The Internet is the company: November 09, 1998 issue of New Thinking

November 09, 1998 New Thinking:
The Internet is the company

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November 09, 1998

The Internet is the company

By Gerry McGovern

The Internet is a company and that creates a challenge for traditional companies.

A company is a group of people and things and the Internet certainly is that. The word ‘company’ is derived from the word “companion.” It’s all about people working together.

The traditional commercial company tended to have rigid structures and lines of command. In a relatively slow changing commercial landscape, these entities were ideally suited for producing and selling most of the products and services we required as consumers.

However, the Internet and the digital age in general has changed the rules and the environment. Things have speeded up to an enormous degree. The network that is the Internet has established for those who want them, company-like structures.

For example, all companies require a structure for communicating orders, and allowing co-operation to occur within departments so as to achieve specific goals. The Internet allows orders and other messages to be communicated in an efficient manner. Email discussion groups and websites can create strong co-operative environments which allow people work towards achieving specific goals.

“Open Source Software poses a direct, short-term revenue and platform threat to Microsoft,” a Microsoft document leaked at the beginning of this month stated. Dubbed as the ‘Halloween Document,’ the extensive report went on make the following points:

Open source software can achieve if not surpass the quality of commercial software.
Open source software is more a process than a product; the ‘competitor’ is not so much a company but a way of thinking and working.
Open source software is being used in an increasing number of ‘mission critical’ environments.
The best example of what open source software can achieve is the Internet itself, much of which runs on open source software.
The more the Internet grows, the more potential there is for the open source software model.
Traditional Microsoft tactics and strategies will not be able to combat open source software.

This is not the end of the world as we know it because open source software is not likely to take over the world of software as we know it anytime soon. It is an important event, though, when the most powerful company in the world feels that its operating systems are threatened by a bunch of volunteers making software in their spare time.

The reason these volunteers can create superior operating systems such as Linux and world-beating web servers such as Apache, is because the Internet is a company. The Internet gives programmers all over the world the communication and information infrastructures that historically would have been the exclusive domain of corporations such as Microsoft.

At the same time as the Internet offers us the opportunity to become part of these new types of companies, the offering of traditional companies is weakening. Job security has gone out the window and a legacy of downsizing is that there is precious little loyalty around.

Again, this is not in any way to say that the traditional company is on the way out. It’s merely to point out that we live in interesting times, where change barks loudly in our ears. Those who cling to old structures, old certainties and old ways of thinking will find themselves old and worn out.

Gerry McGovern

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The Internet delivers the communication and information infrastructures that historically would have been the exclusive domain of corporations such as Microsoft.