12. IBM and Microsoft
Frenemies since: 1981, when Microsoft provided the DOS (which it had in turn licensed from an obscure software company) for IBM’s first personal computer, helping to make the IBM PC the industry standard and thereby creating the Wintel platform that would go on to put billions of dollars in Redmondian pockets.
Acts of friendship: Big Blue and Bill Gates’ company continued to collaborate on DOS development for years; in 1985, they teamed to create OS/2, meant to be DOS’s substitute; IBM’s famous ThinkPads run Microsoft software to this day, even though they’re no longer IBM products.
Acts of enmity: In 1990, Microsoft abandoned OS/2 and poured resources into making Windows into an OS/2 rival, to enormous success; a ticked-off IBM responded by pouring resources into making OS/2 into a Windows rival, to…well, not much success at all, even though it marketed it as “a better DOS than DOS and a better Windows than Windows.” IBM continued its anti-Microsoft combat when acquired Lotus in 1995, picking up SmartSuite (which completed with Microsoft Office) and the Domino/Notes messaging platform (which still competes with Exchange and Outlook).
Current state of the frenemyship: IBM not only no longer makes desktop operating systems, it doesn’t even make computers that run them. It still seems to derive pleasure from tweaking its onetime best friend, though–just last week, it announced a “Microsoft-free” Linux software environment.
(Microsoft OS/2 disk image from Wikipedia.)
December 11th, 2008 at 6:05 am
Great list, I enjoyed that, thanks. ;-)
December 11th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Great job on this, Harry. Many of us have lived through the stuff you’ve written about here, but were we really paying attention? On some levels, yes, but we all tend to be revisionist historians to a certain degree. With this article you’ve put a stake in the ground. Would love to see you do a periodic update on the same 12 — maybe adding or deleting as new frenemies develop or others lose pertinence.
December 15th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
What about nVidia and AMD? It seems like that’s a big one.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Great article!
December 18th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Frenemies—- are they not just competitors? OR two persons/entities that have a mutual love hate relationship that shift from one end of teh spectrum to another….
December 23rd, 2008 at 1:03 am
Wow. Microsoft has many enemies.
December 30th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Not to be a grammar policeman, but it seems you spelled “enmity” wrong.
Oh, well. Pretty awesome article. That there are six pages containing Microsoft relationships says something….
May 4th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Wow, I immensely enjoyed this list. Microsoft leads the ranks with enemies on almost both ends of the list.
I’m missing the iFruad producers vs Apple on the list though. :P
http://kixtrix.com
May 8th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Microsoft and Nintendo! While it may not be cpu-based, nintendo helped microsoft get going with the xbox, which then completely left nintendo to branch out their own and is now nintendo’s biggest opponent (sorry sony). Not to mention how nintendo is so bitchy about making sure that nobody but themselves and add programs and games to their consoles, so there isn’t a nintendo game on the xbox and vise versa. And, Gates has famously said quote, “”There’s room for innovation (on the wii), but moving that controller around — it’s something that’s not mainstream for most games.” Who knows? Maybe Gates will give in to 114,000,000 dollars a year of motion-sensitivity and make a motion-sensitive Halo. YES.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:01 am
You forgot Google and Mozilla, google has always been a big but quiet supporter of firefox, and then they release Chrome…
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November 4th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Great article!I enjoyed that, thanks. ;-)