Microsoft, AOL headed for final showdown
C|Net | at | by Mike
At an America Online staff meeting in 1994, then-President Ted Leonsis wheeled out a wooden cutout of a bare-fanged Tyrannosaurus rex meant to symbolize the company's most menacing enemy: Microsoft. Leonsis' representation was both right and wrong. The software giant indeed presented a major threat at the time--the eve of the launch of its Microsoft Network--but its battle form would come to resemble a multiheaded Hydra more than a prehistoric monster. Rather than full-frontal assaults, Microsoft would attack from many directions simultaneously and regenerate appendages whenever they were severed. "That's the way you win a war; you don't do it with monster battles unless you're sure you can win them," said Carl Howe, an analyst at Forrester Research. "You do it by finding weaknesses in the enemy's lines before you mount your big attack."