ABSTRACT
When computer networks enabled users to reach out to other individuals, by "chatting" or exchanging e-mail, the personal computer (PC) had truly become an information machine. The first phase, which can be characterized as the gold-rush era, lasted from about 1975 to 1982. The second phase, which began about 1983, following the standardization of the personal-computer market around the International Business Machines (IBM)-compatible PC, was a period of consolidation in which many of the early firms were shaken out. Personal-computer software was a new type of product that had to evolve its own styles of marketing. The story of Microsoft illustrates the value of an income stream from an already successful product as an alternative to raising venture capital. In mid-1982 Microsoft began to develop a word-processing package called Word. Microsoft gradually worked its way down the pantheon of American encyclopedias, finally obtaining the rights to Funk and Wagnall's New Encyclopedia in 1989.
