left, there was a sequence
of pretty boring, unimaginative corporate leadership
that followed him.
- So, why did you leave Apple?
- Well, why did I leave Apple?
Oh, I was asked to leave.
Yeah, I was asked to leave Apple.
I was planning on spending the rest of my life there,
but it didn't work out that way.
- Steve Jobs was a genius,
but one of the reasons he got moved out of his job
was because he was spending huge amounts of money
on projects that, for the most part,
never reached the market.
And Apple had a crisis of confidence.
- At a time when major computer corporations
like Apple are laying off 10% of their workforce,
Microsoft is the big exception in the computer industry.
- People didn't get how much value there was
to be derived from software.
That the operating system could be the most valuable
piece of real estate in the whole computing business
was something not understood by almost anybody
in the computer industry, apart from Bill Gates.
[techno music]
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
- Today, we're introducing Microsoft Windows version 3.
[cheers and applause]
- Bill Gates: part Thomas Edison,
part Henry Ford,
part Holden Caulfield Catcher in the Rye.
At 19, he dropped out of Harvard
to design computer software with his friend, Paul Allen.
They came up with a system
that operates 90% of the personal computers today.
- Microsoft was making a lot of money then.
They were charging $200, $300, $400
for, say, a word-processing package
that really was costing them about 50 cents
to print on floppies.
- Hardworking, modest, easygoing,
it would seem, to a fault.
Of course, he does have at least one secret.
But we'll fix that.
Is it true that you can leave over a chair
from a standing position?
- It depends on the size of the chair,
but this chair, probably so.
- [laughs] Yes! - [laughing]
- [laughing] That was... - I-I took a step
before I did it. - That's okay.
- Bill Gates wasn't just one thing.
He was a brilliant guy, had great parents,
family values, but he was a killer.
He basically was a ruthless guy, and so was Microsoft.
- No, no, no, no, somebody's confused.
Somebody's just not thinking. - Well...
- I mean, there's no way...
- We'll figure it out.
- You guys never understood!
You never understood the first thing about this.
- A lot of people make the analogy
that competing with Bill Gates
is like playing hardball.
I'd say it's more like a knife fight.
- I've never heard any of these things.
You know, you're saying, like, "knife fight."
That's silliness. It's childish.
I mean, why be a mouthpiece for that kind of silliness?
Well, I'm done.
- Um...can I just ask you
one more question, Bill?
- No, I don't think so.
- Um...
- I remember one time interviewing Gates,
and I said, "Microsoft owns the world right now.
Do you worry about that at all?"
He said, "I worry about it every single night."
I go to bed thinking, "What have I not thought about?"
- Personal computer...
[dial-up modem beeping]
- Now it's starting to dial.
[modem dialing]
[modem beeping]
And now I am in.
[exciting music]
- It spans the globe like a super-highway.
It is called Internet, the Net.
Began back in 1969, it was a tool of the Pentagon.
But nowadays, just about anyone
with a computer and a modem can join in.
- The Internet was a really dorky,
hard-to-use, and extremely nerdy thing.
None of your friends would've been on this.
Just fellow people in tech.
- The Internet, really, was not a huge factor
in the early '90s,
but Netscape changed things.
- They're calling him the next Bill Gates:
24-year-old Marc Andreessen.
15 months ago, Andreessen,
fresh out of the University of Illinois,
helped start a company called Netscape.
At 11:00 a.m. this morning, the company's stock went public
and Wall Street went bonkers.
So, what does Netscape produce
that now makes the company worth $2.9 billion?
This, the Netscape Navigator, software which makes it easy
for people to connect to the global computer network
called the Internet.
- Microsoft has a long history of feeling threatened
by hot, new upstarts.
You could easily argue that
Bill Gates' game plan was world domination.
- These guys can be taken!
But the only way we're gonna take them
is by studying them. Know what they know.
Do what they do. Watch 'em, watch 'em, watch 'em.
Take every one of their good ideas
and make it one of our good ideas.
- Microsoft came down and essentially said to Netscape,
"Hey, you know, we can be friends,
"or we can be enemies.
"And if we're gonna be friends, that's great.
"You'll get all the advantages of working with Microsoft
"in a million ways, and you'll be on the home screen
"of a lot of computers. Or we can compete,
"and if we're gonna compete, we're gonna basically
do whatever's required to kill you."
- Some people believe that you have
an infinite appetite for power,
that you are the embodiment
of a button that was around during the 1980s
that said, "I want it all,"
and you wanna eat up your competitors.
Is that unfair?
- It... [laughs]
Doesn't ring any bells with me.
[dramatic music]
- The first day back.
- How's it feel? How's your back?
- What do President Clinton,
conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh,
and rock star Billy Idol have in common?
They've all got electronic mail addresses
on computer systems linked to the Internet.
- Who are these other people that are on it?
- Other people just like you who bought--
- But how did they get on it? Who regulates this Internet
and who decides who gets on this highway
and who doesn't? - Well, the services
we're talking about today are commercial services.
So you spend money to get on there.
So there's no real regulation per se.
You use your phone line and your computer,
and you get online.
- CompuServe was for the tech-savvy people,
Prodigy was for shopping,
and AOL was the first one that had a vision
to get everyone connected.
[modem dialing]
[modem beeping and whirring]
- When I heard that sound, I cried a little bit
because I knew there was a big adventure waiting for me.
[modem hissing]
- Welcome. You've got mail.
- CompuServe charged by the minute,
so it was like a taxicab.
AOL's invention was to forget that
and charge $19.95 a month, all-you-can-eat.
And that changed everything, 'cause now you could afford
to be on the Internet all you wanted.
- You didn't have to be a researcher.
You could dial onto AOL.
AOL was specifically designed to be point-and-click.
- Steve Case is the president of America Online.
I interviewed him via computer...
- And George asked,
"What are the most popular
America Online features now?"
- He responds, "The real focus for us
is on promoting interactivity."
- What's the very best thing about it?
- Yeah. - I think being able
to communicate with just about anyone, anywhere.
- One of the things that AOL realizes
is that America Online can't be
all 200-plus million people at once.
You need little neighborhoods,
and so chat rooms become Internet neighborhoods,
where people who share interests
create their own little space.
- You can either click on the chat button up here,
or go to the "people connection."
That's what America Online calls it.
And when you get here, click on "list rooms."
You'll find different categories of rooms.
- When I was a kid, I didn't know
any other black, gay people.
And the only people I knew were the folks that I met
on America Online.
I didn't come out to my mother till much later,
but I was out on the Internet.
- In many respects, AOL was, you know,
one of the first social media companies.
- Computer communication is not like human communication.
There's no facial expression
to help you know which way something ambiguous is meant.
So the isolated communicators of cyberspace
have come up with little signs made out of punctuation marks.
They're called emoticons.
- You were using text to have a conversation
that felt like a face-to-face communication.
You could see the start of this new online culture.
- It's a technological revolution
that's changing the way we do everything,
from making friends to falling in love.
- I mean, he was nice, and he never gave me
any of the come-on lines. It was always friendly, and...
- Wait, wait, wait. You're telling me that
guys use pick-up lines on a computer?
- Mm-hmm.
- As the Internet grows,
I'm finding information, I also wanna find love.
- I just happened to stumble on Michael's address.
I picked him out of the blue.
I read his profile and I was completely floored.
- Many of the businesses of the Internet
work on connecting, for the first time,
total strangers who have very narrow interests in common.
- AOL was what was called a "walled garden."
Picture this: you're paying a monthly fee
for something with a limited number
of things to do, but no matter how many things
they put inside their garden, it could never come close
to the hundreds of millions of things
that would pop up on the open Internet.
- The thing about the World Wide Web
is that it has no central organizing body.
It's chaotic. If you are running a website,
how is anyone gonna find you?
- Stanford grad students Jerry Yang and David Filo
like spending hour after hour discovering interesting places
on the Internet, and that is how they stumbled
onto a fortune. - Ah!
- Their million-dollar idea is called "Yahoo!"
- ♪ Yahoo ♪ [banjo music]
- Yahoo came in at just the perfect time.
They literally made a list.
It was just simply a listing.
It was Jerry and David's web-listing.
And they named it Yahoo, after rednecks--yahoos.
- Yahoo was an exercise in organizing the Internet.
It quickly became the leading way to find things,
and it was a directory-based system.
It wasn't a search-based system.
The idea was to curate the whole Web.
- Wall Street now values Yahoo at around $700 million,
even though the company is barely profitable.
- With the success of Netscape,
and the growth of these digital upstarts, Yahoo,
there was this energy that was not all in Seattle.
- This is Silicon Valley, the heart and soul
of the nation's computer business.
Here, Microsoft is respected and feared as a powerful giant
whose every footstep sends shivers
through the entire industry.
- There's this emerging war, basically,
between the Silicon Valley culture,
built up around the Web, and the Microsoft culture
up in Redmond, and it's not
just a cultural clash, but an economic clash,
technological clash-- a clash for power.
- Bill Gates had to turn Microsoft,
like a supertanker, around to have it address the Internet.
And the way they did that was by coming up
with Internet Explorer, which they presented
as the world's best browser.
It wasn't. You know, Microsoft stuff,
it never is the best.
But it was well-marketed and it was pushed,
and they had a lot of money behind it.
- Here came Microsoft with its own version
of a Web browser built into Windows 95.
Their intention was to kill Netscape as the browser,
and make Internet Explorer its replacement.
all: Five!
Four! Three!
Two! One!
Zero!
- A consumer feeding frenzy.
Many computer stores, like this one in Miami,
opened at the stroke of midnight so customers could be
the first to get their hands on Windows 95.
all: ♪ Check out Windows 95 ♪
- It seems like an awful lot of fuss
over a single product, but the product will have
a huge impact, not just on Microsoft,
but on the global computer industry.
- This is Jennifer Aniston. I'm Matthew Perry.
We're here to see Mr. Bill Gates about a possible starring role
in the video guide to Microsoft Windows 95.
[The Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up"]
- All of the employees of Microsoft have been invited
to a huge party in a tent over there
on the Microsoft campus, and guess what song
we could hear blaring out of there?
You got it, Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up."
- Windows 95 was the most successful
software launch to this day.
Everybody, whether they really wanted to or not,
went out and got Windows 95.
- Getting the Rolling Stones to allow their music
to be used in the ad launch tonight
is the sign of a company at the peak of its powers.
The challenge for Microsoft is to stay there.
With the race now on to exploit the Internet,
it may soon be Microsoft's turn to fear the competition.
- ♪ I've been running hot ♪
♪ You got me tickin', gonna blow my top ♪
[dramatic music]
- Apple Computer, a pioneer in the personal computers
and software business, has fallen on hard times.
After reporting a big quarterly loss,
it decided to lay off 1,300 workers.
- How do you feel about what's happened to Apple?
Did it have to turn out the way it did?
- It's hard to predict these things. I mean, Apple--
- Come on, Steve. You've thought about this.
This is not a subject that's unfamiliar to you.
- Yeah, it is.
It's sort of ancient history to me right now.
I don't really think about this stuff anymore,
and Apple and Microsoft duke it out,
and Netscape and Microsoft duke it out,
and to me, it's a spectator sport.
- In the mid-1990s, Apple had a couple more CEOs,
none of whom really grasped the vision of Apple.
As a result, the company just did worse
and worse and worse as the decade progressed.
- With big losses in the last quarter,
With profit margins shrinking,
Apple seems destined for a takeover.
This is a computer that even has fan clubs.
- I just love the Apple, and I always have.
And I can't really say why.
- Everyone was rooting for Apple to somehow survive,
but it wasn't at all clear that Apple would
be around at the end of the 1990s.
- The troubled Apple Computer company
may return to its core,
in an effort to boost sagging sales.
Apple reportedly will name its co-founder, Steve Jobs,
as its new chairman. Jobs would replace a chairman
who was ousted earlier this month.
- Steve came over to Apple,
sold NeXT to Apple for $400 million.
He had no ambitions at Apple at all,
but Steve Jobs was watching Apple flounder,
and he just couldn't help himself.
And so, he remade the company the way he wanted.
And there was no one to oppose him
because the company was exhausted.
[cheers and applause]
- Steve Jobs had exactly the abrasive
but incisive personality
that Apple needed at that point.
They needed someone to come in to say,
"Kill that project, kill that project,
that's stupid, consolidate that,"
and focus the company.
- I'd like to announce one of our first partnerships today,
a very, very meaningful one.
And that is one with Microsoft.
[scattered applause]
We're very, very happy about it.
We're very, very excited about it.
And I happen to have a special guest
with me today, via satellite downlink.
[crowd chattering]
audience: Ooh!
[Jobs chuckles]
[crowd booing]
- I don't think Steve Jobs has ever experienced,
you know, before or after that,
just people going, "Boo! No!"
Microsoft represented everything
that these hardcore Apple fans hated.
- If we wanna move forward
and see Apple healthy and prospering again,
we have to let go of a few things here.
We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win,
Microsoft has to lose, okay?
[applause]
- There was an alliance now,
between these two former archrivals,
and Microsoft was gonna invest $150 million in Apple.
But, more important from Bill Gates' point of view,
was that Apple would include Microsoft's browser
in all Macintoshes. That was the last piece.
Now he had domination of the browser world.
- Microsoft says Internet Explorer
just makes it easier to get around the Web.
But when you hit a button to access services
for travel, entertainment, news, and the like,
you found sites owned by Microsoft.
And that's what the government is worried about.
Over the next few years, Americans may be buying
billions of dollars in goods and services
through the Internet,
and that's a market too important,
the government says,
for one company to act as gatekeeper.
- The U.S. Justice Department asked a federal court today
to fine Microsoft Corporation
a record $1 million a day.
- The complaint against Microsoft came
from executives at Netscape, a fast-growing software company
that struck gold with its Web browser,
but Microsoft began giving away
its own browser, and required computer manufacturers
to offer it with Windows.
- What they're able to do is they're able to--
illegally, we believe-- use that monopoly power
to block competition. They're able to pay people
to not use our software, and they're able to do
other things that monopolists
are legally not allowed to do.
- A lot of people were saying
the antitrust laws are outmoded.
"Technology will enforce competition on its own."
The counterargument is that when you begin
to get lots of people to use your operating system,
it becomes harder and harder for somebody else
to break in to that industry.
- Microsoft chairman Bill Gates goes before Congress
for the first time today. Gates is expected to face
tough questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee.
- I wanna--if you don't mind-- ask--
can I ask the audience one question
and get a little quick poll here.
How many of you use Intel-based PCs
in this audience? Raise your hands.
All right, of that group who use PCs,
how many of you use a PC without Microsoft's operating system?
Gentlemen, that's a monopoly. That's a lot.
That's 100%.
- It is fair to say that when you compete with people,
you think, "Hey, we're gonna have a better product.
"We're gonna win the customer. We're gonna do a good job here
on these things."
- The hearing makes clear,
I think, to most people, like, "Oh, huh,
"so, that Gates guy, he's not just, like,
"kind of a good-natured geek in glasses.
He's another rich, rapacious capitalist."
- Police and security guards in Belgium
were caught flat-footed today by a cowardly sneak attack
on one of the world's wealthiest men.
- Careful, careful! - Oh--
- [yelps]
- It's been a bad week for Microsoft
and its cyber-meister, Bill Gates.
Yesterday, at the Chicago debut
of his much-awaited Windows 98 system,
the program dramatically crashed.
- You'll notice that this scanner-build--whoa.
- [chuckles]
- Well, it's shaping up as one of the antitrust battles
of the century.
Federal and state governments today sued Microsoft,
saying the computer software giant
is predatory and scheming to crush all competition.
- Microsoft used its monopoly power
to develop a chokehold on the browser software
needed to access the Internet.
- I don't think Bill Gates recognized
the seriousness of the situation.
This was a case that simply wasn't gonna go away.
- Worst case, they'll ask us to create
a crippled product, and that would be too bad.
That would really hold us back.
So we're quite confident that won't happen.
- The government tried to avoid this trial
in every way they could.
But once Bill rejected every settlement offer,
the world just changed, because it was like,
"Okay, so now we're going to court."
The government might not be good at some things,
but it's really good at litigation.
And when it decides it's gonna win a lawsuit...
you are gonna face a formidable adversary.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
[cheers and applause]
- It's been ten months
since the new management team took over at Apple.
And because of their hard work, I'm really pleased to report
to you today that Apple's back on track.
And...
[cheers and applause]
Today, I'm incredibly pleased
to introduce iMac, our consumer product.
This...
is iMac.
[cheers and applause]
So...
[soaring instrumental jingle]
- The iMac was a computer that was meant to look
like something you would want people to see in your house.
It ushered in this new era
where design started to matter.
- The iMac was sexy. I had a blue one,
and it had curves. It was built like a sports car.
When people think of computers, they think of boring,
they think of beige, they think of it as utilitarian.
Apple made it fun.
- You can take it home, take it out of the box,
and be cruising the Internet within ten minutes.
And that's not something you can do
on any other computer we know of.
- He added software to make it easier
to connect to the Internet.
So the "I" in iMac was for "Internet."
- It changed how people thought of Apple,
and changed how people perceived
what had been a dying company.
Suddenly, people saw that there was a spark here.
- In the world of computers, it's kill or be killed,
and the original whiz kid
was thought to be dying an early death.
But guess what?
Mac is back.
- A year ago, nobody would have predicted this.
Steve Jobs, the head man at Apple Computer,
hailed as the visionary hero who brought the company back
from the verge of extinction.
- In 4 1/2 months, iMac has become
the number-one selling computer in America.
- Bill Gates ultimately represents
the computer genius as entrepreneur.
Steve Jobs represents the entrepreneur as artist.
- You know, you can say what you want about Steve Jobs,
but he knew how to make people believe.
- In federal court in Washington, D.C. today,
a case of legal hardball and computer software.
The U.S. government set out to prove
that computer-industry giant, Microsoft,
tried to bully the competition, illegally,
into submission or out of business.
- As Microsoft and Justice Department lawyers
came to do battle at the federal courthouse,
a Bill Gates impersonator showed up,
adding a surreal touch.
Inside the courtroom,
the real Bill Gates, on videotape, under oath,
in a deposition taken in August.
- The thing about a deposition
is the only thing that the witness can really do
is to sit there and tell the truth,
simply and directly.
The first two hours of the deposition was...
quite unexpected.
- From the stuff you've given me here--
- I don't want you to just read. I'm asking
for your present recollection, if you have one.
I can read the document myself.
- I don't know what you mean, "my present recollection"?
What do you mean by "Internet software"?
The full breadth of your question?
- This person who I know is brilliant
and articulate and passionate is withdrawn,
playing word games, being evasive,
doing everything that makes him look
like he is not confident in his position.
- You recognize that this is a document
produced from Microsoft's files, do you not, sir?
- No. - You don't?
- Well, how would I know that?
- David Boies, the famous litigator,
he has a photographic memory.
He would ask Gates in the deposition,
"Do you ever remember saying this?"
"No, I never would say something like that."
Boies, without looking at notes, would say,
"Would you call up Document 3,021, please?
- Did you know that Microsoft people
were meeting with Netscape before they actually met?
- I don't recall knowing in advance.
- Government lawyer David Boies
revealed an internal Microsoft memorandum,
written by Gates,
three weeks before that meeting.
"I think there is a very powerful deal
of some kind we can do with Netscape," Gates wrote.
- When I covered the trial, one of the things
the judge said to me is he didn't believe Bill Gates.
And that deposition was very instrumental
in shaping the judge's decision.
- I've never seen a stamp like that.
I've never used a stamp like that.
- Haven't you seen stamps like that
on every single one of the documents
that you've been shown during this deposition?
- Can you get me all the exhibits?
- It's just a waste of time. - It is a waste of time.
- Technology is hard to understand.
Their pitch to the judge was, "Trust us.
We're doing what we're doing for the consumer."
The deposition made him and the company
look like they were not trustworthy.
- Because of this deposition
and the snippets of it that played out
day after day, on national television,
it was an incredibly precipitous decline
in how most people viewed Bill Gates.
- He was in an environment that, unlike almost
every other environment in which he operates,
he did not control.
No witness controls a deposition,
no matter how rich, no matter how powerful.
Every witness has to sit there and answer questions.
- In words surprisingly blunt,
Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson declared Microsoft a monopoly.
Lawyers from the Justice Department
in the 19 states that sued Microsoft
immediately claimed victory.
- Microsoft is a monopolist,
and it engaged in massive anti-competitive practices.
- It drove Bill Gates crazy
that the government was portraying him
as some kind of evil force.
Was he ruthless as a businessman? Yes.
Did he see himself as a ruthless businessman? No.
He saw himself as someone
who was advancing the common good.
And the government didn't see it that way.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
- There is a lot of chat about technology
in business, you'd expect that,
but some of the conversation might surprise you.
It is not just tech talk.
They're talking about sex.
- Are you an adult? - What she does
is she loads pictures, mostly X-rated pictures,
into her computer,
and then customers anywhere in the world
can call up Laura's Lair and see on their home computer
this list: 15,000 descriptions of photos
in language that's not always suitable for TV.
- Pornography is always the first to make money
on any new technology.
And not just technology since computers.
I mean, since the beginning.
- Now, Laura's customers pay to transfer these photos
from her computer, through the phone lines,
to their computer.
- Okay, here it comes.
- Okay, how do I know--oh. - [laughs]
- Okay, so they don't have clothes on.
You didn't tell me that.
How do I stop sweating? - [laughs]
- The adult industry was very interested
in figuring out how to make credit cards work.
That had benefits for online commerce.
It boosted consumer acceptance of online credit card use.
- Our little shopping carts that we now use
are invented by pornographers.
- What was unknown was whether or not
somebody could set up a website and actually make money.
And the proof of concept of that was pornography.
- For the most part, entrepreneurs have not
figured out a way to make profit on the Internet,
that is, until eBay came along.
- Pierre Omidyar started the auction site as a hobby.
Three years later, it has a market value
of close to $6 billion,
and is a superstar on Wall Street.
eBay makes its money by charging to list an item,
then takes a small percentage of the final selling price
if it sells.
- If you've got an item you wanna sell,
like a 1967 Green Hornet lunch pail, for example,
you write up a brief description,
add a digital photo and decide on an opening bid.
- eBay really changed everything,
and not because what they were offering
was so incredible and revolutionary.
Essentially, what they were doing
was they were automating the middleman.
- All right, 600 million hits a month.
- That's right, that's right. - Okay, that's a lot of people.
How do you stop the unscrupulous?
- Problems like that are really very, very, rare on eBay.
It's all based on trust.
- One thing eBay pioneered
is this idea that we rate each other,
so that future transaction participants
can see whether you're a good person
to deal with or not. It's in your financial interest
to be looked up to and respected
as a trustworthy transactional partner.
- On "NBC News In Depth" tonight,
we're gonna talk about the superstars
of the stock market, those red-hot Internet stocks.
Companies that, in some cases,
didn't even exist a few years ago,
are now trading into the stratosphere.
- The whole dot-com bubble of the late '90s
was based on this idea that what counted
was not profit, what counted was eyeballs.
If you could get enough people using your stuff,
you would figure out a way,
organically from that, to make a profit.
- The daily volume: 3.7 million shares.
We are almost a $2 billion company.
[all cheering]
- People love these stocks.
Anything that has ".com" or "net" in its name,
it goes like hot cakes.
- It's billed as the Earth's biggest bookstore,
not just the country's, but the Earth's,
but you can't shop there unless you have a computer.
It's a virtual bookstore.
- Books, books, and more books.
That's what they do at Amazon.com.
- If you were to print the Amazon.com catalog,
it would be the size of seven New York City phonebooks.
- In the early '90s, Jeff Bezos looked
at what the Internet could be
and he decided that the Internet could be anything.
- Bezos started Amazon.com at this modest ranch home
in Seattle in 1994.
Less than five years later, his idea of selling books
on the Internet has grown
into a multi-billion-dollar business.
- The largest physical bookstores only carry
about 175,000 titles.
Amazon.com has 2 1/2 million titles in its online catalog.
There's no way to have a 2 1/2 million-title
physical bookstore.
- Bezos understood that it would take decades
to create this infrastructure of shipping and warehouses.
- He had this vision of completely
upending the retail business.
- A couple of things we have to get to,
which is often said about your company,
you're losing money.
+- I can tell you that I think it's good
that we're losing money right now.
It's important to Amazon.com someday, in the future,
in the long term-- - We'd just like to know
what day that is. [laughs]
- You can't be the everything store
unless you're absolutely gigantic.
Bezos' philosophy was, "Get big fast."
Earning money, making a profit, that'll come later.
For now, let's become the 800-pound gorilla.
- This year, I think more and more people
are gonna do more and more of their shopping online.
It's so much more convenient,
because you have almost unlimited selection.
The convenience is gonna make this the year
that shopping really comes of age on the Internet.
- This was a time that allowed you to make choices
as a consumer without gatekeepers
choosing things for you.
You could decide, "I want that," and you'd get it.
If you don't live in a big city,
you could still get big-city stuff.
- The worldwide computer network called the Internet
has inspired more movies than any big-deal technological fad
since, oh, the CB radio boom of the 1970s.
The Internet itself, however, is definitely exploding.
- It hit and within, like, two years,
it just-- it's become so powerful.
- We're sitting on the most perfect beach
in the world and all we can think about is where--
- Where can I hook up my modem?
- In 1999, we are-- culturally, socially,
financially-- quite dependent on the Internet.
- In Washington today, a special Senate Committee
is preparing to release a fairly alarming report
on the Y2K millennium computer problem.
They call it one of the most serious
and potentially devastating events
the nation has ever encountered.
- The brains of most computers, the chips that do the thinking,
have tiny, built-in clocks, and many register the year
with only the last two digits,
assuming the first two are always 19.
- The problem was not that the computer
would think that it's 1900.
The problem was it wouldn't know what to do.
It would just break down and go,
"Ehh, can't process this."
- It could trigger widespread computer failures,
blackouts and breakdowns
of everything from home appliances
to the global financial system.
- If we left things as they are right now,
the military would effectively shut down.
- The Pentagon will spend at least $4 billion
to defuse the millennium bomb.
And Pentagon officials are confident
they'll do it, but critics claim
they started too late, and those thousands of fixes
won't be done in time.
- Many states have not yet updated their computers
that run programs such as Medicaid and food stamps,
benefits that millions of families rely on.
- On New Year's Eve, 1999,
I was prepared for the world to shut down.
- For a growing number of people,
the year 2000 is not a milestone
as much as it is a sign of some sort of impending chaos.
- At home, I got lots of water,
generator, flashlights, batteries, canned food...
- So what do you think's gonna happen?
- I think there's gonna be riots.
- "Get ready!" warn the books.
Computer failures will shut down electric utilities,
prison gates will swing open at midnight,
terrorist attacks will occur in larger cities,
and wild dog packs will roam the streets.
And many of these books recommend stockpiling weapons
as a precaution.
- I just wanted to be prepared
in case, you know, anything happens for Y2K.
[ominous music]
[dramatic music]
- Now, if you are just joining us, good morning.
And let us assure you all is well.
Apocalypse is not now. The sky is not falling.
The dreaded millennium bug bugged out.
- For the most part, life went on as normal.
The sun came up,
people watched morning television,
and ate their Wheaties.
- We have spent, in this country,
$100 billion correcting Y2K.
Commerce secretary Bill Daley says it amounts
to $65 per taxpayer.
- Part of the reason why disasters didn't occur
on Y2K was because the government
and corporations realized the problem
and spent months in intensive preparation for that moment.
- It was a big deal,
a lot of energy spent, a lot of fear...
big nothing.
- Good afternoon.
Microsoft was founded 25 years ago,
and I've had the same job as CEO during that twenty--
entire 25-year period.
Today, Steve is going to step up to a new role,
and he will be CEO of Microsoft.
- By the time this trial was over,
Microsoft wound up settling,
but Microsoft was really, really chastened in the end
by that long, grueling case.
- Does the government's case against Microsoft
have anything to do with this change in leadership?
- No, absolutely not. If anything,
this change underscores what a dynamic,
competitive business we have, but it's not at all related.
- Bill Gates had been very successful.
He had an enormous amount of money.
He may very well have thought that,
given what he had already accomplished,
the highest and best use of his remaining years
was to spend that money helping humanity.
- It was just a few months back
if your company ended in ".com," it was a good thing.
But at the end of this brutal week
on Wall Street, a lot of analysts think
the Internet bubble is ready to burst,
and by this time next year
a huge number of those dot-coms might be dot-gone.
- A year ago, investors were so eager
to buy into the Internet they were happily ignoring
the traditional measures of success:
sales, profits, and growth.
But reality has now set in.
- These upstarts didn't have any income.
They're saying, "We are worth billions of dollars."
Where's your revenue? They didn't have any.
- When the venture capitalists stopped putting money in,
you could time the bubble, you could say,
"Ah, you know, if we all believe this fantasy, it works.
If some of us stop believing, it's a prelude to its failure."
- Most dot-com retail companies will be out of business
by next year, eliminating 25,000
out of 30,000 Internet companies.
- What sort of message do you have
for all of us, as we look at what's happening
to the dot-com businesses and the stock market?
- Don't invest in dot-coms? [laughter]
- The Internet opened up a lot of things for people.
It made things easier for people,
and that didn't change, bubble or no bubble.
- With more than a billion web pages out there--
millions of websites out there on the Internet--
it's no wonder the most common activity
on the Web is still searching,
trying to find the information you're looking for.
There really hadn't been very much new
in the search engine field for years,
until something called Google came along.
- A traditional search engine will take your search terms,
and you'll see, "Oh, what pages
have those search terms on them?"
- Right. - Maybe, you know,
how many times they occur.
Google goes way beyond that.
Google will say, "What do other web pages
say about this page?"
- Google captured the entire Web,
and they made a map of what linked to what,
and found things with an accuracy
that no one imagined would be possible.
- It turned out that Google, rather than Netscape,
was the one that eclipsed Microsoft.
And by the end of the decade,
Netscape is basically gone,
but Microsoft was, in fact,
completely overtaken by exactly the thing
that Bill was concerned about being overtaken by.
Netscape and Google are part of the same thing,
which was the ascendance of the Web.
- The rate of change in our lives
has grown faster and faster.
The zeroes and ones of computer language
are literally transforming every part of our lives.
- When you have the little ones running around,
to be able to go to my computer and grocery shop,
it's incredible to be able to do that.
- What I found was another world,
a world of caring, concerned people.
- Once you become familiar with it,
it becomes a friend, a companion.
- You have a sense of possibility
that geography used to deny you.
Without moving yourself,
the world would come to you.
- Any student could instantly call up the text or pictures
from any book in the Smithsonian,
or tap into a supercomputer from NASA.
A specialist at a huge city hospital
could help diagnose patients at small rural clinics anywhere.
- The Web is incredibly exciting
because it is the fulfillment of a lot of our dreams.
that the computer would ultimately not be
primarily a device for computation,
but metamorphisize into a device for communication.
- It is the equivalent of the Industrial Revolution.
It is the equivalent of electricity.
The changes are just so profound.
- When we look back a hundred years from now,
this is the point where we're gonna say,
"This is where everything changed."
- I wasn't prepared to translate that,
as I was doing that little tease.
- Oh, that's right. - That little mark,
with the "A" and then the ring around it.
- "At"? - See, that's what I said.
- Mm-hmm. - Katie said she thought
it was "about." - Yeah.
- Oh. - But I'd never heard it--
- Or "around," or "about." - I'd never heard it said.
- I'd always seen the mark,
but never heard it said. - Yeah.
- And then it sounded stupid
when I said it-- "violence at NBC."
There it is! violence@nbc.ge.com.
I mean... - Well, Allison should know.
How do you say that, Allison? - What is Internet, anyway?
What, do you write to it, like mail?
- No, a lot of people use it and communicate--
I guess they can communicate with NBC writers and producers.
Allison, can you explain what Internet is?