• by Bill McCloskey , July 3, 2001

The recent ruling reversing the Microsoft break-up started me thinking about monopolies - do they further or hinder technological advancement? It is not an easy question to answer - I've had personal experience on both sides of the fence and quite honestly, I don't have a Solomon-like answer.

As part of an acquisition, I actually worked for Microsoft at one time - the company I was working for was swallowed by the Microsoft juggernaut. One day we were using Powerbooks and Apple Printers and the next - PCs and HP printers, and they didn't even want the old equipment back. Mine ended up being donated to my local church, so thanks to Microsoft, my priest now has a PowerBook.

Later, I was part of a company that went up against Microsoft. Trust me, it's not a good position to be in, especially when a decision from Redmond can make or break the future plans of your company.

The company was SGI. I worked for the division that developed the Cosmo Player, the VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) plug-in. Even though SGI developed the VRML language, it was developed at that weird moment in the Web's history when ownership was verboten and 'open standards' was the rallying cry. So even though SGI developed the language at their expense, they gave it to the world as a gift.

VRML caught on and became the standard for interactive 3D vector graphics for the Web. The Cosmo Player was bundled into Netscape (free of charge - oh, those were the days) and everything looked pretty rosy. Soon, twenty five million Cosmo Players were distributed, and SGI had high hopes of cornering the market by bundling Cosmo with Microsoft's budding Internet Explorer. The thinking was that with IE in their pocket, SGI could start selling hardware and software development platforms to create all those latent William Gibson nightmare fantasies people had back then.

Unfortunately, Microsoft knew a thing or two about monopolies and they weren't about to watch SGI do to them what they had done to IBM. They needed a VRML player as a "check-off" item in the war against Netscape, but their vision of 3D on the Web didn't include SGI owning the tools of the future.

Rather than bundle the Cosmo Player, they licensed a copy of an inferior competing player from a company called Intervista. Interestingly, although it was bundled in IE, the player wasn't turned "on" by default, so users had to configure their browsers to accept VRML. In doing so, Microsoft could claim both that they were playing the open standards game, and that they had the VRML box checked in the Netscape vs. IE feature set.

However, at the same time, they guaranteed VRML's death. Why? Because VRML content performed differently in the Cosmo and Intervista players. In fact, in some cases content developed for one player wouldn't work in the other player.

In addition, SGI developed extensions to VRML that only worked in the Cosmo Player - their developers simply got tired of playing Russian Roulette with their work. Microsoft's own later version of 3D Chrome Effects also ended up shipwrecked and withdrawn within weeks of its launch.

So here is the dilemma: Had Microsoft allowed SGI to have a monopoly, VRML development might have taken off and by now we would have more VRML content online than we do now. In theory, the Web would have advanced a pace or two. Instead, VRML died in its tracks in 1998.

So would a monopoly have been good for the Internet industry? Not necessarily. As a result of Cosmo's failure, other great 3D technologies have been developed by many competing companies: Viewpoint, RichFX, Pulse, Brilliant Entertainment, Cult 3D, Shout3D. Had SGI succeeded, none of these companies would have the chance to "bake" awhile, to get away from the religion of open standards, to stay under the radar and develop their own take on 3D for the Web.

As a result, there is higher quality 3D on the Web right now than there ever has been. And none of it is coming out of either SGI or Microsoft.

When it comes to technology, sometimes all you can do is take one breath at a time and enjoy the ride. At least that's what my priest keeps telling me. Personally, I think he just likes getting the free equipment.

- Bill McCloskey is Founder and CEO of Emerging Interest, an organization dedicated to educating the Internet advertising and marketing industry about rich media and other emerging technologies. He may be reached at bill@emerginginterest.com.