Why we love Java

If the Justice Department is still looking to bring an antitrust case against Microsoft for attempting to corner the market for PC operating systems, it had better hurry. The alternative is the spectacle of the government accusing a company of monopolizing a market that no longer exists. Sure, this statement is a bit hyperbolic. It's hard to imagine the requirements for Windows, OS/2 or the Macintosh operating systems drying up overnight, but the developments over the last few months with Netscape Communications, Sun Microsystems and Oracle, particularly relative to the growing popularity of Sun's Java language, have shown how fast things change.

It also gives credence to those who have favored a more market-oriented approach regulating the high technology, as opposed to those of a more pro-regulatory bent, who tend to equate bigness with badness. Just six months ago, policy-makers were debating whether Microsoft was unfairly using its position as dominant OS supplier to bludgeon other software manufacturers into designing products to Windows and Windows 95 applications programming interfaces or else face eternity in the darkness of the bottommost shelf at the local Software Etc. outlet.

Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, was growing feistier than ever, and despite the DOJ's decision to block his purchase of Intuit, maker of the popular Quicken home finance management software, he was a best-selling author, and America's proclaimed high tech seer. The era of multimedia was at hand, he declared, and with a Clint Eastwood-like "Go ahead, make my day," he looked Attorney General Janet Reno in the eye and dared her to take the political risk of moving against Microsoft, which had undeniably helped create an economic boom in the Northwest, made the U.S. an undisputed world leader in software technology, and, unlike the most of trusts of the 19th century, actually did create a great deal of wealth for a great many people.

But Gates' crystal ball lacked one thing-a good Internet browser. That accounts for the schadenfreude that many felt when Microsoft, somewhat humbled, gave in and licensed Java from Sun after completely miscalculating the potential of the Internet. Now the whole Java phenomenon has touched off a storm of discussion about the so-called network computer and whether an OS, certainly one on the scale of Windows 95, is needed, especially as personal computing becomes more tied to the public network.

For those in the carrier community who have not been paying attention, Java is a programming language that, virtually overnight, has become the preference of World Wide Web site developers everywhere. Its value is that it separates applications from the underlying OS. Once, in the wireless world, you had to buy a cellular switch and a base station from the same vendor. Standards like TDMA and GSM changed that, allowing integration of components. Java does the same for software. When one looks at the way Microsoft has tried to dominate PC software by linking applications to its OS, the implications are clear: Java's ability to create "applets" makes it the ultimate Gatesbuster.

Now Microsoft, which dedicated a decade to building bigger and more powerful OSs, suddenly finds itself on the defensive, surrounded by companies it has either dismissed as second-tier competitors, or worse, burned. IBM's fervent involvement in the race for a $500 network computer is no coincidence. Demand for PCs, and the OSs that accompany them, will not go away. But there is no doubt that Java and the network computer concept have already changed the shape and outlook of the market. This month's issue of Byte magazine does a thorough analysis of how close the business is to developing a true network computer and, despite some obstacles, the device is not as far down the road as you might think. As always, the toughest technology challenge remains the bandwidth bottleneck, and how well both camps, OS and applets, can spur the carrier side into action. Microsoft has already taken up the ISDN banner with its kit that helps consumers self-order. (To give Gates credit, he recognized ISDN's potential long ago). Meanwhile, cable modem technology is evolving at a rapid pace.

The wireless arena has been challenged to meet requirements of on-line services just as the industry was hoping to reach quality parity with 64 kb/s landline service. Carriers should note that the current frenzy in the PC OS market is being spurred by the Internet and the World Wide Web. Admittedly, it's still in its infancy, but carriers will do wrong to defer strategy. If the fast track leadership of companies as solid and as well-run as Microsoft can be rocked by the turbulence and technology dynamism new media brings, what does that say about anyone's immunity?