内容来源：https://www.geekwire.com/2025/30-years-after-microsoft-went-all-in-on-the-internet-its-ai-strategy-feels-like-a-big-budget-remake/

内容总结：

三十年前，微软创始人比尔·盖茨在西雅图召集超过200名记者与分析師，宣布公司将全力押注互联网；三十年后，在人工智能浪潮席卷全球的当下，微软再次站在了技术革新的十字路口。回顾这两段历史，既能看见惊人的战略呼应，也折射出科技行业格局的深刻变迁。

1995年12月7日，微软发布了一系列以互联网为核心的产品战略：免费捆绑的IE 2.0浏览器、全面支持网络功能的Office、重构的MSN在线服务，以及从Sun公司获得Java授权。盖茨当时宣称：“互联网是我们所有产品线新工作的核心驱动力。”这一转型为后来的互联网繁荣乃至云计算崛起奠定了基础。

如今，微软首席执行官萨提亚·纳德拉将“互联网”替换为“AI”，延续了同样的战略决心。他在2025年致股东信中写道：“在成立五十年后，微软再次置身于AI平台变革这一代际机遇的中心。”从Azure云平台、Windows 11到LinkedIn和Microsoft 365，AI已深度融入微软全线产品。

变与不变
不变的是大型科技企业在技术范式转换中面临的紧迫感。1995年，微软在发布Windows 95后仅四个月便加速推出新一代互联网产品，盖茨在内部备忘录中将互联网称为“自1981年IBM PC问世以来最重要的进展”。2023年，纳德拉同样强调AI将“彻底改变计算机辅助人类思考、规划与行动的方式”。

变化则体现在行业格局与竞争维度。上世纪90年代，微软在操作系统领域占据绝对主导，主要对手是网景等初创企业；如今AI赛道上，亚马逊、谷歌、英伟达、OpenAI等企业构成了竞合交织的复杂生态。此外，技术基础设施的成熟度也已不同——当前AI应用建立在已有架构之上，而90年代的互联网仍处于探索商业模式的混沌期。

规模与挑战
微软的体量今非昔比：1996年其Windows用户约为1.5亿，如今Windows月活跃设备超过14亿，且拥有庞大的云计算与企业服务业务。资本投入量级亦呈几何级增长——上一财年微软资本支出超880亿美元聚焦AI基础设施，而1995年与NBC合资成立MSNBC的2.2亿美元在当时已属天价。

然而历史经验表明，技术领先不必然转化为市场成功。1995年盖茨曾难以回答“用户为何需要MSN而非自建网站”；如今部分用户也对Copilot等AI工具提出“谁需要这个”的质疑。行业分析人士指出，微软AI战略成败的关键在于能否提供解决实际问题的真实价值与明确投资回报。

历史的启示
竞争格局的流动性警示着科技企业没有永久的护城河——1995年《纽约时报》报道中提及的竞争对手，仅IBM至今尚存且已彻底转型。此外，过度激进的竞争可能伴随反垄断风险，微软90年代末的互联网战略虽取得成功，但也引发了长达三年的美国司法部调查。

从互联网到人工智能，微软两次“豪赌”折射出科技产业演进的内在逻辑：技术浪潮迭代不息，唯有持续创新与生态适应能力，方能穿越周期。而这一次，故事才刚刚翻开篇章。

中文翻译：

12月7日这一日期承载的历史重量远不止于科技领域。但对于那些在上世纪90年代报道微软的人来说，这个日子还有另一层深意。三十年前的今天，比尔·盖茨在西雅图中心召集了200多名记者和分析师，宣布公司将"全力押注"互联网。

作为当时《微软杂志》的执行主编，我亲历了那场发布会，至今记忆犹新。三十年后的今天，我无法不将这段历史与微软当前的人工智能战略联系起来。

微软当天启动的将互联网连接融入所有产品的举措，将在未来十年产生深远回响，不仅为互联网繁荣年代奠定基础，某种程度上也催生了云计算的最终崛起。免费捆绑发布的IE 2.0浏览器、微软Office的互联网化、初生的MSN在线服务的全面改造、从太阳微系统公司获得Java授权，以及对互联网商业化应用的聚焦——这些都是微软当日公布的战略拼图。

"互联网是我们整个产品线所有新工作的主要驱动力，"盖茨在1995年对齐聚一堂的科技媒体说道，"我们对互联网是铁了心的。"

若将"互联网"替换为"人工智能"，这俨然是现任微软CEO萨提亚·纳德拉过去两年间随时可能发表的宣言。"在成立五十年之际，微软再次站在了技术代际变革的核心位置，我们正身处人工智能平台转型的浪潮中，"纳德拉在2025年度致股东信中写道，"与此前任何转型相比，这代人工智能正在彻底改变技术栈的每个层级，而我们正随之蜕变。"

无论您使用微软Azure云平台、运行Windows 11电脑/平板/笔记本、浏览领英网站，还是使用Microsoft 365，都能发现人工智能已深度融入其中。

对比今昔，相似与差异之处皆具启示。微软在90年代中期经历的失误与成功，至今仍具借鉴意义。

有何相似？

在庞大而快速发展的公司中驾驭技术代际转型的挑战，是当前与三十年前最大的共通点。1995年的微软规模虽远小于今日，却已是当时软件行业的霸主。当公司在1995年8月发布Windows 95时，已同步推出IE浏览器和MSN的初代版本。四个月后，它必须推出这些产品的升级版，并实施大量配套变革。

这种对快速变革的迫切需求，源于Windows 95发布前数月公司向高层传递的信息：要想在这场输不起的竞赛中迎头赶上，就必须加速行动、加倍努力。盖茨1995年5月26日那封著名的"互联网浪潮"备忘录（后来成为反垄断案证据）阐明了威胁与机遇，称互联网是"自1981年IBM PC问世以来最重要的单一发展"。

备忘录后半部分，盖茨承认了一个重大问题：微软必须向出版商和互联网用户解释为何要使用MSN而非自建网站——而他坦言公司尚未找到令人信服的答案。

快进到2023年3月，在合作伙伴OpenAI推出ChatGPT数月后，纳德拉在一场关于未来工作的演讲中明确了人工智能时代的规模："今天将是新征程的起点，强大的基础模型和智能副驾将通过最普世的界面——自然语言——触达大众。这将彻底改变计算机辅助人类思考、规划和行动的方式。"

当然，三十年来微软CEO们已汲取诸多经验，包括避免在可能公开的内部文件中暴露公司短板。纳德拉从未发表过类似盖茨关于MSN的坦率言论。但他对人工智能挑战与机遇的论述，与三十年前盖茨对互联网的紧迫感如出一辙。

有何不同？

在PC操作系统和软件领域，1990年代的微软是无可争议的王者——几乎没有竞争者能接近其市场份额。尽管其"全公司转型互联网"的决策被认为姗姗来迟，但毕竟是从绝对优势地位出发的转型。

三十年后的人工智能浪潮中，亚马逊、谷歌、英伟达、OpenAI和Anthropic构成了更复杂的竞合网络。1995年，人们认为主要竞争来自网景等快速崛起的互联网初创企业——微软则是迎战新兴力量的巨擘。《纽约时报》当年报道的标题精准概括了这种叙事："微软进军互联网市场，网景股价下挫"。《西雅图时报》则直言："微软强势出击——互联网战略：碾压竞争。"众多媒体都呼应了这一主题。

我在发布会现场亲历了这种竞争态势——午餐时恰巧坐在盖茨身旁。我记得他对关于太阳公司Java授权协议的问题略显不耐，也对媒体执着于网景/微软对立的叙事感到无奈。他更希望聚焦于当日宣布事项的宏观影响。

例如他强调，微软授权使用太阳公司Java编程语言用于IE浏览器"并非大事"。"Java可以轻松复现，"盖茨对我说，将授权协议轻描淡写为常规商业决策，与微软多年来的其他决定并无二致。

规模差异更为显著。1996年1月我为《微软杂志》撰写的封面故事中，盖茨阐释了"1.5亿Windows用户"将如何从20项新产品技术的互联网整合中受益。以今日标准观之，这些数字微不足道。微软执行副总裁尤瑟夫·梅赫迪今年初在博客中透露，Windows每月活跃设备已超14亿台。这还未计入微软庞大的云计算业务、Microsoft 365、领英、Xbox，以及来自Copilot的巨额人工智能相关营收。

投资差距更为惊人（即使计入通胀因素）。上一财年微软资本支出超880亿美元，大部分投向人工智能基础设施。而在1995年，公司与NBC斥资2.2亿美元共建MSNBC的协议已堪称天价。

但MSNBC协议也凸显了今昔另一重要差异：1995年无人确知互联网（及万维网）的演进方向，无数人在预测线上商业模式的成败中经历财富沉浮。创意策略公司CEO、资深行业分析师蒂姆·巴加林指出，微软当前的处境优于1995年，关键区别在于：如今我们已具备支撑实用人工智能应用的基础架构，而这在当年的互联网领域并不存在。

"直到见证基于网络架构的应用价值，我们才真正理解互联网的意义，"巴加林说，"这正是根本差异所在。"

当下启示

巴加林认为，微软的人工智能战略唯有提供真实价值——即解决实际问题并展现明确投资回报的实施方案——方能成功。近期媒体报道显示并非所有人都信服此点。德国《PC-WELT》杂志直言："无人要求此功能：微软Copilot人工智能引发社交媒体反弹。"这恰是1995年盖茨未能回答关于MSN的问题：人们为何要使用这个？

竞争层面最重要的启示或许是：科技领域没有永恒的王者。1995年12月《纽约时报》报道中提及的竞争者，仅IBM至今尚存——且已与当年截然不同。

关于成功代价的教训同样深刻。微软激进的互联网战略虽获成功，却也引发了1998年至2001年的司法部调查。积极竞争固然必要，过度竞争则需承担后果。

不过这已是属于另一个十年的故事了。

英文来源：

December 7 carries historical weight well beyond the tech world, but for those who covered Microsoft in the ’90s, the date has another resonance. Thirty years ago today, Bill Gates gathered more than 200 journalists and analysts at Seattle Center to declare that the company was going “all-in” on the internet.
As managing editor for Microsoft Magazine at the time, I was there, and I remember it well. Three decades later, I can’t help but see the parallels to Microsoft’s current AI push.
The moves that Microsoft kicked off that day to build internet connectivity into all its products would reverberate throughout the next decade, helping to lay the foundation for the dot-com boom years and arguably the eventual rise of cloud computing.
The release of Internet Explorer 2.0 as a free, bundled browser, the internet-enablement of Microsoft Office, the complete revamping of the still-new MSN online service, Microsoft’s licensing of Java from Sun Microsystems and a focus on how the internet might be used commercially were all pieces of the Microsoft plan unveiled that day.
“The internet is the primary driver of all new work we are doing throughout the product line,” Bill Gates told the assembled technology press in 1995. “We are hard core about the internet.”
Substitute the word “AI” for “internet” and you have a statement that current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella could have made at any moment in the last couple of years.
“Fifty years after our founding, Microsoft is once again at the heart of a generational moment in technology as we find ourselves in the midst of the AI platform shift,” Nadella wrote in his 2025 annual letter to shareholders. “More than any transformation before it, this generation of AI is radically changing every layer of the tech stack, and we are changing with it.”
Whether you are using the Microsoft Azure cloud platform; running a Windows 11 PC, tablet, or laptop; spending time on LinkedIn; or using Microsoft 365, you will find AI baked in.
Comparing then and now, there are insights in both the similarities and the differences, and lessons from Microsoft’s mid-’90s missteps and successes that are still relevant today.
What’s the same?
The challenge of navigating the shift to a new generation of technology in a large, fast-moving company is the biggest similarity between now and 30 years ago.
Microsoft was a lot smaller in 1995, but it was still the dominant force in the software industry of its day. When the company launched Windows 95 in August of 1995, it came with the first versions of both Internet Explorer and MSN. Within four months, it had to ship new, better versions of those products alongside a whole lot of other changes.
The push for speedy change grew out of something the company had been telling its senior leaders for several months prior to the launch of Windows 95: It had to move fast and do more if it was going to catch up in a race that it couldn’t afford to lose.
Gates’ famous “internet tidal wave” memo from May 26, 1995 (which later became an antitrust exhibit) spelled out both the threat and opportunity — calling the internet “the most important single development to come along since the IBM PC was introduced in 1981.”
Later in the memo, Gates acknowledged a significant problem: Microsoft would have to explain why publishers and internet users should use MSN instead of just setting up their own website — and he admitted that the company didn’t have a great answer.
Fast forward to March 2023, a few months after Microsoft partner OpenAI launched ChatGPT, when Satya Nadella made the scale of the AI era clear in a speech on the future of work.
“Today is the start of the next step in this journey, with powerful foundation models and capable copilots accessible via the most universal interface: natural language,” Nadella said. “This will radically transform how computers help us think, plan, and act.”
Of course, Microsoft CEOs have learned a lot over the last 30 years, including the importance of not pointing out the company’s shortcomings in memos that could end up being seen by the rest of the world. Nadella offered nothing like Gates’ MSN admission. But his comments about the size of the AI challenge and opportunity were a direct parallel to the urgency that Gates expressed about the internet 30 years ago.
What’s different?
In the world of PC operating systems and software, Microsoft in the 1990s was king — with few competitors that came even close to the kind of market share it enjoyed. It was arguably late in making a bet-the-company pivot to the internet, but doing so from a very strong position.
Thirty years later, amid the rise of artificial intelligence, Amazon, Google, Nvidia, OpenAI, and Anthropic are part of a more complex network of competitors and partners.
Back in 1995, the big competition was perceived as coming from Netscape and other fast-moving internet startups — and Microsoft was the behemoth battling the insurgents.
The New York Times’ headline about the 1995 event summed up the framing: “Microsoft Seeks Internet Market; Netscape Slides.” As The Seattle Times put it, “Microsoft plays hardball — Game plan for the Internet: Crush the competition.” Many others echoed the theme.
I saw that competitive dynamic first-hand at the press event, when by a stroke of luck I ended up sitting beside Bill Gates at lunch. I recall him being a little annoyed by questions about the Java licensing deal with Sun and the broader press interest in the Netscape/Microsoft narrative. He wanted to focus on the broader impact of the day’s announcements.
He stressed, for example, that the licensing by Microsoft of Sun’s Java programming language for use with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser was not really a big deal.
“Java you can recreate trivially,” Gates told me, brushing off the licensing deal as a routine business decision, not much different than many others Microsoft made over the years.
The scale is also drastically different. For example, my January 1996 cover story for Microsoft Magazine quoted Gates explaining how the “150 million users of Windows” would benefit from the internet integration it was undertaking across 20 new products and technologies.
In today’s terms, those numbers look tiny. In a blog post earlier this year, Microsoft executive vice president Yusuf Mehdi said Windows now powers more than 1.4 billion monthly active devices. That doesn’t include Microsoft’s massive cloud computing business, Microsoft 365, LinkedIn, Xbox, and its already-significant AI-attributable revenue from Copilot.
The investment gap is more dramatic, even adjusted for inflation. Microsoft poured more than $88 billion into capital expenditures last fiscal year, much of it on AI infrastructure. In 1995, the company’s $220 million deal with NBC to launch MSNBC sounded like a lot of money.
That MSNBC deal, however, highlights another important contrast between the present and the past. In 1995, no one really knew where the internet (and the web) was going to go. Fortunes were made and lost trying to predict which business models would work online.
Tim Bajarin, CEO of the consultancy Creative Strategies and a longtime industry analyst, says Microsoft is better positioned now than it was in 1995. The difference: we already have the underlying architecture for useful AI applications. That wasn’t true with the internet back then.
“We didn’t see the value proposition until we saw the role of applications built on a web-based architecture,” Bajarin said. “That is what is significantly different.”
Lessons for today
Microsoft’s AI push, Bajarin said, will succeed only if it delivers genuine value — implementations that solve real problems and show clear return on investment.
Recent headlines suggest not everyone is convinced. ‘No one asked for this’: Microsoft’s Copilot AI push sparks social media backlash, declared Germany’s PC-WELT magazine. It’s the same question Gates couldn’t answer about MSN in 1995: Why should anyone use this?
Perhaps the biggest lesson on the competition front is that there is no guarantee of longevity or relevance in tech. Only one of the competitors listed in the December 1995 New York Times story is still around – IBM – and it is a vastly different company than it was then.
There is one more lesson, about the cost of success. Microsoft’s aggressive internet push worked — but it also triggered a Department of Justice investigation that lasted from 1998 to 2001. Competing hard is essential. Competing too hard has consequences.
But that’s a story for another decade.