message for us has always been important to impact people positively, and there's a divide in this country right now. >> all right, ladies, thank you both for joining us, cindy and terry. be sure to tune in for a brand new episode of "the '90s" at 9:00 p.m. eastern on cnn. i'm ana cabrera. have a great night. in the '90s, we're going to revolutionize human communication using desktop computers. >> you've got mail. >> what is the world wide web? >> in the world of computers it's kill or be killed. >> please welcome bill gates. >> do you agree or disagree you have a monopoly? >> check out windows 95. >> this is imac. >> it's a technological revolution that's changing the way we do everything from making friends to falling in love. >> when the new millennium arrives so will a technological tidal wave. >> three, two, one!

♪ ♪ so you've just bought your first personal computer, you've brought it home from the store, you're unpacking it and then comes the moment of truth.

if you've just bought your first personal computer, this show is for you. >> computers were in 1990 a disconnected device. it was a brick, right? that sat in your house and let you do amazing things that you'd never been able to do before but it was essentially a productivity tool. >> now that we have all these very powerful tools, we're still islands and we're still not really connecting these people using these powerful tools together. >> apple was in a period of decline. steve jobs quit in kind of a temper tantrum in 1985. and he went off and started a company called next. after he left, there was a sequence of pretty boring unimaginative corporate leadership that followed him. >> why did you leave apple? >> well, why did i leave apple? i was asked to leave. yeah, i was asked to leave apple. i was planning on spending the rest of my life there but been the didn't work out that way. >> steve jobs was a genius, but one of the reasons he got moved out of his job was because he

was spending huge amounts of money on projects that for the most part never reached the market, and apple had a crisis of confidence. >> at a time when major computer corporations like apple are laying off 10% of their workforce, microsoft is the big exception in the computer industry. >> people didn't get how much value there was to be derived from software that the operating system could be the most valuable piece of real estate in the whole computing business was something not understood by almost anybody in the computer industry apart from bill gates. >> today we're introducing microsoft windows version 3. >> bill gates, part thomas edison, part henry ford, part holden caulfield from "catcher in the rye." at 19, he dropped out of harvard to design computer software with

his friend paul allen. they came up with a system that operates 90% of the personal computers today. >> microsoft was making a lot of money then. they were charging $200, $300, $400 for say a word processing package that was costing them about 50 cents to print on floppies. >> hard working, modest, easy going, it would seem to a fault. of course, he does have at least one secret. but we'll fix that. is it true that you can leap over a chair from a standing position? >> it depends on the size of the chair but this chair, probably so. >> yes! >> i took a step before i did it. >> that's okay. >> bill gates wasn't just one thing. he was a brilliant guy. had great parents. family values. but he was a killer. he basically was a ruthless guy, and so was microsoft. >> no, no, no, somebody's confused not thinking. > there's no way.

you guys never understood, you never understood the first thing about this. >> a lot of people make the analogy that competing with bill gates is like playing hard ball. i'd say it's more like a knife fight. >> i've never heard any of these things. you know, you're saying like knife fight. that's silliness. it's childish. i mean, why be a mouthpiece for that kind of silliness? i'm done. >> can i just ask you one more question, bill? >> no, i don't think so. >> i remember one time interviewing gates and i said, microsoft owns the world right now. do you worry about that? he said i worry about it every single night. i go to bed thinking what have i not thought about. >> now it's starting to dial. and now i am in. >> it spans the globe like a

super highway. it is called internet. the net began back in 1969. it was a tool of the pentagon. but nowadays just about anyone with a computer and a modem can join in. >> the internet was a really dorky, hard to use, and extremely nerdy thing. none of your friends would have been on had. just fellow people in tech. >> the internet really was not a huge factor in the early '90s. but netscape changed things. >> they're calling him the next bill gates. 24-year-old mark andreessen, 15 months ago, fresh out of the university of illinois, he helped start a company called netscape. at 11:00 a.m. this morning, the company's stock went public and wall street went bonkers. so what does netscape produce that now makes the company worth $2.9 billion? this. the netscape navigator, software which makes it easy for people to connect to the global computer network called the internet. >> microsoft has a long history of feeling threatened by hot new upstarts.

you could easily argue that bill gates' game plan was world domination. >> these guys can be taken. but the only way we're going to take them is by studying them. know what they know. do what they do. watch them, watch them, watch them. take every one of their good ideas and make it one of our good ideas. >> microsoft came down and essentially said to netscape, hey, you know, we can be friends or we can be enemies and if we're going to be friends, that's great. you'll get all the advantages of working with microsoft in a million ways and on the home screen of a lot of computers or we can compete. if we're going to compete, we'll do whatever is required to kill. >> some people believe you have an infinite appetite for power that you're the embodiment of a button that says i want it all. and you want to eat up your competitors. is that unfair? >> it doesn't ring any bells with me.

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highway and who doesn't? >> the services we're talking about today are commercial services. you spend money to get on there. there's no real regulation per se. you use your phone line and computer and you get online. >> and compuserve was for the tech savvy people. prodigy was for shopping and aol was the first one that had a vision to get everyone connected. >> when i heard that sound, i cried a little bit because i knew there was a big adventure waiting for me. >> welcome. you've got mail. >> compuserve charged by the minute. it was like a taxicab. aol's invention was to forget that and charge $19.95 a month all you can eat. that changed everything because now you could afford to be on the internet all you wanted. >> you didn't have to be a researcher. you could dial on to aol. aol was specifically designed to be point and click. >> steve case is the president of america online. i interviewed him via computer. >> and george asked what are the

most popular america online features now? >> he responds the real focus for us is on promoting interactivity. >> what's the very best thing about it? i think being able to communicate with just about anyone anywhere. >> one of the things that aol realizes is that america online can't be all 200 plus million people at once. you need little neighborhoods so chat rooms become internet neighborhoods where people who share interests, create their own little space. you can either click on the chat button up here or go to the people connection, that's what america online calls it and when you get here, click on list rooms to find different categories of rooms. >> when i was a kid, i didn't know any other black gay people. the only people i knew were the folks that i met on america online. i didn't come out to my mother till much later but i was out on the internet. >> in many respects aol was one of the first social media companies. >> computer communication is not like human communication. there's no facial expression to help you know which way

something ambiguous is meant. so the isolated communicators of cyber space have come up with little signs made out of punctuation marks called emoticons. >> you were using texas to have a conversation that felt like a face-to-face communication. you could see the start of this new online culture. >> it's a technological revolution that's changing the way we do everything from making friends to falling in love. >> he was nice and he never gave me any of the come on lines. it was always friendly. >> wait, you're telling me guys use pickup lines on a computer? >> um-hum. >> as the internet grows, i'm finding information and want to find love. >> i just happened to stumble on michael's address. i picked him out of the blue. i read his profile and i was completely floored. >> many of the businesses of the internet work on connecting for the first time total strangers who have very narrow interests in common. >> aol was what was called a walled garden. picture this, you're paying a

monthly fee for something with a limited number of things to do. no matter how many things they put inside their garden, it could never come close to the hundreds of millions of things that would pop up on the open internet. >> the thing about the world wide web is that it has no central organizing body. it's chaotic. if up if you are running a website how is anyone going to find you? >> stanford grad students jerry yang and david filo liked spending hour after hour discovering interesting places on the internet. that is how they stumbled on to a fortune. their million dollar idea is called yahoo. >> yahoo! >> yahoo came in at just the perfect time. they literally made a list. it was just simply a listing. it was jerry and david's web listing. and they named yahoo! after rednecks, yahoos. >> yahoo was an exercise in organizing the internet.

it quickly became the leading way to find things. it was a directory based system. it wasn't a search based system. the idea was could curate the whole web. >> wall street now values yahoo at around $700 million even though the company is barely profitable. >> with the success of netscape aband the growth of these digital upstarts, yahoo, there was this energy that was not all in seattle. >> it's not really silicon valley versus what's going on in redmond, washington. it's more mankind versus microsoft. silicon valley is just one outpost against the evil empire to the north. >> this is silicon valley, the heart and soul of the nation's computer business. here microsoft is respected and feared as a powerful giant whose every footstep sends shivers through the entire industry. >> there's this emerging war basically between the silicon valley culture build up around the web and the microsoft

culture up in redmond. it's an economic clash, technological clash, a clash for power. bill gates had to turn microsoft like a super tanker around to have it address the internet. the way they did that was by coming up with internet explorer which they presents as the world's best browser. it wasn't. microsoft stuff never is the best but it was well market and it was pushed and they had a lot of money behind it. >> here came microsoft with its own version of a web browser built into windows 95. their intention was to kill netscape as the browser and make internet explorer its replacement. >> five, four, three, two, one. zero. >> a consumer feeding frenzy. many computer stores like this one in miami opened at the stroke of midnight so customers could be the first to get their hands on windows 95.

x xwl. >> check out windows 95! >> it seems like an awful lot of fuss over a single product but the product will have a huge impact not just on microsoft but on the global computer industry. >> this is jennifer aniston. i'm matthew perry. we're here to see mr. gates on a possible starring role on the video guide to sft windows 95. >> all of the employees have been invited to a huge party in a tent on the microsoft campus.s 95. >> all of the employees have been invited to a huge party in a tent on the microsoft campus. guess what song we could hear. >> reporter: you got it, rolling stones, "start me up." >> windows 95 was the most successful software launch to this day. everybody whether they really wanted to or not went out and got windows 95. >> getting the rolling stones to allow their music to be used in the ad launch tonight is the sign of a company at the peak of its powers. while the challenge for microsoft is to stay there with the race now on to exploit the internet, it may soon be

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apple computer, a pioneer in the personal computers and software business has fallen on hard times after reporting a big quarterly loss it, decided to lay off 1300 workers. >> how do you feel about what's happened to apple?

did it have to turn out the way it did. >> it's hard to predict these things. >> you thought about this. this is not a subject that's unfamiliar to you. >> yeah, it is. it's sort of ancient history to me right now. i don't really think about this stuff anymore. apple and microsoft duke it out and netscape and microsoft duke it out and it's a spectator sport. >> in the mid-1990s, apple had a couple more ceos, none of whom grasped the vision of apple. as a result, the company did worse and worse as the decade progressed. >> with big losses in the last quarter, with profit margins shrinking, apple seems destined for a takeover. this is a computer that even has fan clubs. >> i just love the apple. and i always have, and i can't really say why. >> everyone was rooting for apple to somehow survive. it wasn't at all clear that apple would be around at the end of the 1990s. >> the troubled apple computer company may republican to its core in an effort to boost sagging sales. apple reportedly will name its

co-founder steve jobs as its new chairman. he will replace the chairman who was ousted earlier this month. >> steve came over to apple, sold next to apple for $400 million. he had no ambitions at apple at all. but steve jobs was watching apple flounder. and he just couldn't help himself and so he remade the company the way he wanted. and there was no one to oppose him because the company was exhausted. >> steve jobs had exactly the abrasive but incisive personality that apple needed at that point. they needed someone to come in and say kill that project, kill that project. that's stupid. consolidate that. and focus the company. >> i'd like to announce one of our first partnerships today, a very, very meaningful one and that is one with microsoft. we're very, very happy about it. we're very, very excited about it. and i happen to have a special

guest with me today via satellite downlink. >> i don't think steve jobs has ever experienced you know before or after that just people going boo, no. microsoft represented everything that these hard-core apple fans hated. >> if we want to move forward, and see apple healthy and prospering again, we have to let go of a few things here. we have to let go of this notion for apple to win, microsoft has to lose. okay? >> there was an alliance now between these two former archrivals and microsoft was going to invest $150 million in apple. but more important from bill gates' point of view was that apple would include microsoft's browser in all macintoshes. that was the last piece. now had he domination of the browser world. >> microsoft says internet

explorer just makes it easier to get around the web but when you hit a button to access services for travel, entertainment, news and the like, you find sites owned by microsoft and that's what the government is worried about. over the next few years, americans may be buying billions of dollars in goods and services through the internet. and that's a market too important the government says, for one company to act as a gate keeper. >> the u.s. justice department asked a federal court today to fine microsoft corporation a record $1 million a day. >> the complaint against microsoft came from executives at netscape, a fast growing software company that struck gold with its web browser but microsoft began giving away its own browser and required computer manufacturers to offer it with windows. >> what they're able to do is illegally we believe use that monopoly power to block the competition and do other things that they're not legally allowed

to do. >> a lot of people were saying the anti-trust laws are outmoded. technology will enforce competition on its own. the counter argument is when we begin to get lots of people to use your operating system, it becomes harder and harder for somebody else to break into that industry. >> microsoft chairman bill gates goes before congress for the first time today expected to face tough questions from the senate judiciary committee. >> i want to can i ask the audience one question and get a quick poll here. how many of you used intel based pcs in this audience. raise your hands. of that group who use pcs, how many of you use a pc without microsoft's operating system? gentlemen, that's a monopoly. that's a lock. that's 100%. >> it is fair to say that when you compete with people, you think hey, we're going to have a better product. we're going to win the customer. we're going to do a good job on these things. >> the hearing makes clear i

think to most people like oh, huh, so that gates guy, he's not just like kind of a good natured geek in glasses. he's another capitalist. >> police and security guards in belgium were caught flat-footed today by a cowardly sneak attack on one of the world's wealthiest men. >> it's been a bad week for microsoft and its cybermeister bill gates. yesterday at the chicago debut of his much awaited windows 98 system, the program dramatically crashed. >> you'll notice this scanner, whoa. >> it's shaping up as one of the anti-trust battles of the century. federal and state governments today sued microsoft saying the computer software giant is predatory and scheming to crush all competition. >> microsoft used its monopoly power to develop a chokehold on the software needed to access the internet.

>> i don't think bill gates recognized the seriousness of the situation. this was a case that simply wasn't going to go away. >> worst case, they'll ask us to create a crippled product and that would be too bad. that would really hold us back. so we're quite confident that won't happen. >> the government tried to avoid this trial in every way they could. but once bill rejected every settlement offer, the world just changed because it was like okay, now we're going to court. the government might not be good at some things but it's really good at litigation. when it decides it's going to win a lawsuit, you are going to face a formidable adversary. it's been ten months since a listen up, heart disease. you too, unnecessary er visits. and hey, unmanaged depression, don't get too comfortable. we're talking to you, cost inefficiencies and data without insights. and fragmented care- stop getting in the way of patient recovery and pay attention. every single one of you is on our list.

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new management team took over at apple, and because of their hard work, i'm really pleased to report to you today that apple is back on track. and today, i'm incredibly pleased to introduce imac, our consumer product. this is imac. >> so -- >> the imac was a computer that was meant to look like something you would want people to see in your house. it ushered in this new era where design started to matter. >> the imac was sexy. i had a blue one and it had curves. it was built like a sports car. when people think of computers they think of boring, beige, utilitarian.

apple made it fun. >> you can take it home, take it out of the box, and be cruising the internet within ten minutes. and that's not something you can do on any other computer we know of. >> he added software to make it easier to connect to the internet so the i in imac was for internet. >> it changed how people thought of apple. and changed how people perceived what had been a dying company, suddenly people saw that there was a spark here. >> in the world of computers, it's kill or be killed and the original wiz kid was thought to be dying an early death but guess what, mac is back. >> a year ago, nobody would have predicted this. steve jobs, the head man at apple computer, hailed as the visionary hero who brought the company back from the verge of extinction. >> in 4 1/2 months, imac has become the number one selling computer in america. >> while bill gates ultimately represents the computer genius' entrepreneur, steve jobs represents the entrepreneur's artist.

>> and you could say what you want about steve jobs, but he knew how to make people believe. >> in federal court in washington, d.c. today, a case of legal hard ball and computer software. the u.s. government set out to prove that computer industry giant microsoft tried to bully the competition illegally into submission or out of business. >> as microsoft and justice department lawyers came to do battle at the federal courthouse, a bill gates impersonator showed up adding a surreal touch. inside the courtroom, the real bill gates on videotape under oath in a deposition taken in august. >> the thing about a deposition is that the only thing that the witness can really do is to sit there and tell the truth simply and directly. the first two hours of the deposition was quite unexpected. >> given me here. >> just read. i'm asking for your present recollection if you have one. >> i don't know my present recollection. what do you mean by internet

software? the full breadth of your question. >> this person who i know is brilliant and articulate and passionate is withdrawn, playing word games. being evasive. doing everything that makes him look like he is not confident in his position. >> you recognize that this is a document produced from microsoft's files. do you not, sir? >> no. >> you don't? >> well, how would i know that? >> david boies, the famous litigator, has a photographic memory. he would ask gates in the deposition, do you ever remember saying this? no, i never would say something like that. without looking at notes, he would say would you call up document 3,021 please. >> did you know that microsoft people were meeting with netscape before they actually met? >> i don't recall knowing in advance. >> government lawyer david boies revealed an internal microsoft memorandum written by gates three weeks before that meeting.

i think there is a very powerful deal of some kind we can do with netscape, gates wrote. we can even pay them money as part of the deal, buying some piece of them or something. >> when i covered the trial, one of the things the judge said to me is he didn't believe bill gates. that deposition was instrumental in shaping the judge's decision. >> i've never seen a stamp like that, never used a stamp like that. >> haven't you seen stamps like that on every one of the documents you've been shown during this deposition? >> can you get me all the exhibits? >> just a waste of time. >> it is a waste of time. >> technology is hard to understand. their pitch to the judge was trust us. we're doing what we're doing for the consumer. the deposition made him and the company look like they were not trustworthy. >> because this deposition and the snippets of it that played out day after day on national television, it was an incredibly

precipitous decline in how most people viewed bill gates. >> he was an environment that, unlike almost every other environment in which he operates, he did not control. no witness controls a deposition. no matter how rich, no matter how powerful. every witness has to sit there and answer questions. >> in words surprisingly blunt, judge thomas penfield jackson declared microsoft a monopoly. lawyers from the justice department in the 19 states that sued microsoft immediately claimed victory. >> microsoft is a monopolist and it engages in massive anti-competitive practices. >> it drove bill gates crazy that the government was portraying him as some kind of evil force. was he ruthless as a businessman? yes. did he see himself as a ruthless businessman? no. he saw himself as someone who was advancing the common good. and the government didn't see it that way.

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so we know how to cover almost almoanything.hing even a swing set standoff. and we covered it, july first, twenty-fifteen. talk to farmers. we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ there is a lot of chat about technology in business. you'd expect that, but some of the conversation might surprise you. it is not just tech talk. they are talking about sex.

>> are you an adult? >> what she does is she loads pictures mostly x-rated pictures into her computer. and then customers anywhere in the world can call up laura's lair and see on their home computer this list. 15,000 descriptions of photos in language that's not always suitable for tv. >> pornography is always the first to make money on any new technology and not just technology since computers. i mean, since the beginning. >> laura's customers pay to transfer these photos from her computer through the phone lines to their computer. >> okay, here it comes. >> how do i know? okay. they don't have clothes on. you didn't tell me that. stop sweating. > the adult industry was very interested in figuring out how to make credit cards work. that had benefits for online commerce. it boosted consumer acceptance of online credit card use. >> our little shopping carts that we now use are invented by pornographers.

what was unknown was whether or not somebody could set up a website and actually make money. and the proof of concept of that was pornography. >> for the most part, entrepreneurs have not figured outs how to make profit on the internet, that is until ebay came along. >> pierre omidyar started the auction site as a hobby. three years later, it has a market value of close to $6 billion and is a superstar on wall street. ebay makes its money by charging to list an item, then takes a small percentage of the final selling price if it sells. >> if you've got an item you want to sell like a 1967 green hornet lunch pail, for example, you write up a brief description, add a digital photo and decide on an opening bid. >> ebay really changed everything and not because what they were offering so incredible and revolutionary essentially what they were doing was they were automated the middle man. >> 600 million hits a month.

>> that's right. >> that's a lot of people. >> that's right. >> how do you stop the unscrupulous? >> problems like that are really very, very rare on ebay. it's all based on trust. >> one thing ebay pioneered is this idea that we rate each other. so that future transaction participants can see whether you're a good person to deal with or not. it's in your financial interests to be looked up to and respected as a trustworthy transactional partner. >> on nbc news in-depth tonight, we're going to talk about the superstars of the stock market, those red hot internet stocks. companies that in some cases didn't even exist a few years ago are now trading in the stratosphere. >> the whole dotcom bubble of the late '90s was based on this idea that what counted was not profit. what counted was eyeballs. if you could get enough people using your stuff, you would figure out a way organically from that to make a profit. >> the daily volume, 3.7 million shares.

we are almost a $2 billion company. >> people love these stocks. anything that has dotcom or net in its name, it goes like hot cakes. >> it's billed as the earth's biggest bookstore. not just the country's but the earth's. but you can't shop there unless you have a computer. it's a virtual bookstore. >> books, books, and more books. that's what they do at amazon.com. >> if you print the amazon.com catalog, it would be the size of seven new york city phone books. >> in the early '90s, jeff bezos looked at what the internet could be and he decided it to be anything. >> he starred it at this modest ranch home in seattle in 12994, less than five years later, his idea of selling books on the certainty has grown into a multibillion dollar business. >> the largest physical bookstores only carry about 175,000 titles. amazon.com has 2.5 million titles in its online catalog. there's no way to have a 2.5

million physical bookstore. >> bezos understood it would take decades to create the infrastructure of shipping and warehouses. he had this vision of up ending the retail business. >> a couple of things we have to get to which is often said about your company. you're losing money. >> i can tell you that i think it's good that we're losing money right now. it's important to amazon.com some day in the future in the long-term. >> we'd like to know what day that is. >> you can't be the everything store unless you're absolutely gigantic. bezos' philosophy was get big fast. earning money, making a profit that will come later. for now, let's become the 800-pound gorilla. >> this year i think more and more people will do more and more shopping online. it's so much more convenient. you have unlimited selection. the convenience is going to make this the year that shopping comes of age on the internet. >> this was a time that allowed you to make choices as a consumer without gatekeepers choosing things for you.

you could decide, i want that, and you'd get it. if you don't live in a big city, you can still get big city stuff. >> the worldwide computer network called the internet has inspired more movies than any big deal technological fad since the cb radio boom of the 1970s. the internet itself however is definitely exploding. > it hit and within like two years, it's become so powerful. >> we're sitting on the most perfect beach in the world and all we can think about is -- >> where can i hook up my modem. >> in 1999, we are culturally, socially, financially quite dependent on the internet. >> in washington today a special senate committee is preparing to release a fairly alarming report on the y2k millennium problem. they call it one of the most serious and potentially devastating events the nation has ever encountered. >> the brains of most computers, the chips that do the thinking have tiny built-in clocks. many registered the year with only the last two digits assuming the first two are

always 19. >> the problem was not the computer would think that it's 1900. the problem was it wouldn't know what to do. it would just break down and go can't process this. >> it could trigger widespread computer failures blackouts and breakdowns of everything from hope appliances to the global financial system. >> if we left things as they are right now, the military would effectively shut down. >> the pentagon will spend at least $4 billion to defuse the millennium bomb and pentagon officials are confident that he would do it. critics claim they started too late and those thousands of fixes won't be done in time. >> many states have not updated their computers that run programs such as medicaid and food stamps. benefits that millions of families rely on. >> on new year's eve, 1999, i was prepared for the world to shut down. >> for a growing number of people the year 2000 is not a milestone as much as it is a sign of some sort of impending chaos. >> at home i got lots of water,

generator, flashlights, batteries, canned food. >> what do you think's going to happen? >> i think there's going to be riots. >> get ready. computer failures will shut down electric utilities, prison gates will swing open at midnight, terrorist attacks will occur in larger cities and wild dog packs will roam the streets. many of these books recommend stockpiling weapons as a precaution. >> i just wanted to be prepared in case anything happens for y2k. four seconds on the clock, down by one. championship on the line. erin "the sharpshooter" shanahan fakes left. she's outside of the key, she shoots... ...she scores! uh... yes, erin, it is great time to score a deal.

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if you are just joining us, good morning. let us assure you, all is well. apocalypse is not now. the sky is not falling. the dreaded millenium bug bugged out. >> for the most part, life went on as normal. the sun came up. people watched morning television and ate their wheaties. >> we have spent in this country $100 billion correcting y2k. commerce secretary bill daily says it amounts to $65 per taxpayer. >> part of the reason why disaster didn't occur is because the government and corporations realized the problem and spent months in intensive preparation for that moment. >> it was a big deal. a lot of energy spent, a lot of fear. big nothing.

>> good afternoon. microsoft was founded 25 years ago and i've had the same job as ceo during that entire 25-year period. today, steve is going to step up to a new role and he will be ceo of microsoft. >> by the time his trial was over, microsoft wound up settling, but microsoft was really, really chastened in the end by that long, grueling case. >> does the government's case against microsoft have anything to do with its change in leadership? >> no. absolutely not. if anything, this change underscores what a dynamic, competitive business we have. but it's not at all related. >> bill gates had been very successful. he had enormous amount of money. he may very well have thought that given what he had already accomplished, the highest and best use of his remaining years was to spend that money helping

humanity. >> it was just a few months back, if your company ended in dot-com it was a good thing. but at the end of this brutal week on wall street, a lot of analysts think the internet bubble is ready to burst and by this time next year, a huge number of those dot-coms might be dot gone. >> a year ago, investors were so eager to buy into the internet they were happily ignoring traditional measures of success. sales, profits and growth. but reality has now set in. >> these upstarts didn't have any income. they were saying we are worth billions of dollars. where's your revenue? they didn't have any. >> when the venture capitalists stopped putting money in, you could time the bubble. you could say you know, if we all believe this fantasy it works. if some of us stop believing, it's a prelude to its failure. >> most dot-com retail companies will be out of business by next year, eliminating 25,000 out of 30,000 internet companies.

>> what sort of message do you have for all of us as we look at what's happening to the dot-com businesses and the stock market? >> don't invest in dot-coms. >> the internet opened up a lot of things for people. it made things easier for people and that didn't change. bubble or no bubble. >> with more than one billion web pages out there, millions of websites out there on the internet, no wonder the most common activity on the web is still searching, trying to find the information you're looking for. there really hadn't been very much new in the search engine field for years until something called google came along. a traditional search engine will take your search terms and say oh, what pages have those search terms on those, maybe how many times they occur. google goes way beyond that. google will say what do other web pages say about this page. >> google captured the entire web. they made a map of what linked to what and found things with an accuracy that no one imagined would be possible.

>> it turned out that google rather than netscape was the one that eclipsed microsoft. by the end of the decade, netscape was basically gone but microsoft was, in fact, completely overtaken by exactly the thing bill was concerned about being overtaken by. netscape and google are part of the same thing which was the ascendance of the web. >> the rate of change in our lives has grown faster and faster. the zeros and ones of computer language are literally transforming every part of our lives. >> we have the little ones running around to be able to go to my computer and grocery shop is incredible to be able to do that. >> what i found was another world. a world of caring, concerned people. >> once you become familiar with it, it becomes a friend. companion. >> you have a sense of possibility. that geography used to deny you. without moving yourself. the world would come to you. >> any student could instantly call the text or pictures from any book in the smithsonian or

tap into a supercomputer from nasa. a specialist at a huge city hospital could help diagnose patients at small, rural clinics anywhere. >> the web is incredibly exciting because it is the fulfillment of a lot of our dreams that the computer would ultimately not be primarily a device for computation, but met more if asize into a device for communication. >> it is equivalent of the industrial revolution. the equivalent of electricity. the changes are just so profound. >> when we look back 100 years from now, this is the point where we will say everything changed here. >> i wasn't prepared to translate that. i was doing that little tease. >> oh, that's right. >> that little mark with the a and the ring around it. >> at? >> that's what i said. >> katie thought it was "about." >> oh. >> i never heard it said. i have only seen the mark but never heard it said. it sounded stupid when i stayed it. violence @nbc.

there it is. violence @nbcge.com. what is internet, anyway? do you write to it, like mail? >> a lot of people use it and communicate. i guess they can communicate with nbc writers. alison, can you explain what internet is? imagine what it was like back when the rolling stones would shock parents everywhere. my, how times have changed. >> i see hustling, killing. that's what i rap about. >> you can take me out of the goetta but you can't take the ghetto out of me, though. >> and kirk cobain in particular, the angst. >> and country music has taken over the air waves and record charts. >> the honeymoon over. now we're getting down to real commerce. >> aren't these girls just crazy? >> yeah, they are.