Who Made Piracy Microsoft Windows Popular?
In the early days, when most of us didn’t have computers in our homes, softwares which are made in China like WPS are very popular. However, when Microsoft office and windows came to China, everything changed.
To any software, piracy is an inevitable problem. Microsoft also meets the problem, especially in China. The difference is that it never says NO to the piracy Microsoft products before year 2000.
And some even said that Bill Gates was very happy to see his products being copied and sold illegally, because it was their strategy.
Microsoft's group VP of productivity and business services Jeff Raike said on Morgan Stanley Technology Conference, “If you want to use piracy software, please use Microsoft ones”, he said, “Many customers otherwise may never use our products, because of piracy, they get used of Microsoft products and finally become genuine users.”
Raike’s words well explained why Microsoft didn’t fight piracy toughly.
When Microsoft just came to China, Bill Gates never thought of make any money from his products. In the 1990s, who can afford nearly 2000 RMB for a software? Fortunately, we got piracy ones. A piracy windows or office just cost us 5 yuan.
What’s more, the piracy ones can also download everything from Microsoft.com, including Windows update; we even cannot see the difference between genuine and piracy.
But Bill Gates was much happier than us, for his products were sharing more and more market.
And then, we generally used to Microsoft Windows, Office and so on.
At that time, what we know is that without Windows, we can only stare at the computer, and what we didn’t know is many of our home-made softwares are disappeared and the companies who produce them were closed.
In 2004, Microsoft began to apply more positive actions towards his piracy products. Surly, it’s not because of Bill’s sudden idea, that’s because Microsoft had already formed monopoly in China.
The one who help piracy industry a lot suddenly turned out to be an anti-piracy leader.
In that year, if piracy Windows users update their Windows XP from Microsoft.com, the system will be locked and tell them to buy genuine Windows.
Microsoft didn’t stop. In 2006, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gutierrez came to China again, his purpose is to urge our government spare more efforts on the protection of copyright. Under strong pressure, our government introduced a new policy which forces all PC providers to prefabricated genuine operating system.
Who can reap the greatest benefits? Of course Windows is not the only genuine operating system, but can other OS software producers compare with Microsoft? Will we sacrifice our own habit when using a computer so as to change our system into Linux or something else?
Many people say that the strategy Bill Gates applies is dirty; it is he who encourages the piracy makers and users, and again it is he who first stands out to wave the anti-piracy banner.
Whatever Bill Gates is, his strategy is useful, wise and successful.
All’s fair in war.
