In July 1995 the everything store was a man shipping books from his basement.

Windows 95 hit manufacturing on July 14, 1995 with a three hundred million dollar campaign behind it. Days later Amazon opened its site and started taking orders for books it did not own yet, ordering each one after you bought it and packing it in a basement.

One of these was the biggest launch in computing history. The other looked like nothing. Thirty years on, the basement won.

I do not tell that story to romanticize small beginnings. I tell it because in July 1995 you could not tell which was which, and neither could anyone else. That is always the situation. You bet before you know.