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Win 98: A key to the Web
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May 14, 1998: 8:29 p.m. ET
Microsoft's shortcut to Web gives access to a $350 billion market
From CNNfn Correspondent Katharine Barrett
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - "Windows 98" is the first complete overhaul of Microsoft's bedrock computer operating system in nearly three years.
The biggest change - and target for government trust-busters - is that Microsoft has made its own shortcut to the Internet a mouse-click away -- a far easier trip than by way of competing Internet browsers like Netscape Communications Corp. (NSCP).
Those Internet gateways are the keys to what is predicted to be a $350 billion commercial kingdom by the turn of the century, with money to be made selling ads, selling lists of users, or selling goods and services.
"If you can control the screen, you can control what people will buy. This isn't about the browser. It's about trying to monopolize electronic commerce," says Ken Wasch, president of Software Publishers Association.
And Microsoft controls a lot of screens: more than nine out of 10 personal computers run on its operating systems.
Another unspoken reason Microsoft may be fighting so hard for its Internet strategy is that the software giant came late to the game and has not yet made much money.
"The Internet business for Microsoft is a loss business. Microsoft has been a financial failure in the Internet services business," says David Readerman, software analyst at Nationsbanc Montgomery Securities.
Readerman says Microsoft's "Expedia" travel site, "Investor" and other services contribute less than 1 percent of Microsoft's revenues.
But the company and its supporters say future Windows users will demand the ability to move from their desktops to the far reaches of cyberspace and back, and that Microsoft should be free to sell them that service. 
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