Today is March 13th 2006 and it was exactly 20 years ago today the most successful technology company of all time came to market.
The year was 1986 Chernobyl was being covered up by the Russian government, the Iran Contra Affair was in full swing and in the NBA The Boston Celtics took the Houston Rockets in 6 games. The most popular song was “That’s What Friends Are For” … Dionne Warwick and Friends
There was also a rather small company changing the way the world was computing, and about to make many early investors and employees (who took stock options) very happy.
The performace of microsoft’s stock has been absolutley stunning as everyone knows, just to give you a few examples if had invested only $3000 at there ipo price of $21 a share it would be worth in excess of 1.1 million, another intresting fact is that Microsoft’s stock has split 9 times, so that same $3000 you would have 40,000+ shares (now that doesnt hurt). We all know Microsoft is one of those rare companies that people wish they had invested in, but now a days all the talk seems to be surrounding Google. Which is very understandable since the stock has put in a great preformance so far, only recently falling on hard times.
The Comparision
Microsoft - The company that popularized the “windows” style (not the inventor, that goes to Xerox Parc, probley the biggest screw up company in the history of the world) and basically owns the Operating System business still to this day, was in the “sweet spot” they were in the right place at the right period in time, when computers were not really able to talk to each other, so the progress was limited. They dominated that spot for now 20 years, but the harder times are now coming, even the chief Bill has declared that the OS’s days are running out, people are now migrating to a simper style of computing. A style which is much more dependant on web services, i would boldly predict that within the next 10 years
you may not even have an opoerating system, your computer would just boot up instantly to your personal “homepage” it’s basically your homebase on what you want to do.
So what are shareholders left to think?
Well as with all other things Bill does he is thinking ahead many many years into the future and he has realized that web services are the future, so as a shareholder (as i am full disclosure people) i think you are in a good spot as Microsoft is gearing up to take over the living room and many other things you never thought of, i.e. the mobile phone with the switching of Palm Treo to the Microsoft mobile OS can it be only a matter of time till the Redmond boys own the phone market too?
I don’t know what the future hold all i know is that the past is a great indication of the future, but remeber just a when you drive you can’t only look in the rear view mirror, that’s how accidents are caused =)
Google
Google ipo’d in August 19th 2004 at $100 a share, since then it has gone on a meteoric rise to the high of $475 and more recently come down to the $350’s.