Success Quote by Jim Barksdale

There is a polite corporate veneer on this line, but the blade is unmistakable: it is an antitrust argument disguised as product advice. When Jim Barksdale says Microsoft should separate its applications group from its operating system group, he is targeting the company’s core advantage of the era: the ability to make the platform and then tilt the playing field for everything that runs on it. In the 1990s, that wasn’t an abstract concern. Microsoft’s dominance in Windows meant it could bundle, privilege, or technically “optimize” its own software in ways rivals couldn’t match, then call the outcome “competition.”

Barksdale, best known for leading Netscape, isn’t asking for a tidy org chart. He’s trying to pry apart two kinds of power that, when combined, become self-reinforcing: control of distribution (the operating system) and control of demand (the must-have apps). The subtext is that Microsoft’s integration is not merely efficient; it’s strategic leverage, a way to turn the OS into a gatekeeper and apps into the tollbooth.

The genius of the phrasing is its managerial neutrality. “Should separate” sounds like governance hygiene, not a legal remedy. It also dodges a purely technical debate about features and performance and reframes the fight around structure and incentives: if the same entity owns the roads and runs the trucking company, every promise of a fair market becomes a PR exercise.