Kurt Shintaku's Blog

The Acquired podcast published 2 long form podcasts – each about 5 hours long – about the history of Microsoft, the first focusing on the Bill Gates/Paul Allen founding & era & the second on Steve Ballmer’s leadership & era. (They did a good job with both so I’m posting them below – Steve even comes on to the podcast in a separate episode to expand upon certain topics & make his own remarks about a few events that took place during his term as CEO.)

Microsoft Volume I: The Complete History and Strategy of founding through Windows 95 (Audio) – 4hr 23min

• Microsoft. After nearly a decade of Acquired episodes, we are finally ready to tackle the most valuable company ever created. The company that put a computer on every desk and in every home. The company that invented the software business model. The company that so thoroughly and completely dominated every conceivable competitor that the United States government intervened and kneecapped it… yet it’s STILL the most valuable company in the world today.
• This episode tells the story of Microsoft in its heyday, the PC Era. We cover its rise from a teenage dream to the most powerful business and technology force in history — the 20-year period from 1975 to 1995 that took Bill and Paul from the Lakeside high school computer room to launching Windows 95 alongside Jay Leno and the Rolling Stones. From BASIC to DOS, Windows, Office, Intel, IBM, Xerox PARC, Apple, Steve Jobs, Steve Ballmer… it’s all here, and it’s all amazing.

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Microsoft Volume II: The Complete History and Strategy of the Ballmer Years (Audio) – 4hrs & 51min

In 1999, Microsoft became the most valuable company in the world. And in 2019, Microsoft became the most valuable company in the world, *again*. But… what happened in the twenty years in between? The answer, as we discovered in our research, is probably not what you think. In this episode we explore and analyze the browser wars and the DOJ case, Windows XP through 8, Surface, Xbox, search, Yahoo!, Bing, the iPhone, Nokia, mobile, social, Facebook… and oh yeah, a little thing called Azure and the enterprise — which ended up becoming so big that no failures mattered.