Republicans have long opposed the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicles contained in the Inflation Reduction Act. Now, it seems President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has made that a priority with plans to end the tax credit as part of broader tax reform legislation, Reuters reported citing two unnamed sources. TechCrunch has confirmed the […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The extraordinary pace of Microsoft’s ascent is what stands out in retrospect.

The company, which is marking its 50th anniversary next year, was well on its way to dominating its industry by the time it arrived in the Seattle region from Albuquerque in 1979. Seven years later, in March 1986, the company made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange, closing its first day of trading at a market value of more than $500 million.

So what can be learned from a fresh look at Microsoft’s startup years?

That’s the question at the heart of the second chapter in our Microsoft @ 50 series. Our research and interviews with key players show how the company’s bet on a market that didn’t really exist at the time — personal computer software — paid off in ways that its founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen never imagined.

One of the experts who put this story in context for us was historian Margaret O’Mara of the University of Washington, whose book, The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America, chronicles the rise of the modern tech industry. This special GeekWire Podcast episode features highlights from my conversation with O’Mara, in addition to a first-hand account from the company’s first outside investor and longtime board member, David Marquardt.

Listen below, read the full story here, and continue reading for highlights from O’Mara’s comments, edited for context and clarity.

Microsoft’s decision to focus on software: Software was not an industry. Desktop computing didn’t even exist at the start of the ’70s. They were able to latch onto this nascent industry, when it isn’t even an industry. … But they also were charging for something that in the hobbyist community was being given away for free. And that was novel — they were, again, on the ground floor, one of the very, very first enterprises doing that.

The early approach: On the one hand, it’s getting on the launchpad as the rocket ship’s about to go off, but also being pretty aggressive and elbowing competitors aside, and being quite aggressive and making sure that you’re first to it. And then famously striking a deal with IBM that not only gets the IBM PC business, but also is a platform that can be cloned and it isn’t a closed ecosystem, so it just creates this market that turns out to be globally dominant.

The advantage of their upbringing: They’re different than some of the other startup founders who are really coming with few connections and just a brash attitude and a willingness to do what it takes. … I don’t think that detracts from what they accomplished. There are plenty of people who had plenty of privilege and didn’t do it. [Their privilege] didn’t build what they built, but that does set them apart. … This is a useful lesson for founders, then and now: success does come with support of more mainline institutions, and the new economy grows on old-economy foundations.

The importance of the team: Microsoft is Paul and it’s Bill and it’s Steve [Ballmer], but it’s also so many other people who were there at the ground floor and were there in the early years who built it. The technical people and non-technical people, and an ecosystem, a Seattle ecosystem, a broader tech industry ecosystem, that enabled them to do what they did. And that’s a super-important lesson for any founder, any startup leader, to remember that it’s about much more than just you. Having your cast of thousands both in and outside the company is really important.

The move to Seattle: Moving up here was choice not only to come home, but also to get something of a competitive advantage in the job market for programmers. If they had been down in California, they would’ve been competing with a lot of other startup companies. And up here, there were some startup companies, but not quite as many. And there was obviously the engineering workforce around the University of Washington.

The roots of gender bias: Very quickly, as it starts growing — and it grows fast in those early years here in Seattle — there’s a certain work culture that is very hard-charging. … There was not a big emphasis on work-life balance. Historically, that’s one of the things that has driven a lot of women out of technical roles in the tech industry over time, where you have this relentless and very male-coded and male-dominated culture that is all about work and doesn’t give a lot of flexibility for caregiving or other things outside of work.

Long-term role in the region: Greater Seattle has always been a company town. First it was timber, then it was Boeing, and then it’s Microsoft and tech, but really Microsoft. It was Microsoft’s town for a very long time, even after Amazon was established and was growing. It’s only in the last decade and change that it’s been Microsoft and Amazon’s town, that Amazon’s taken such a central role in our political economy and our regional conversation. But Microsoft has done so much to define what this place is for 50 years.

Subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Podcast edited by Curt Milton. Music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Before we jump into the news, I wanted to steer you toward a recent TechCrunch Equity podcast episode with Waabi co-founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun.  A little […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Microsoft and NASA have joined forces to develop Earth Copilot, a software tool that uses artificial intelligence and cloud computing to simplify the process of searching and analyzing Earth science data.

The collaboration is part of NASA’s Transform to Open Science Initiative, which aims to make more than 100 petabytes of satellite imagery and other Earth science data more readily available to scientists, educators, policymakers and the general public.

“The vision behind this collaboration was to leverage AI and cloud technologies to bring Earth’s insights to communities that have been underserved, where access to data can lead to tangible improvements,” Minh Nguyen, Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft, said today in a blog posting about the project. “By enabling users to interact with the data through simple, plain language queries, we’re helping to democratize access to spaceborne information.”

Tyler Bryson, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for U.S. health and public sector industries, said Earth Copilot lets users interact with NASA’s data repository conversationally.

Bryson noted that the sheer scale and complexity of the information gathered for NASA’s Earth Science Data Systems Program can sometimes make finding the right information a daunting task. Earth Copilot doesn’t require users to navigate highly technical interfaces or master the intricacies of geospatial analysis.

“Instead, they can simply ask questions such as ‘What was the impact of Hurricane Ian in Sanibel Island?’ or ‘How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect air quality in the U.S.?'” Bryson said. “AI will then retrieve relevant datasets, making the process seamless and intuitive.”

The project leverages Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and the customizable capabilities of Azure OpenAI Service.

“Azure’s robust suite of services, including machine learning, data analytics and scalable cloud infrastructure, powers this AI prototype,” said Juan Carlos López, a former NASA engineer who is now an Azure Specialist at Microsoft. “We’ve designed the system to handle complex queries and large datasets efficiently, ensuring that users can quickly find the information they need without getting bogged down by technical complexities. Our goal was to create a seamless, scalable solution that could evolve as NASA’s data, tools and applications grow.”

Earth Copilot is currently being tested by NASA researchers to explore its capabilities. After the platform is evaluated and fine-tuned, the NASA IMPACT team will look into making it part of its Visualization, Exploration and Data Analysis Project — also known as VEDA.

The satirical news outlet The Onion has acquired Infowars, the conspiracy theory-riddled site run by Alex Jones, in a bankruptcy auction. In a press release posted to X Thursday, The Onion announced that it plans to “end Infowars’ relentless barrage of disinformation for the sake of selling supplements and replace it with The Onion’s relentless barrage of humor for good” when it relaunches in January 2025.

The Onion purchased Infowars’ assets with the support of the families in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, who sued Jones for spreading lies about the victims of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Jones was ordered to pay more than $1 billion in 2022 and filed for bankruptcy later that year. In September, a judge approved...

Continue reading…