One of the most used Windows buttons today has a hilarious origin story involving Microsoft

Microsoft-IBM debated TAB key navigation; hierarchy clash ended humorously, favoring Microsoft's decentralized decision-making approach.

When we hear of Microsoft, we almost immediately associate it with the Windows OS or its Office suite of products. However, long before Windows became the desktop OS of choice, Microsoft had been working with IBM when the two gave birth to OS/2 back in 1987, one of the most anticipated products of its time.

A recent post by Microsoft’s veteran engineer Raymond Chen has shed light on a lesser-known tale from the early collaboration days between Microsoft and IBM during the development of OS/2.

In the blog post, Chen recalled a dispute over what was seemingly a minor design choice: which key should move the cursor between fields in dialog boxes. While Microsoft developers favored the TAB key, something that's still in practice today, IBM teams objected and escalated the issue through multiple levels of management.

The TAB key, as you probably know, serves several functions across computing, like moving the cursor to the next tab stop in text editors, helping align text, creating indentation, and organizing content into columns. It is also widely used for navigation like jumping between form fields, buttons, or links in web browsers without a mouse. Additionally, it can also assist in switching interface elements, auto-completing commands in terminals, and more.

According to the account, a Microsoft engineer working onsite at IBM’s Boca Raton office initially defended the decision, noting that he had been entrusted to make such calls independently. However, IBM’s tiered management structure led the matter to be raised several levels up, and it ended up reaching a vice president (VP) who opposed the TAB key choice.

The situation was resolved in a rather unconventional manner. When IBM requested confirmation from an equivalent level of leadership at Microsoft, the response humorously indicated that such a minor issue would not warrant any executive attention as they stated: "Bill Gates’s mother is not interested in the TAB key.” This hilariously yet effectively ended the dispute, and the TAB key remained the standard for navigation.

Essentially, it seems Chen has used the story to convey the broader organizational contrasts between the two giants in those days, with Microsoft seemingly being more decentralized and IBM being more hierarchical. It reflects how even small technical decisions can reveal deeper structural and cultural differences between entities like companies.

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Posted Thursday 7 May 2026 at 7:07 am AEST (my time).

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