At exactly midnight on September 18, 1954, my telephone rang. It was Jim Phalen, a friend of mine from the Long Beach Press-Telegram, and he had a "good flying saucer report," hot off the wires. He read it to me. The lead line was: "Thousands of people saw a huge fireball light up dark New Mexico skies tonight."
The story went on to tell about how a "blinding green" fireball the size of a full moon had silently streaked southeast across Colorado and northern New Mexico at eight-forty that night. Thousands of people had seen the fireball. It had passed right over a crowded football stadium at Santa Fe, New Mexico, and people in Denver said it "turned night into day." The crew of a TWA airliner flying into Albuquerque from Amarillo, Texas, saw it. Every police and newspaper switchboard in the two-state area was jammed with calls.
One of the calls was from a man inquiring if anything unusual had happened recently. When he was informed about the mysterious fireball he heaved an audible sigh of relief, "Thanks," he said, "I was afraid I'd gotten some bad bourbon." And he hung up.
Dr. Lincoln La Paz, world-famous authority on meteorites and head of the University of New Mexico's Institute of Meteoritics, apparently took the occurrence calmly. The wire story said he had told a reporter that he would plot its course, try to determine where it landed, and go out and try to find it. "But," he said, "I don't expect to find anything."
When Jim Phalen had read the rest of the report he asked,
"What was it?"
"It sounds to me like the green fireballs are back," I answered.
"What the devil are green fireballs?"
What the devil are green fireballs? I'd like to know. So would a lot of other people.
The green fireballs streaked into UFO history late in November 1948, when people around Albuquerque, New Mexico, began to report seeing mysterious "green flares" at night. The first reports mentioned only a "green streak in the sky," low on the horizon. From the description the Air Force Intelligence people at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque and the Project Sign people at ATIC wrote the objects off as flares. After all, thousands of GI's had probably been discharged with a duffel bag full of "liberated" Very pistols and flares.
But as days passed the reports got better. More people were reporting seeing the 'flares' and as the reports came in, they indicated they were increasing in size. It was doubtful if this "growth" was psychological because there had been no publicity—the 'flare' answer was reconsidered by the Air Force. They were in the process of doing this on the night of December 5, 1948, a memorable night in the green fireball chapter of UFO history.
At 9:27 P.M. 10 miles east of Albuquerque, an Air Force C-47 transport was flyinf at 18,000 feet on December 5. The pilot was a Captain Goede. Suddenly the crew, Captain Goede, his co-pilot, and his engineer were startled by a green ball of fire flashing across the sky ahead of them. It looked something like a huge meteor except that it was a bright green color and it didn't arch downward, as meteors usually do. The green-colored ball of fire had started low, from near the eastern slopes of the Sandia Mountains, arched upward a little, then seemed to level out. And it was too big for a meteor, at least it was larger than any meteor that anyone in the C-47 had ever seen before. After a hasty discussion the crew decided that they'd better tell somebody about it, especially since they had seen an identical object twenty-two minutes before near Las Vegas, New Mexico.
Captain Goede picked up his microphone and called the control tower at Kirtland AFB and reported what he and his crew had seen. The tower relayed the message to the local intelligence people.
A few minutes later the captain of Pioneer Airlines Flight 63 called Kirtland Tower. At 9:35 P.M. he had also seen a green ball of fire just east of Las Vegas, New Mexico. He was on his way to Albuquerque and would make a full report when he landed.
When he taxied his DC-3 up to the passenger ramp at Kirtland a few minutes later, several intelligence officers were waiting for him. He reported that at 9:35 P.M. he was on a westerly heading, approaching Las Vegas from the east, when he and his co-pilot saw what they first thought was a "shooting star." It was ahead and a little above them. But, the captain said, it took them only a split second to realize that whatever they saw was too low and had too flat a trajectory to be a meteor. As they watched, the object seemed to approach their airplane head on, changing color from orange red to green. As it became bigger and bigger, the captain said, he thought sure it was going to collide with them so he tracked the DC-3 up in a tight turn. As the green ball of fire got abreast of them it began to fall toward the ground, getting dimmer and dimmer until it disappeared. Just before he swerved the DC-3, the fireball was as big, or bigger, than a full moon.
After asking a few more questions the intelligent officers went back to their office. More reports, which had been phoned in from all over northern New Mexico, were waiting for them. By morning a full-fledged investigation was under way.
There are many examples, in nearly every major market segment. Netscape comes to mind as one of the more famous. Peregrine Systems here in San Diego is another example. I'm sure every reader can think of many more.
So what is the difference between one of these "shooting stars" and the Microsoft's, Hewlett Packard's and Dells of the world? After all, in the beginning, they pretty much all look alike on the surface.
CUTTING CORNERS
I believe if you look under the covers, however, there are real differences. It's the difference between a fast rising house of cards, and a mansion built to withstand Hurricane Katrina. You start with a solid foundation when you go to build something lasting--which of course a house of cards is lacking completely.
Now most of the time, people don't intentionally set out to build a house of cards. It usually happens when the stress and strain of the marketplace gets in the way. That's when management begins taking short cuts. It's often an incremental thing. Cutting expenses in that key project, so that you can appease Wall Street by making next quarter's numbers. Accepting just a slightly less than normal quality level, to allow that behind-schedule new product to finally get out the door. Hiring just a few less engineers than was in the plan for this year. Reducing the corporate, brand-supporting Ad buy--a ten percent reduction won't hurt--will it?
It's all just meant to be temporary--but cutting corners has a way of becoming permanent by default, especially when there is brutal competition, or extreme pressure from the Street.
WINNERS MAINTAIN THE FOUNDATION
Every great company has a foundation that it is built on--and the care and maintenance of that foundation is a non-negotiable expense for long-term success. With HP, it was historically the R&D budget and reliability of its products. The R&D monster was always fed, because product innovation was what fueled the company's growth for over 60 years. And for a long time, reliability was never compromised. The product might end up being a little too costly, a little too big, a little too heavy or late to market--but it was built like a tank, and the products were unquestioned leaders in reliability. Indeed, I would say that the HP brand stood for strong reliability for many years. Now that the company has lost it's way a bit, I don't know that the HP brand still has the same reliability cache, which it had in past years. Still it's a quality brand; mind you, just not quite the same. The maniacal devotion to quality just isn't quite there anymore. And it's funny that just about the only thing that has been truly "invented" at HP in recent years is the word "Invent" being placed alongside the logo in advertising. Ironically, even with the dearth of HP engineering invention in recent years, R&D expenses remain high relative to competitors--the worst of both worlds.
Microsoft was built on monopoly power and paranoia. And I don't mean that in a negative sense. Depending upon your perspective, Microsoft either shrewdly created the DOS/Windows monopoly position it has enjoyed for years--or luckily fell into it. I suspect it was a bit of both, but no matter. Since realizing their position, Microsoft has never lost their aggressiveness, or failed to leverage their monopoly platform. Some believe they've overstepped at times, and I have always felt that they left a lot of money on the table rolling things into the Operating System--essentially given it away for free. But they've reacted every time there has been a threat--Apple, WordPerfect, Novell, Lotus, Netscape--the list of road-kill is quite long. Some of their moves may have been overkill, as their paranoia seems to present every software company in the world as a potential threat to their dominance. But they never took their eye off the ball, building and protecting their OS and Office franchise with as much firepower as required, for as long as it took. Even though Microsofties are very pleasant to deal with on an individual basis, the company as a whole is predatory. They believe it's their birthright to sell every last line of software code in the world. I believe that this aggressive corporate culture is a big part of the foundation that Microsoft is built upon. It has let them survive and thrive since the infancy of the PC until today--alive and well for the fight with the latest pretender to their throne--Google. But more on Google later.
We've examined a couple of long time winners--now let's look at one of those classic shooting stars--Netscape.
FORMULA FOR LOSING
It looked like the next big thing--the Microsoft if the Internet Age. They were to be the successor to the throne. They were the darlings of High Tech, and Microsoft was shaking in its boots. It was one of those times where Bill, Steve and the Microsoft gang got caught napping a bit. They didn't see the Tsunami of the Internet coming at them--until it was almost too late. But the boys from Redmond recovered in time, and put all hands on deck until they finally smothered the upstart Netscape. So what happened to Netscape?
Well, in large part, Microsoft happened to Netscape. Microsoft put together a Herculean effort to change their company to compete in the Internet Age. But they stumbled a bit a first, giving Netscape some breathing room. Early versions of Internet Explorer, like some much software out of Microsoft, were not very good. They were almost laughable, to be frank. But Microsoft is the Terminator of the software business. It just keeps throwing people and money at the problem, and version after version comes out until they get it right. Unfortunately, Netscape had never built a solid foundation to combat this onslaught, in my opinion. The browser was what they were about. But an early decision to use the browser as the "razor" in that classic razor/blades marketing strategy, turned ultimately into a flaw. Intending to make their money on Servers, I feel that they neglected to keep the Navigator Browser as the market leader. It was a tough battle, with Microsoft bundling IE into the OS. But they needed to find a way, through innovation, to keep Navigator in the forefront of the browser wars. It was a tough task--no doubt. But once that browser franchise began to erode, their reason for existence began to fade away. It was really their foundation--which began to crack when it wasn't built to last. The other mistake, which compounded their plight, was fighting a multi-front war with Microsoft--much like Hitler in WWII. They didn't have the corporate infrastructure or resources, but chose to compete head to head in every market Microsoft was in. Novell made the same mistake, both companies buying some second-rate competitors to Microsoft, just to get in the game. Instead, they should have focused their resources where they had a lead, and a chance to win--Netscape in Browsers, Novell in Networking. History tells us that the upstart must focus and win decisively in that first battlefield, before they move on. Or they almost certainly will be crushed.
HOW WILL GOOGLE DO?
Which brings us back to Google. They are the current technology darling and high flier, next big thing, and the latest threat to Microsoft. Once again, Microsoft is treating this threat as real. Right now, we're at that stage where it appears Google is winning. But I remember when Novell and Netscape were, too. It didn't last. And I see some parallels emerging--Google is diversifying rapidly, even recently making noises about competing with Microsoft in office software. That would be a huge blunder, in my opinion. Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, is a veteran of mammoth battles with Microsoft from his time at both Sun and Novell. It will be interesting to see what he has learned from the past.
What do you think--is Google the next Microsoft, or will they end up as a footnote like Novell or Netscape? Drop me a note and tell me what will happen--and why.
Both Ronald Pearce & Phil Morettini are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Ronald Pearce has sinced written about articles on various topics from Home Improvement, Astrology Predictions and Religion. This article is taken from chapter four of . To read more about the contents of the book or to purchase it visit. Ronald Pearce's top article generates over 12100 views. to your Favourites.
Phil Morettini has sinced written about articles on various topics from Marketing, Pearls and Small Business. Phil Morettini is President of PJM Consulting, Management Consultants to Tech Companies PJM provides assistance in Management, Product Marketing and Biz Dev. More Articles at. Phil Morettini's top article generates over 22200 views. to your Favourites.