Once all the kinks were worked out, Microsoft would swoop in and overlay its next-era platform on top of everything and take a generous cut for doing so. It was a strategy that had worked for Microsoft time and again in the 1980s: let others do the hard work of proving a market, then come in and dominate it once the dust had settled. Various industry estimates said that true broadband wouldn’t become common in North America until the turn of the century (an accurate prediction, as it turned out.) Gates believed he had time to wait.
