1995: WINDOWS 95 launch - is Microsoft too big? | Newsnight | Retro Tech | BBC Archive

Windows 95 has been launched, to the strains of Start Me Up by the Rolling Stones. The operating system is Microsoft's most important software product to date, and is expected to find its way onto as much as 80% of all personal computers. Much has been made of the Microsoft Network, which sees Microsoft aggressively position Windows as an online service. BBC Newsnight's Graham Ingham visits Seattle, the home of the computer giant, to ask industry insiders whether Bill Gates' ambitions to be dominant in every sphere of PC software is good for the industry.

Clip taken from Newsnight, originally broadcast 24 August, 1995

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[CreamedCheesed]

4:01 I remember in the 1990s surfing the information superhighway really was an event. You’d get dressed up turn off the lights put on some Kraftwerk…. and spin around. Now people just slobber over their phones and tablets all day and night without as much as a 180. Where’s the magic? Where’s the suspenders? Where’s the German techno? Where’s the dizziness induced vomiting?

[BenjyDale]

Microsoft started to get big with Windows 3.1 (1991-ish?) but yeah Windows 1995 was a flagship in that Windows have looked similar layout-wise for the next couple of decades. Even Windows 10 / 11 is still visually similar, just the start menu placement is different

[banseva]

Legend says Microsoft asked the Rolling Stones how much to license Start Me Up. They said $10 million as a joke. Microsoft paid it.

[HPro]

Those celebrity impersonators were spot on! I thought that was actually Princess Diana and Jack Nickelson!

[kob]

9:33 so wonderfully ‘90s. people were just chilling outside being thoughtful back then

[ericclaptonsrobotpilot]

2:50 might be the coolest news package ever filmed.

[MaxFleye]

Start Me Up was a good pick, Windows 95 did make plenty of grown men cry.

[kristianTV]

I was working for an independent computer retailer at the time Win95 went on sale. The sudden popularity of people buying an OS in such high quantities was one of the most memorable recollections I have of the decade I spent working in it (87 to 97).

[danielm]

This was our first family computer. It was a family occasion to turn it on. It later got handed down to me. It had quite a nice aesthetic to it, and it really felt like you were using a tool, as opposed to PCs and laptops now.

[ChrisRowe]

Nice use of "I miss you" by Björk at 2:51

[Animal_lives_matter]

Look how sane and dignified people were back then

[Miwna]

That company, Intuit, is still going. And it's become just like Microsoft, a big company buying up the competition, lobbying, defrauding and so on.

[daithiocinnsealach]

These days a new version of windows hardly even gets a mention on mainstream news it's become so ubiquitous.

[rich_rich]

1990s Microsoft: Are they becoming too big?
2020s Google: Hold my keyboard...

[maolcogi]

At 4:27 anyone else hear a random Owen Wilson "Wow!"?

[richardsequeirateixeira]

It's worth noting that PCs after the launch of Windows 95 are different from the PC of 1994 and before. After Windows 95, you had PCs supporting optical media, plug-and-play, USB, and modern networking.

[THQUALIZR]

Win 95 was the start of Microsoft becoming aggressive & greedy. After the MSN thing came the Internet Explorer suits which only ended relatively recently by giving users the choice of their default browsers. But they still try crafty little tricks to take other choices away. And their contempt for the consumer can be measured in the quality of it's products and customer services in 2022.

[Nightweaver]

We were so incredibly innocent back then, and so incredibly naiive about what the future would really hold for the computer and internet industry.

[toddchamberlain]

About Windows 95 - yet they use an Amiga 2000 at 2:49 and 3:56 to do the news story. :)

[MrMann]

What gets me is that this is 30 years ago and it is tricky to tell that bar the big CRT screens, go 30 years the other way and youd know it was a different ago