The Rise and Fall of Lotus 1-2-3: How It Lost to Excel

In 1984, Lotus 1-2-3 made its company bigger than Microsoft. It was the program that put personal computers on office desks, and by 1988 it held about 70% of the spreadsheet market. Then it lost almost all of it to Excel. The usual story says Lotus was simply too slow to move to Windows. That is true, but it is not the whole story. Microsoft had already fought Lotus once and lost. What it did after that defeat explains how Excel really won. In this video: How a former DJ and a programmer writing in assembly built the fastest spreadsheet on the IBM PC Why Microsoft's first spreadsheet, Multiplan, never stood a chance The decision to launch Excel on the Macintosh first, and the engineer who quit over it Lotus Jazz, and why Lotus's own move to the Mac fell flat The bug from 1983 that is still inside Excel today Subscribe to Tech Fallout for more stories about the rise and fall of technology companies. #Lotus123 #Excel #Microsoft #TechHistory #TechFallout