Bloomberg Terminal launch (1981)
Michael Bloomberg founded Innovative Market Systems in 1981 and launched the Terminal, a closed, subscription-based data and analytics system. It spread through trading floors over the following decade, creating network effects that made it standard issue.
The Terminal displaced incumbent quote machines and became the indispensable tool of institutional finance.
It built Bloomberg's multi-decade data monopoly and pricing power over financial professionals.
Enterprise MCP is Bloomberg opening its crown-jewel data through an open standard. The question is whether the company can preserve its monopoly economics while adopting a protocol designed to make data portable across AI systems.
