Bill Gates bashing comes in various shapes. I had an interesting entry a few months ago. As the story goes, Gates said that if the automobile industry had matched the astronomic rate of value improvements in the computer industry, we should be driving $25-cars today. General motors replied that in this case car owners would have to contend with their cars crashing twice a day!

As if that was not enough, in April Windows98 crashed while Gates was giving a demonstration at the COMDEX conference in Las Vegas, California. Gate swallowed hard and made fun of this setback. However, he is still smiling to the Bank. The 10 richest people in the technology business as compiled by Forbes ASAP magazine (September 97) reads like this: Following the name and company is the estimated net worth.

1. Bill Gates, Microsoft, $38.66 billion

2. Paul Allen, Microsoft, $14.77 billion

3. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft, $8.21 billion

4. Larry Ellison, Oracle, $8.20 billion

5. Gordon Moore, Intel, $7.97 billion

6. Michael Dell, Dell, $4.66 billion

7. William Hewlett, Hewlett-Packard, $4.20 billion

8. Ted Waitt, Gateway 2000, $2.83 billion

9. David Duffield, PeopleSoft, $1.73 billion

10. Charles B. Wang, Computer Associates, $1.20 billion

When I saw this list I wondered ‘what have we done wrong?’ Microsoft is now worth about $200 Billion, and Gates shares about $50 - and rising. Bloody bulldogs of Wall Street. WithUS$50 Billion you can buy 95% of General Motors.

The growth of the computer industry is relentless. It is estimated the US has a shortfall 346,000 information technology workers, half of which are for software engineers. The Office of Technology Policy in the U.S. Department of Commerce says this will rise by 138,000 a year over the next eight years. Gates said Microsoft has 25,000 unfilled positions, and their partners around the world have 41,000. If you are a software engineer, there has never been a better time to insist on a pay rise, unless you are already overpaid!

Geomatics is IT-driven but we seem to have been left behind in the financial part of this revolution. Recently Microsoft moved into our industry via a deal with ESRI in the development of ESRI's Spatial Database Engine

(SDE) software for Microsoft SQL Server. ESRI has led in exploiting Microsoft's SQL Server as a DBMS and OLE DB technology to integrate GIS information and relational data with outstanding results on NT systems.

For many top players, it was not a welcome sight because Microsoft is a hard-player with a history of not taking hostages. But it could be a blessing. It is rare to find decent software in the Geomatics industry for less than US$10,000, not to talk of the abominable costs of training, system integration, etc. Meanwhile, Windows98, with a bundle of freebies, is set to debut for US$109. This is about the cost of a dongle!

What is the key to bringing down software prices? Well the volume is not there for basic economics, and it would not until the market extends to very ordinary people. Most of the Geo-data-base information obtained from government agencies could be available using some ‘generic’ browser. But they are stored in hundred of different formats and are "browsed" with proprietary software tools packaged at astronomical terms. Some players in the Geomatics industry are reluctant to agree to a free exchange of formats which would pave the way to standardising the whole business. When you pay US$25,000 to a vendor for a single software, you will from that day show this vendor some brand loyalty! As long as you have not got much possibilities for integration, you are hooked. There are packets of data-bases out there, we cannot easily integrate the information they have, and so there is no basis for developing "browsing" tools that would appeal to ordinary needs. So the developed market-volume is only a trickle of the vast potential, and everybody is loosing money.

Of course a dominant super-player with a couple of billions to spare could change all that. The internet-net browser war ended before we could even brace ourselves for it. If the Geomatics industry do not work together for the common profit of all, a major player could eventually emerge, possibly from outside, and swallow everything. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who, during the American war of independence, said "If we do not hang together, we shall hang separately".