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Microsoft's Marketing of "Food For Windows"
Sub: Food for Windows - The Microsoft Strategy
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Monday, 10 AM -- Chicago, Illinois --
Start-up software developer Cuisine International announced CUISINENET,
the first internetworking program to seamlessly integrate word and food
processing. Called a breakthrough for small restaurants and snack bars,
Cuisine Chairman Mark Meigs confidently predicted sales of thousands of
copies with shipments soon to begin.
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Monday, 4 PM -- New York --
Cuisine International shares closed sharply higher on announcement of new
CUISINENET product.
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Tuesday, 9 AM -- Redmond, Washington --
Microsoft Chairman William H. Gates, III announced that Microsoft Food for
Windows would soon enter beta testing. Gates described the product as the
first of a projected family of products to include Food for Windows,
designed for small commercial dining establishments; Personal Food for
Windows, designed for home kitchens; Portable Food for Windows, designed
for lunchboxes; and, of course, at the high end, Food for Windows NC
(Nouvelle Cuisine) designed for large institutional dining rooms.
Asked by a reporter about CUISINENET, Gates said that he had never heard
of the product, but was not surprised by it, because the software business
is highly competitive, and Microsoft has to compete on the merits with
many strong competitors, as the FTC had recently concluded.
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Tuesday, 3 PM -- Chicago, Illinois --
An angry Mark Meigs showed reporters a copy of the nondisclosure agreement
signed by Bill Gates, under which Cuisine International had informed
Microsoft a year earlier about plans for CUISINENET. Meigs said that in
hindsight, he should never have signed the agreement, as the only thing he
learned from Microsoft was that Gates was considering making changes to
Windows.
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Wednesday, 9 AM -- Redmond, Washington --
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announced that Microsoft would soon publish
specifications for the Windows Open Kitchen Architecture (WOKA), a series
of design specifications to permit manufacturers of toasters, ranges, and
other kitchen appliances to integrate their products into the forthcoming
Microsoft Food for Windows line. Asked about reports of a nondisclosure
agreement with Cuisine International for a similar product, Gates said
that the other product was really at most a niche product, and would
probably have less functionality than the food-related features that
Microsoft would be building into the new Unsaturated FAT File System which
would be part of DOS 7.0. Gates said that he doubted there would be much
interest in a dead-end solution that would not be able to keep up to date
with advances in WOKA. Gates added that over 11,000 manufacturers of
kitchen appliances were already having serious discussions with Microsoft
about WOKA, and that he expected almost all important eaters of food to
standardize on the WOKA environment.
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Wednesday, 10 AM -- Redmond, Washington --
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announced that he would be giving the
keynote speech at the American Bakers annual convention on "Nutrition at
Your Fingertips." Gates played down speculation that he would use the
Bakers convention to introduce Microsoft Food for Windows, saying only
that alpha testing was proceeding ahead of schedule, and the product would
be shipped when it was ready.
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Wednesday, 11 AM -- Redmond, Washington --
Microsoft Corporation announced that its Chairman, William H. Gates, III,
had made a donation of over $250 of personal funds to the Cordon Bleu to
begin an endowment fund for the Bill Gates Professorship of Advanced
Cookery. The famous French cooking school confirmed that it had agreed to
be a beta site for the much discussed Food for Windows application sweet.
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Thursday, 9 AM -- New York --
PCWeek Magazine reported in a copyrighted story that it had obtained a
copy of correspondence from Microsoft to Cuisine International, demanding
that the small developer of kitchen software cease using the Cuisine name,
as it infringes on the trademark for Microsoft Food for Windows NC.
Microsoft added that Chairman Mark Meigs would also have to change his own
name as Mark infringed a copyright on the Windows Edit menu, Meigs
infringed the trademark on Meigs Field in Microsoft Flight Simulator, and
Chairman infringed the trademark on Bill Gates's title which he had
acquired with personal funds from Mao's estate. Also, Microsoft advised
that while the company did not actually have to move out of Chicago, use
of the name on press releases infringed a trademark on Windows 4.0
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Thursday, 4 PM -- New York --
Cuisine International stock closed at 0-bid, 1/16-asked.
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Friday, 9 AM -- ? --
An anonymous spokesman for an unnamed Midwestern software developer
announced the discontinuation of operations.
Undescribed legal problems were cited as the reason. Others speculated
that a failure to appreciate the competitive nature of the software
business may have led to the company's sudden collapse.
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Monday, 9 AM -- Microsoft Internal Mail
From: billg
To: mikem
Re: Food Program
Please see if you can reassign one of the 3,000 engineers from the OS/2
virus development project to do a feasibility study on a food-related
program. Not sure what it would do. Low priority.
 
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