Glass Panes and Software: Windows Name Is Challenged
The single person most responsible for Microsoft’s selecting the name Windows, according to court documents, was Rowland Hanson, a marketer who came from Neutrogena, the soap and cosmetics maker. Until Mr. Hanson arrived in May 1983, the new software was called Interface Manager, which the programmers liked.
Understandably, Mr. Hanson scrambled for an alternative. He had scant knowledge of computers at the time. “I recall that windowing or something like that had been used by somebody,” Mr. Hanson said in deposition testimony, “and that’s what triggered me to think about it as windows. . . . I looked at our product, and ours was clearly, had windows on the screen.”
So Microsoft Windows it was.
So the name was no more carefully thought-out than the product itself . . . . .
Actually, not to toss rotten tomatoes at the usual target, I’m amused that Michael Robertson is doing this. I don’t know that it’s unfair to call him a “serial opportunist” as MSFT has done: but so what? It’s not as if what Mr Gate’s team hasn’t aped what they couldn’t come up with on their own.
I would never have guessed MP3.com would end up making anyone $372 million dollars. If that gives him the wherewithal to stay in the game longer than Be, I say good for him.