3 ms·
Of course, Sharepoint was released a decade before Dropbox. And Hotmail a decade before Gmail. (nearly.) And the web versions of Office are certainly more fun
by encoderer 15y ago
Of course, Sharepoint was released a decade before Dropbox.
And Hotmail a decade before Gmail. (nearly.)
And the web versions of Office are certainly more functional (tho arguably less usable) than Gdocs -- especially when Office Live launched and you still, at the time, couldn't do Find and Replace in a Google Document without seeing several "EXPERIMENTAL!" warnings all over it.
And something the GP didn't mention, but that can be added to his list, is that Microsoft invented ajax when it released the XHR object feature to enable web-based outlook.
Though, sure, Ajax-like behavior was possible (tho not popular and very clunky -- i know first hand) using iFrames. But come to think of it, I think Microsoft invented iFrames, too...
- bigiain 15y agoDidn't they buy hotmail after it became wildly popular? I recall hearing inside stories of the difficulties they had moving it off the Sun hardware/OS onto their own OS...
- X-Istence 15y agoThey bought it well before gmail even came around. Hotmail when they bought it was running on top of FreeBSD not Solaris. Microsoft even has an entire document on how they did the migration: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb496985.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb496985.aspx
- bigiain 15y agoThanks for the link, 1997 &2000, eh? No wonder my recollection is so vague... I notice the article mentions "various unix Systems" then goes on to talk exclusively of the FreeBSD web front end. I still have vague (perhaps 12 year old) memories aout the actual mail storage and management being Sun kit... (mostly from the point of view of a bunch of friends who worked at Sun being outrageously amused at the ballsup of multiple attempts at migration...)
- X-Istence 15y agoThey used to have a migration PDF that detailed how their mail store was on FreeBSd for the backend, insofar as I can remember. It was possible that there was a mix of Sun technologies in the back.