Quote Archive
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"The Mac heralds a major change in how people view and interact with applications programs. That's why I'm so excited about it. There's no question that I'll let my mom try it out." (1984)
"The strategic goal here is getting Windows CE standards into every device we can. We don't have to make money over the next few years. We didn't make money on MS-DOS in its first release. If you can get into this market at $10, take it."
"The Internet is central to everything we are doing." (after a sudden reversal in Microsoft policy)
"It's possible, you can never know, that the universe exists only for me. If so, it's sure going well for me, I must admit."
"There are people who don't like capitalism, and there are people who don't like PCs, but there's no one who likes the PC who doesn't like Microsoft."
"If you can't make it good, make it look good." (1995)
"It's not a business where anybody has a guaranteed position even Microsoft, with all its success. Unless we teach Windows how to understand speech, how to have vision and do all these new things there's plenty of people standing by to replace us very quickly."
In reference to junk email:
"Wasting somebody else's time strikes me as the height of rudeness. We
have only so many hours, and none to waste." (Editor's Note: Millions
of hours are wasted daily by users waiting for Windows to boot or reboot.
So, according to Gates, Microsoft is rude.)
"While we're all very dependent on technology, it doesn't always work"
The Road Ahead, p. 265 (original edition):
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough [to break modern encryption]
would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers."
Internal e-mail, cited by the DOJ lawsuit:
"I was quite frank with him [Scott Cook, CEO of Intuit] that if he had a favor
we could do for him that would cost us something like $1M to do that in return
for switching browsers in the next few months I would be open to doing that."
"To create a new standard, it takes something that's not just a little bit different. It takes something that's really new and really captures people's imagination. The Macintosh, of all the machines I have ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard."
"Sometimes we do get taken by surprise. For example, when the Internet came along, we had it as a fifth or sixth priority." [Link]
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." [Link]
"Hey, Steve, just because you broke into Xerox's store before I did and took the TV doesn't mean I can't go in later and steal the stereo." (1989)
"You shouldn't get overly paranoid thinking that Microsoft's a broad competitor and it's not possible to work with us." (1997)
In response to Java:
"Anybody who thinks a little 9,000-line program that's distributed
free and can be cloned by anyone is going to affect anything
we do at Microsoft has his head screwed on wrong."
OS/2 Programmer's Guide (forward by Gates):
"I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system,
and possibly program, of all time. As the successor to DOS, which has over
10,000,000 systems in use, it creates incredible opportunities for
everyone involved with PCs."
From the back of an old Digitalk Smalltalk/V PM manual, 1990:
"This is the right way to develop applications for OS/2 PM. OS/2 PM is a
tremendously rich environment, which makes it inherently
complex. Smalltalk/V PM removes that complexity and lets you
concentrate on writing great programs. Smalltalk/V PM is the kind of tool
that will make OS/2 the successor to MS/DOS".
"If you don't know what you need Windows NT for, you don't need it."
"When Intel finds someone who has some humility about developing operating systems and the complexities involved... then maybe we can try to work together." [Link]
At a press conference in response to Judge Jackson's
Findings Of Fact:
"Microsoft's products are popular because we've
focused on our customers and innovated to meet
their needs... In this industry, no company has a
guaranteed position. Microsoft has succeeded
because we have been guided by the most basic
American values: innovation, integrity, serving
customers, partnership, quality and giving to the
community. We compete vigorously, but fairly."
[Link]
[Another link]
"We have no intention of shipping another bloated OS and shoving it down the throats of our users."
In regards to Netscape:
"We are going to cut off their air supply. Everything they're selling, we're
going to give away for free."
"The idea that people know what they want is wrong. They need to be pulled through the Web."
"Sometimes I think it's unfortunate that we compete the way we do."
"The ever-growing size of software applications is what makes Moore's Law possible: 'If we hadn't brought your computer to its knees, why would you go out and buy a new one?'"
"We build confusing systems. That's true in the software and true in the hardware. The number of questions that we get on our support lines imply that we together haven't done a very good job. The questions I get from my mother imply we haven't done a very good job. Systems don't function out of the box. We actually did a few surveys where we went and bought systems, and we were surprised at how many, you plug them in and they actually didn't work. That's going to give us all a very bad reputation. If you upgrade the software or hardware, it's way too difficult."
In a document titled "Concerns For Our Future":
"1. Ensuring that we leverage Windows. I don't understand how IE is going to
win. The current path is simply to copy everything that Netscape does
packaging and product wise... My conclusion is that we must leverage
Windows more. Treating IE as just an add-on to Windows which is cross-platform
[is] losing our biggest advantage -- Windows marketshare. We should dedicate a
cross group team to come up with ways to leverage Windows technically more...
"Memphis [code name for Windows 98] must be a simple upgrade but most importantly it must be killer on OEM shipments so that Netscape never gets a chance on these systems."
"[It would] be very hard to increase browser share on the merits of IE 4 alone. It will be more important to leverage the OS asset to make people use IE instead of Navigator."
"I don't know what anti-competitive means."
To David Dorman, Pacific Bell CEO, after signing a contract with Netscape:
"You're either a friend or a foe, and you're an enemy now."
"...to really look at why people who get IE with a new machine switch to Navigator and what is being addressed in IE 4.0 to make that difficult."
"If you [speaking to AT&T officials] want to be part of the Windows box, you're going to have to do something special for us."
"What the [user] is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is DR-DOS and then go out to buy MS-DOS" [Link]
In an email to Jim Allchin:
"drdos has problems running
windows today, and I assume will have more
problems in the future." To this Allchin responded,
"You should make sure it has problems in the future. :-)"
[Link]
"...if you're running Windows 98 and another operating system in a dual-boot environment, converting your primary disk drive to FAT32 may cause the other operating system to be unusable. This is true even if the other operating system is installed on a different drive."
"New interface closely resembles Presentation Manager, preparing you for the wonders of OS/2!"
"[The source code for Windows 95] is among the most valuable and confidential pieces of intellectual property in the world" [Link]
"Subversion has always been our best tactic. It leaves the competition confused, and they don't know what to shoot at anymore." [Link]
"We have increased our prices over the last 10 years [while] other component prices have come down and continue to come down." [Link]
"You asked me for a user's view of DR DOS 5.0... I used DR DOS 5.0 with a huge number of apps. I found it incredibly superior to MS DOS 3.31 and IBM DOS 4.01... The most important reason to use any version of DOS is to run DOS apps. DR DOS 5.0 runs every DOS app I know. DR DOS 5.0 works successfully with Windows (2.11, Win 386 2.11 and Windows 3.0 and 3.0a)... Conclusion: DR DOS is vastly superior to MS dos 5.0." [Link]
"The problem (and the genius) regarding Microsoft's products is bloat. Microsoft's penchant for producing overweight code is not an accident. It's the business model for the company. ... While [bloatware has] made Bill Gates the world's richest guy, it's made life miserable for people who have to use these computers and expect them to run without crashing or dying."
"First of all, as good as Win NT appears to be, I'm not sure I want a phone company switching to it to run it's network. And heck, Microsoft has never gotten DOS -- a bloated file loader posing as an OS -- to work bug free. Now this? Let's not forget that Microsoft's own mega-Web site was seriously infected by a Win NT bug this summer. If I find out that Microsoft is selling fly-by-wire software to Airbus Industries or Boeing, then I'm going back to rail travel."
"Here's the worst part of what is happening: Because of the still unstable aspect of [Windows], the only people who can use computers and be sure they won't crash are those who buy factory-installed systems running something like Microsoft Works and never upgrade or add third-party software. For all practical purposes, this open system of ours has become proprietary. Proprietary to Microsoft."
"Obviously, the Microsoft spin doctors are trying to associate the word innovation with Windows 98 in the minds of the public. This is cute, since there is very little innovation in Windows 98. Everything in the OS is either a geegaw, a bug fix, or some new support, such as that for USB." [Link]
"But what was I to think when the first thing the Microsoft update did was shove Eudora aside and make Outlook Express my default mail reader? The update I got was at a stage where Microsoft had to have known that I'd already been presented with Outlook Express and had chosen another product. Why doesn't the company just leave the defaults alone? This is the same old nonsense the company used to pull, as when it kept you from running AOL during the era when MSN was supposed to take over the world. The laws against mucking with a computer system, whether by hacker or megacorporation, should be applied equally. This, to me, is illegal hacking. Hello, FBI! Are you there?" [Link]
"...Windows CE fits right into the Microsoft way of doing things. Call it 'Creeping Featurism.' Keep adding more and more functionality no matter how little of it is used. 'At least they can't say we don't have that function!' So Microsoft walks a tightrope between products that work and products that get so loaded with features that they don't work. There is a moment somewhere in between 'barely functional' and 'dysfunctional' when Microsoft hits home runs." [Link]
"In Win98 Microsoft supposedly fixed 3,000 bugs. You'd think a product with 3,000 bugs would be fixed for free. They recall cars and toys for defects. Not software. We have to buy more." [Link]
"When Microsoft first released Windows, it created a great development platform for others. As time went by, Microsoft competed with its own customers. It decimated every category it chose to enter. It would even give away the product if that was what winning took. That's the current image of Microsoft. It's perceived as a company that will stop at nothing to win. Nothing!" [Link]
"I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter."
"The best thing about Windows 95, of course, is the mountains of software designed specifically for it. There are programs to compress memory, recover a damaged registry, remove the heaps of unneeded files Windows accumulates, tune sluggish performance, and undo a few of the many problems that can occur when installing new software, to mention but a few. There is even software designed to intercept system faults to improve your chances of saving your work before you have to reboot."
"I go out and buy a copy of WinCable 2003... naturally, WinCable 2003 won't install on my General Instruments WinTV-compatible. Unfortunately, Microsoft's technical support can't help me because they haven't yet been trained on WinCable 2003. So I have to figure out for myself that I need a flash update to the BIOS on the cable card in my WinTV. I use my neighbor's WinTV to download the file. After the BIOS upgrade, I get WinCable 2003 installed..."
"After all, how do you give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt when you know that if you throw it into a room with truth, you'd risk a matter/anti-matter explosion."
"Remember Cairo? It was supposed to ship in 1994. Four years later, Microsoft can't even get an NT service pack out the door let alone deliver on its Cairo promises. If you want to understand how Microsoft got so far off course, look no further than Mountain View, Calif. When the Netscape Navigator browser threatened to turn Windows into a commodity, Microsoft diverted all its energy to the task of crushing Netscape. Goodbye, Cairo. Hello to a desktop operating system that OEMs are warning its customers not to use and a version of Windows NT that lacks the one quality that made its predecessors worthwhile -- stability." [Link]
"In the end, any attempt by Microsoft to cite Linux as evidence that competition is alive and well simply draws attention to the fact that competition was almost dead until the threat of Justice Department action revived it. And that simply highlights Microsoft's sordid past." [Link]
"You can order Internet Explorer 4.0 on CD-ROM from Microsoft. You can buy it from a retailer. You can download it. The beta version for Microsoft Office 2000 comes with Internet Explorer. You can get IE for Macintosh. You can get it for Solaris. You can download a beta release of the latest version, IE 5.0. But according to Microsoft, it's an inextricable part of the Windows OS." [Link]
"Appeasement, said Winston Churchill, consists of being nice to a crocodile in the hope that he will eat you last. At the moment, the biggest crocodile in the world is Microsoft, and everybody is busy sucking up to it."
"'[S]trategic partnerships' are means to a single end: to enable Microsoft to learn enough about particular businesses eventually to dominate them."
"Like medieval peasants, computer manufacturers and millions of users are locked in a seemingly eternal lease with their evil landlord, who comes around every two years to collect billions of dollars of taxes in return for mediocre services."
"...Microsoft has taken a perfectly good standard, broken it, and then told us that we have to buy expensive programs that support the broken interface rather than use the free ones that come with all operating systems in the world except Microsoft operating systems."
"The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armor to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he, who by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place."
"Nothing is worse than a piece of hardware designed by a software company with a monopoly."
"Microsoft has that certain confidence that comes from enjoying a monopoly and being very good at its business, which leads it to believe that it can do anything. Microsoft and its employees now think it is indeed the Master of the Universe."
"If you look at the history of Microsoft in the operating system business, you might conclude that the company doesn't like its own products. It always seems to be saying it has some new operating system that will solve the problems of whatever it is selling at the time. Now that Microsoft is selling Windows 95, it has two other operating systems it thinks are better: Windows NT and Windows CE. NT is better because it won't fail as often. CE is better because you don't have to invest as much in hardware for it to be useful."
"...Microsoft has managed to make me feel like a computer neophyte groping for answers that should be readily apparent. Indeed, I feel as though I may have committed myself... to what Novell CEO Eric Schmidt once called the Microsoft Roach Motel -- software that's easy to get into and hard to get out of... I feel as if I am fighting Microsoft for the right to use my own computer efficiently."
"Whatever the general public may think, it's easy for me to sum up opinions of knowledgeable industry types: Microsoft is a bully. Microsoft is trying to hoodwink nontechnical people. Microsoft is showing disrespect to [Judge Jackson] and to the federal government. At the very least, Microsoft is splitting hairs, when in the past it has always focused on core issues."
"...Many of you know that when I joined my venture capital firm two years ago, I got our office to switch entirely to Windows software, both for our network servers and our personal machines. Now I look back and try to see what benefit we got from making the switch. The answer is simple: not much. The machines don't work very well. The software is hard to learn and inconsistent, and programs don't mesh as well as you would expect. Now I hear Steve Jobs pitch the coolness and speed and power of the Macintosh, and I get a certain twinge. Why not? Why shouldn't I have a computer that helps me work rather than getting in my way?" [Link]
"With the exception of the Justice Department's opposition to Microsoft's proposed buyout of Intuit Inc. -- a deal that even this gang couldn't ignore -- the antitrust division has played charades with the public interest. The apparent policy: keeping Microsoft under constant surveillance when it comes to innocuous activities -- and, of course, finding nothing untoward -- while ignoring the company's more obviously anti-competitive moves."
"In a manner that would have left the robber barons of the late 19th century gaping in absolute awe, Microsoft is approaching something unprecedented: a monopoly that could well own the choke points of tomorrow's commerce and communications."
"I'd argue that the Justice Department's actions over the past several years have already had a small but perceptible effect. Microsoft is as arrogant as ever in responding to its critics, but it has been forced to modify some of the more outrageous practices. More and more people are learning how brutally the company conducts its business, meanwhile, and skeptical public scrutiny is only just beginning." [Link]
"We have checks and balances in our government, designed to assure that one branch won't overwhelm the others. We have a Bill of Rights, designed to ensure that the majority can't wipe out the fundamental liberties of the minority... And we have the antitrust laws, designed to prevent monopolists from turning free enterprise into a rigged market. When a monopolist is as persistent and unrepentant as this one, the law is forced to restore some balance." [Link]
"Both the PC industry and consumers alike would be better off with some modest limits on Microsoft's zeal." [Link]
"Microsoft has gotten so big that it can put out a Preview that will install itself without checking first to see if it has expired. The message here is that Microsoft's time is worth more than yours.... no start-up company could get away with being that arrogant."
"Cash-strapped libraries that accept the millions Gates is waving at them may find themselves acting out the Microsoft billionaire's dim vision of our electronic future. ... [B]efore they take anything from the chief executive, they'd better examine the gift very carefully for strings. After all, what sort of public libraries can we expect from a man who calls people 'users' and to whom War and Peace and Gilligan's Island are both 'content?'"
[Bill Gates] not only wants to win, but he wants to kill the competition. He wants to bury the wounded.
"[Bill Gates] definitely scares me. He embodies the very cultural and economic forces that have transformed American mass media from the freest and most diverse in the world to among the most cautious, greedy, and useless."
"Most curious is the desire to standardize on one OS and one CPU architecture. Depending on a single company for all future OS innovation and on another for all future CPU innovation would be tragic for an industry driven by technology."
"Microsoft bought MS-DOS from a Seattle company, and it was called QDOS then (Quick and Dirty Operating System). Some say it is not quick anymore, but the rest stays the same.
"The time humanity loses waiting for Windows to boot must be in the thousands of person-years per year."
"In the time it takes me to boot up my Windows 95 PC in the morning, Big Bill's portfolio gains a cool million or so in value. The crime of it all seems obvious to no one but me."
"Microsoft's biggest and most dangerous contribution to the software industry may be the degree to which it has lowered user expectations."
"I've never installed a major upgrade of any Microsoft product without running into major headaches."
"I was startled by the number of people who periodically reinstall Windows and their applications after backing up their documents and then formatting their C: drives. I've heard of individuals doing this, but I didn't realize how many corporations routinely perform this procedure for all users. One IS manager does it every 95 days. (So that's what the 95 stands for...)"
"Microsoft Corp. claims that Windows 95 is a monolithic operating system that doesn't require DOS, but it doesn't take a software wizard to tell that it's really booting a perfectly usable, character-oriented version of DOS before it starts the GUI."
"Although we disagree with Mr. Gates about the best way to read magazines, we do agree that sometimes the old way is still the best. For example, we generally prefer typewriters to Microsoft Word, and we find that our sturdy abacus crashes less often than Excel."
"Microsoft's goal is domination of the global information business, which is to say all business. Phone companies, cable television companies, post offices, stock exchanges, banks, treasury departments -- all of these are viewed by Microsoft as future competitors."
"There is a fantasy in Redmond that Microsoft products are innovative, but this is based entirely on a peculiar confusion of the words "innovative" and "successful." Microsoft products are successful -- they make a lot of money -- but that doesn't make them innovative, or even particularly good."
"Microsoft does its best work in reaction to a real or implied threat. Tell a group of Microsoft engineers to dream up some great new technology and they'll almost always disappoint. Tell them to reverse engineer someone else's great new technology or to react to a specific external technical threat and they respond beautifully. Companies that are aggressive yet lack imagination play good defense." [Link]
"...In my phone conversation with Microsoft's lawyer I copped to the fact that just maybe his client might see me as having been in the past just a bit critical of their products and business practices. This was too bad, he said with a sigh, because they were having a very hard time finding a reporter who both knew the industry well enough to be called an expert and who hadn't written a negative article about Microsoft." [Link]
"In the open source community, where Linux is king, an undocumented API doesn't qualify as an API, and so it isn't used. Microsoft takes the same approach -- that undocumented APIs don't exist and therefore shouldn't be used -- except that Microsoft then goes ahead and uses that undocumented API to gain a performance or feature advantage. Those weasels!" [Link]
"Why can't Microsoft solve [technical problems]? Complacency. Microsoft has no competition to speak of. No incentive to hurry. No urgency to its mission. If it misses its target by, oh say ... two years, what are we going to do about it? Put OS/2 on our machines out of protest? Throw our $3,000 computers away and buy Macs instead? Throw our software away and switch to Unix workstations? Of course not. We're stuck. We're screwed."
"When you taunt the referee, he usually watches you even more closely. That's what happened to Microsoft, whose 'up yours!' attitude toward the Department of Justice has inspired investigators to dig even deeper. Now they're looking at Microsoft's efforts to take over Java. These relentless investigations sap Microsoft, and distract the DOJ from worse dangers such as Intel. And Microsoft's childish, insulting behavior is largely to blame."
"If this were Hollywood, then Windows 98 would be the equivalent of "Heaven's Gate," "Waterworld" and "Godzilla" rolled into one. A huge, overhyped, bloated embarrassment." [Link]
"Microsoft is going to argue that since most users are now familiar with the way a Web browser works, the browser will be an easier interface for novices to use in finding stuff on their own computers. And that might be true. But if it is true, it's an admission of awful truth for Microsoft: It's saying, "After all these years and versions of Windows we still haven't figured out how to make personal computing easy enough for an intelligent person to learn easily."
"Last month, Gates insisted to the U.S. Senate that his company is perennially vulnerable to new competitors snapping at its heels; this month he's holding the national well-being for ransom by insisting that any government interference with a single product release will unleash doom upon us all. Out of one side of its mouth, Microsoft tells us it's no monopoly; out of the other, it insists that it's the sole engine driving our economy. Well, Bill, which is it? You can't have it both ways."
"If Linux -- an operating system collectively developed by idealistic engineers and widely available for free or close to it -- is able to keep making itself easier to use and grabbing market share, the net effect will be to reduce the overall value of Microsoft's operating-system monopoly. The more people turn to an open-source OS that can be distributed dirt-cheap, the less Microsoft will be able to charge for Windows. If Linux becomes a serious contender in the mass market, Microsoft will have to think about giving away Windows for free. And while its control over the Windows standard would remain a hugely powerful asset, Microsoft's loss of billions of dollars of OS profits would go far toward leveling the competitive playing field in the software industry." [Link]
"There's nothing illegal about making obscene amounts of money, to be sure. But how is it that, quarter after quarter, Microsoft miracurously brings in the bucks -- despite market turmoil around the globe, constant change in the software industry and the frequent failure of many of its own projects? Gee, maybe it has something to do with the nature of the monopoly and monopoly profits." [Link]
"Only Microsoft would have the temerity to pick your pocket and ask you to thank it for the favor.
"My personal gripe is Windows 95's pitiful support of TCP/IP. For all the noise that Microsoft has been making about the global connectedness of everything, it's not working very well. Almost any error condition on the connection results in having to restart the machine. Windows 95 puts on a brave face of keeping everything running, but in fact has been mortally wounded. Errors compound, long delays creep into applications, and things generally start falling apart. The correct response to any TCP problem, especially a lost connection, is to shut down all applications and reboot. A combination of bugs and clunky features makes work that should be easy painful and slow."
"Prediction #7 Microsoft will have a bona fide technological breakthrough.
Reality Check: If it did, I certainly didn't hear about it. I give this one a
big goose egg on my score card, and remind myself again that I should
NEVER be nice to those guys."
"... Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates called Windows 98 'a major software innovation' and declared that 'any government action that would derail or delay Windows 98 would hurt the American economy.' Whoa! That grandiose description, like the most rabid charges of the critics, doesn't jibe with what I've observed in testing a prerelease version of Windows 98 every day for about a month now. So far, it's fine, but it hasn't changed my computing experience dramatically, for better or worse. As for the economic impact of Windows 98, all I can say is that Microsoft itself has delayed its release for months, and bread lines haven't appeared..."
"Windows is a paradox. For all its ubiquity, it has few diehard fans, unlike its... rival, the Macintosh operating system. Tens of millions use Windows, but few get excited about it."
"The minute we see vendors [Microsoft] wrapping themselves up in the flag and pledging their alliance to free-market principles, you know they are running scared. The computer industry is just like an other business in terms of making money... upgrades to Windows every 18 to 24 months is what strokes the Microsoft engine. The way Microsoft keeps revenues growing, which in turn drives the stock price, is to get people to upgrade..."
"The only reason that we could not make Windows 98 work is because we had an OS/2 partition on our hard drive. It is clear to use that it is Microsoft's way of telling us that Windows must be the only operating system running on any computer. No other operating system is allowed otherwise it will complain until we learn through installation pains." [Link]
"Perhaps, in retrospect, the lag between the intro of Win 98 and the release of NT may be seen as the window of opportunity that freeware systems such as Linux needed to gain the corporate support and corporate developer infrastructure necessary to become true challengers to NT. The movement of corporate support of freeware -- most noticeable of late is IBM's support of the Apache Web server -- is one of those less noticed events that are often seen as significant in retrospect." [Link]
"For all the nattering nabobs of negativism ready to shovel earth on Apple's
grave, let the record state that the architects responsible for Mr. Bill's
high-tech version of Shangri-La-meets-Seattle use Macs exclusively. 'The
plaque should read, The Gates Mansion, designed by Apple
,' says
our man on the Microserf watch."
"The state attorneys general who want Win98 delayed may be barking up the wrong tree, anyhow. The real problem for consumers is the bug-ridden nature of Windows 95 -- most shamelessly the update version, which has not had a single bug fix since the day it was released. Now that's a real problem for the nation's economic productivity."
"To hear Microsoft tell it, you'd think the Computer Age had changed the rules of commerce. Microsoft Chairman and CEO Bill Gates has argued that the government is trying to structure an industry it knows little about. This is nonsense. What Gates is attempting is as old as the efforts to monopolize the steel, rail, oil, and telephone industries in the robber baron era."
"Don't get me wrong, NT and 95 have their place, but they aren't even close to the all-purpose toolkits that Microsoft markets them as. Consider this: Microsoft doesn't even buy into this PR. Guess what they store their financial data on? VAXes and AS/400s. What do they do much of their documentation, advertising and PR with? Macs. Seems to me, if the shyster won't use the snake oil, then I shouldn't be forced to either." [Link]
"In short, buying a Windows computer that's only considered 'good enough' is selling yourself short. It's not good enough for students. It's not good enough for home users. It's not good enough for business. It's not even good enough for government work. Good enough is ultimately only good enough for those who actively resist excellence -- those whose upper limit is "average." [Link]
"I hope the Department of Justice eventually does break up Microsoft because, among other things, I think it'll prove a far more wonderful thing for Microsoft investors... After such a breakup, even I'd add money to a holding. And Bill Gates' wealth would continue to grow, at probably a faster rate. When Standard Oil was split into 34 companies, Rockefeller's personal wealth tripled over the next decade." [Link]
"Freeware is still on the fringe of the software industry, but it's a pretty substantial fringe. As more businesses of every sort come to depend on the Web, access to source code will become more important. Why? It can mean the world to a programmer or the person running your company's Web site. "Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?" demands Robert Young, Red Hat Software's chief executive." [Link]
"Mastery of UNIX, like mastery of language, offers real freedom. The price of freedom is always dear, but there's no substitute. Personally, I'd rather pay for my freedom than live in a bitmapped, pop-up-happy dungeon like NT." [Link]
"If Windows NT were designed to be an Open Systems solution, with open source code, Microsoft would not be able to utilize their inside knowledge of the NT source code to their business advantage. You see, when you have many different players in the same sandbox, they all have to know how the OS works in order to get along... If Microsoft wanted to make life difficult for a competitor, they could, if they so desired, insert code to make a competitors product run kinda crappy. I have no evidence that Microsoft ever did this, but many users think that Microsoft made engineering decisions in NT that just by happenstance seem to penalize non-Microsoft applications, from time to time. Without the benefit of peer review of the source code, like Linux, there is no hope of everyone understanding what's going on in the OS. As a result, only MS applications seem to run well." [Link]
"I've been using computers for decades. I've set up tons of systems, built them from scratch, torn them apart when they misbehaved, fixed too many to count. But enough is enough. Windows is an utter kludge, the ultimate tar baby, sucking you in, making things harder and harder, until you are hopelessly snagged and stuck, exhausted from fighting with it, resigned to despair. It is an inscrutable, god-awful mess, a disaster waiting to happen, a bonehead botch-job jammed with you-can't-get-there-from-here idiocy. They could train soldiers to kill by forcing them to struggle with this." [Link]
"Twice, Gates was asked about Year 2000 concerns... To the library crowd Gates gave a very incomplete answer that it was primarily a main frame problem. Older software might look funny but it would work. It was the Microsoft party line more than two years ago, when the company was still selling Windows 95 versions that weren't Y2K compliant." [Link]
"...Gates hit on the company's familiar theme: 'Every new innovation in Windows could bring up somebody who offered a separate utility that did the same thing,' he said. That answer resonates against a question asked later in the RCGA session: 'How does a small business protect intellectual property in dealing with a company as big as Microsoft?' His answer: Protect yourself with patents and registered trade secrets before you go to a company like Microsoft. 'We don't like to sign non-disclosure agreements,' he said." [Link]
"But what has infuriated me more than anything is consumers' utter resignation in the face of Microsoft's dominance. Rather than buying Windows because the majority of commercial software runs on it, we should be mad as hell that a company has us behaving like its puppets, while deliberately scheming to keep us captive and pliant by sabotaging efforts to provide us with better products, lower prices, and more choices." [Link]
"Some people scoff when I say that Bill Gates is afraid of competition. They believe he's simply ultracompetitive. That's not the way I see it. If you were competing against Bill Gates in a track meet, he would sabotage your starting blocks, bribe the officials, loosen the cleats in your shoes, use a trick count for the start, and do anything and everything else he could think of to avoid having the outcome determined by virtue of performance on the field. I don't call that competitive. I call it cowardly." [Link]
"If you were competing against Bill Gates in a track meet, he would sabotage your starting blocks, bribe the officials, loosen the cleats in your shoes, use a trick count for the start..."
"[Bill] Gates apparently forgets that, while growing Microsoft, he was supported by various governments with corporate, contract, and copyright law, to name just three. And governments were there protecting him from IBM and others with antitrust law. Hey, Bill, it's simply Microsoft's turn to obey antitrust law."
Quotes by Corporate Executives
"Microsoft, I think, is fundamentally an evil company."
"[Microsoft] is the fox that takes you across the river and then eats you."
"I still think that tens of millions of PC owners needlessly use a computer that is far less good than it should be."
"My view of Microsoft is that they had two goals in the last 10 years: to copy the Macintosh and to copy Lotus' success in the applications business. And they accomplished those goals. Now, they're kind of lost. I've told Bill that I think it's in Microsoft's best interest if NeXT becomes successful because we'll give him something to copy for the rest of this decade."
"You think it's a conspiracy by the networks to put bad shows on TV. But the shows are bad because that's what people want. It's not like Windows users don't have any power. I think they are happy with Windows, and that's an incredibly depressing thought."
"The most important thing for the Web is to stay ahead of Microsoft, . . . anything that slows down the Web reaching ubiquity allows Microsoft to catch up. If Microsoft catches up, it's far worse than the fact the Web can't do word processing. Those things can be fixed later. There's a window now that will close. If you don't cross the finish line in the next two years, Microsoft will own the Web. And that will be the end of it."
"We have enormous appreciation, admiration, and fear [of Microsoft]. But like I tell people: I love my brothers, but I don't let them eat my supper."
"These landmark findings-of-fact prove Microsoft is one of the most powerful and stifling monopolies of the century, and illegally abused its operating system software in a bid to control the market for Internet browsers. Its intimidating and abusive tactics have harmed consumers. We're anxious to see the remedies recommended by the court that will ensure that these predatory and monopolistic practices will not recur." [Link]
"I don't think anybody knows what it is to be in the direct onslaught of Microsoft until they've been there." [Link]
"Every time you turn on your new car, you're turning on 20 microprocessors. Every time you use an ATM, you're using a computer. Every time I use a settop box or game machine, I'm using a computer. The only computer you don't know how to work is your Microsoft computer, right?"
"Microsoft should look in the mirror before they try to explain to people how open processes ought to run..."
"I am convinced that if General Motors could eliminate [Microsoft] Office from their entire company, they could get the 1999 cars out next year at half price."
"We had 12.9 gigabytes of PowerPoint slides on our network. And I thought, 'What a huge waste of corporate productivity.' So we banned it. And we've had three unbelievable record-breaking fiscal quarters since we banned PowerPoint. Now, I would argue that every company in the world, if it would just ban PowerPoint, would see their earnings skyrocket. Employees would stand around going, 'What do I do? Guess I've got to go to work.'"
"The only thing I'd rather own than Windows is English or Chinese or Spanish, because then I could charge a $249 right to speak English. And I could charge you an upgrade fee when I add new letters like N and T."
"This Windows 95 hairball has become so big, so unmanageable, so hard to use, so hard to configure, so hard to keep up and running, so hard to keep secure. Windows 95 is a great gift to give your kid this Christmas because it will keep your kid fascinated for months trying to get it up and running and trying to figure out how to use it."
In response to Microsoft's request to dismiss the DoJ case
after the AOL-Netscape merger:
"Well, can I politely say I think that's a joke? There's been
absolutely no change in operating system market-share, there's been
no change in office productivity suites market-share, no change
in the management, the style, or the practices of that
organization, and this has nothing to do with the DOJ case...
I can say that if that's Microsoft's best defense,
they've got a very desperate strategy in responding to
the DOJ's case."
[Link]
"I take much of what [Bill Gates] says with a grain of salt because Bill would like to be ... the center of gravity for the whole world. He's totally dedicated to his work and will do virtually anything to kill the rest of us ... Bill Gates can be your partner and be your enemy at the same time."
"Microsoft wants to control the operating system of the living room like it controls the operating system of the computer."
"When people understand what Microsoft is up to, they're outraged."
"Microsoft is scared to death of us -- they're just too damn stupid to notice."
"Microsoft does not like negative or even objective press coverage and they have a tendency to be a bully about it. If something appears that they don't like, they have the ability to punish the publication."
"Every single thing that Microsoft says and does is designed to protect their monopoly."
"Normally, in the semiconductor industry, standards drive costs down. Standards enable volume which drives the learning curve and continuous improvement cost reductions. Only open standards do that. In the absence of open standards and competition, consumers will pay a monopolists tax."
"It is amazing that banks would be fast followers of NT. As far as networking and scalability are concerned, Microsoft carries enormous risk." [Link]
"There was a four- or five-year period where they [Microsoft] did not come out with a new version of DOS. It took Digital Research, with a nice version of DR DOS, to get them to release new software. Then, voila! There was [MS] DOS 5.0." [Link]
"If you look at Microsoft's successes over the years they have been rarely done by innovation. They bought DOS, they copied effectively a lot of what was in the Macintosh into Windows. In fact, Windows has gotten to look a lot more like that in 95 and 98. Windows NT is basically being built by the guy that built the VAX/VMS operating system. It is an Intel-based implementation of VMS. So where is the innovation? The innovation is the talking paper clip in Microsoft Office. Is that real innovation?"
"I do hope that the suit can help demonstrate that Microsoft's claims of succeeding through innovation are a complete fraud. Their only innovation has been in inventing predatory business practices. Other than that, they have been perhaps the greatest borrowers in the history of the software industry." [Link]
In response to Judge Jackson's Findings Of Fact:
"I have been competing and doing business with Microsoft for years. I don't
think that when we all go to work on Monday, life is going to be any easier.
Microsoft is going to continue to act like Microsoft. This will require
additional steps, including remedies, before Microsoft changes behavior, and
it becomes a more competitive industry."
[Link]
"Microsoft allowed us to [change our startup screen], but we don't think we should have to ask permission every time we want to make some minor software modification. Windows is an operating system, not a religion."
"We use Linux for all our mission-critical applications. Having the source code means that we are not held hostage by anyone's support department."
"Bill Gates is the pope of the personal computer industry -- he decides who's going to build a PC." [Link]
"What we are vigorously complaining about is illegality. Misuse of that monopoly power because at that point it's not a fair fight. And I use the example of the Monopoly game that we all played when we were children. If one of the players decided to cheat and not play by the rules, the game was over. You can't really have a fair fight, a fair competition unless all the players play by the rules."
"I wonder how long Microsoft can keep its internal transaction costs below those of the outside world. For how long can NT compete with Linux? MS web servers with Apache? I expect Microsoft will collapse under its own weight in my lifetime. So perhaps anti trust action only changes the timing one way or another." [Link]
"I would rather choose to have my leg bitten off than to buy NT." [Link]
(to Bill Gates) "There is something very wrong with the way Microsoft works with Intel." [Link]
"No one wants to see Microsoft go under -- we all just want to see them play fair." [Link]
"Microsoft enjoys so much power in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems that if it wished to exercise this power solely in terms of price, it could charge a price for Windows substantially above that which could be charged in a competitive market. Moreover, it could do so for a significant period of time without losing an unacceptable amount of business to competitors. In other words, Microsoft enjoys monopoly power in the relevant market."
"Viewed together, three main facts indicate that Microsoft enjoys monopoly power. First, Microsoft's share of the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems is extremely large and stable. Second, Microsoft's dominant market share is protected by a high barrier to entry. Third, and largely as a result of that barrier, Microsoft's customers lack a commercially viable alternative to Windows."
"Finally, it is indicative of monopoly power that Microsoft felt that it had substantial discretion in setting the price of its Windows 98 upgrade product (the operating system product it sells to existing users of Windows 95). A Microsoft study from November 1997 reveals that the company could have charged $49 for an upgrade to Windows 98 - there is no reason to believe that the $49 price would have been unprofitable - but the study identifies $89 as the revenue-maximizing price. Microsoft thus opted for the higher price."
"Microsoft's actions have inflicted collateral harm on consumers who have no interest in using a Web browser at all. If these consumers want the non-browsing features available only in Windows 98, they must content themselves with an operating system that runs more slowly than if Microsoft had not interspersed browsing-specific routines throughout various files containing routines relied upon by the operating system. More generally, Microsoft has forced Windows 98 users uninterested in browsing to carry software that, while providing them with no benefits, brings with it all the costs associated with carrying additional software on a system."
"Most harmful of all is the message that Microsoft's actions have conveyed to every enterprise with the potential to innovate in the computer industry. Through its conduct toward Netscape, IBM, Compaq, Intel, and others, Microsoft has demonstrated that it will use its prodigious market power and immense profits to harm any firm that insists on pursuing initiatives that could intensify competition against one of Microsoft's core products. Microsoft's past success in hurting such companies and stifling innovation deters investment in technologies and businesses that exhibit the potential to threaten Microsoft. The ultimate result is that some innovations that would truly benefit consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not coincide with Microsoft's self-interest."
"The suspicion lingers... that Microsoft's ambition is a future where most or all of the content available on the Web would be accessible only through its own browsing software."
"They are trying to use an existing monopoly to retard introduction of new technology."
"Stop Microsoft through government antitrust enforcement now or say goodbye to new products and the openness of the Internet. Gates will own everything, and collect a fee on every imaginable product and service in cyberspace from home finance to a virtual visit to the Louvre. And forget about getting these products and services someplace else. Competitors won't exist."
"If Microsoft is able to extend its monopoly from the desktop to the Internet, then its monopoly will become so vast and so entrenched that only the most severe and substantial remedial action by the government will dislodge it."
"...It was never too late to break up AT&T. And in the United States when AT&T was broken up, it created a whole bevy of new technologies including the Internet itself that we might never have had had we continued to have a telephone monopoly.
"[Microsoft is] a potential threat to our nation's economic well-being."
"If one company dominates everything, it's dangerous. You kill innovation and you lose the capacity to create alternatives. Ultimately, that isn't good for the consumer or the country."
"Forcing PC manufacturers to take one Microsoft product as a condition of buying a monopoly product like Windows 95 is not only a violation of the court order, but it's plain wrong."
In response to Jackson's Findings Of Fact:
"This is a great day for the American consumer."
[Link]
"Microsoft has a huge market share, it can push people around, it enjoys monopolistic profits and venture capitalists will not invest in an area that Microsoft is in -- all those things speak to its dominant market position and its market power. I don't think the Justice Department is going to have any trouble proving Microsoft is a monopoly." [Link]
"The opinion is a clean sweep for the opinion we presented at trial ... The consumers have been harmed substantially, not just in price and availability of product, but because other products have been squeezed out of this market." [Link]
"[Microsoft's] abuses give this set of findings an energy and power that ordinarily isn't found in a legal document. It reads like a novel; indeed it has the compelling drama of a powerful predator abusing its market -- an 800-pound gorilla crushing competition." [Link]
"Netscape was arguably the most innovative company on the planet. It was basically crushed by the actions of Microsoft. That can't be undone, but there ought to be efforts made to make sure that can't repeat itself." [Link]
"Paul Newman -- not to be confused with the famous actor -- gets very steamed up whenever you mention Microsoft. A veteran technical director with UK-based systems integrator Pacific Systems International, Newman has spent 20 years earning his bread and butter putting together computer systems for giant corporate clients. 'Our whole company, and our clients' companies, are stuffed with Microsoft products, and we don't like it,' he growls. 'We all got into Windows NT, and that was a big disaster. This NT thing has got no clothes.'" [Link]
"The software empire that was built on a C:\ prompt, Microsoft has done for software what McDonald's did for the hamburger."
"The programs that come bundled with new computers can be valuable. The software provided with new Macs, for example, is consistently good. But all too often on Windows machines, what you get is a collection of outdated programs or limited 'special editions' that are come-ons for you to pay for upgraded versions."
"DOS Computers manufactured by companies such as IBM, Compaq, Tandy, and millions of others are by far the most popular, with about 70 million machines in use worldwide. Macintosh fans, on the other hand, may note that cockroaches are far more numerous than humans, and that numbers alone do not denote a higher life form."
"Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to describe the history of the computer industry for the past decade as a massive effort to keep up with Apple... (the Mac) went on to pioneer or popularize almost every innovation in personal computing."
"Apple's Macintosh OS had the first real graphical user interface. Too bad Windows didn't copy more of it."
"It was revealed in 1994 that the Calculator applet in Microsoft Windows did not display correct answers. Reportedly, it took the Pentium bug brouhaha to motivate Microsoft to admit and fix a bug it may have known about since 1991."
"One of the biggest disappointments of 1996 was Windows 95. Though it was hyped as a 32-bit powerhouse, many companies simply ignored it and stayed with Windows 3.1. And who could blame them? Plug and Play is often plug and pray. Despite Microsoft's protestations to the contrary, Windows 95 does require more RAM. Those nifty 3D graphics drivers have yet to materialize, and to make matters worse, Windows 95 often runs slower than a comparable Windows 3.1 system. And 32 bit or not, it still crashes. A lot."
"Ohio Gov. George Voinovich, incoming chairman of the [National Governors'] association, said he would try to convene a conference within the next six months to a year to focus in more detail on how state governments can use computer technology more efficiently. 'Microsoft would like to sponsor something like that,' Gates said."
"Asked how small software companies could compete on products that Microsoft wants to fold into Windows, [Microsoft chief operating officer Bob] Herbold told Bloomberg News they could either fight a losing battle, sell out to Microsoft or a larger company or 'not go into business to begin with.'"
"A few weeks ago, a member of the audience at a [Bill] Gates speech in San Francisco asked simply this of the world's richest businessman: 'Can you make a list of things you won't be doing? ... I just want a little piece of something to pass on to my kids 20 years from now.'"
"Trying to get Windows to run on the hardware that Linux typically runs on is like pushing an elephant through a keyhole." [Link]
"Microsoft should abandon the funny looking Windows logo and just hoist the Jolly Roger." [Link]
"Take an operating system with at least 5000 bugs, integrate a CPU-hogging Web browser so that you cannot execute the most inconsequential command without the browser popping up and what do you get? Windows 98."
"Microsoft did the poor Windows-using masses a huge favor by fixing thousands of the bugs it released with Win95, but that it got away with calling Win98 an upgrade rather than a bug fix is criminal."
"If Microsoft is innovative in any area, it is in creating new forms of intimidation."
"A monopoly is smug. A monopoly doesn't have to stay on its toes. A monopoly tends not to have a good feedback mechanism when something goes wrong. In politics we call a monopoly a dictatorship. There are certain features that have broad ramifications that are not good for society."
"As more and more of the world's economic activity transforms itself into software, it transforms itself into the giant maw of the Microsoft monopoly. And that is what is totally not to be tolerated by the anti-trust laws or by a free society. It's not good for innovation, it's not good for freedom of communication and it's not good for pricing."
"You'll read that Bill Gates envisioned it all, which is a crock. He didn't invision any of it. Nobody did."
"[Paul] Allen was was easy to work with, but Gates acted like a spoiled kid, which is what he was."
"What we'll all end up doing if Netscape doesn't play better is we will have instantiated the Microsoft Network. We'll just call it the Internet."
"I don't think that the world needs another market dominated by Microsoft. I have enormous respect for the company, but I really get nervous about markets where one vendor has such power."
"I think anybody who is savvy about this market knows that Microsoft is getting away with stuff it probably shouldn't get away with."
"Microsoft now is in 40 percent of American households. If they can somehow insert themselves in as a piece of infrastructure in the next generation of televisions, they could go to 100 percent penetration of American households and eventually the world."
"You could argue that Microsoft is the product of clever strategy, mediocre technology, and a hell of a lot of increasing returns."
"Microsoft is a company that is desperately resisting change. Its strategy is two-tiered. One is to desperately hang onto what it's got: making the operating system important even though we're moving into a world where the OS becomes steadily less important. At the same time, it is desperately looking for the next high-growth field that it'll make money on. So when the OS finally does start to decline, it will find a new field. It's targeted two areas: one is media and the other is services. Everything it's doing is going into that. It is a classic case of a change-hating company; it is desperately trying to retard change."
"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
"What P.T. Barnum earned by convincing everybody in the nation that they just had to buy a ticket to see Jumbo the elephant amounts to peanuts compared to the billions that Bill Gates of Microsoft has taken in from sales of Windows, a big, expensive, and (in its early versions) clunky imitation of the Macintosh graphical user interface. What made so many people rush to buy Windows? Gates made it seem like the only relief in sight from the cumbersome DOS program he had foisted upon his customers in the first place."
"[I]f the Java alliance were to topple Microsoft's dominance, Microsoft would lose the aura of invincibility and would be forced to compete very hard on the basis of pricing, quality, and service. The bottom line is Microsoft needs to, wants to, and will fight Java tooth and nail.
"I would rather gnaw my leg off, pack the bleeding stump with salt, and run in a circle on broken glass than have to deal with any Microsoft product on a regular basis."
"...We finally finished installing the new servers. For performance reasons, we decided to drop Microsoft Windows NT and return to Unix again. We did this while we were still on the temporary server and even that machine which was a Pentium-90 with only 32mb RAM out-performed the NT Server that was a Pentium-200MMX with 96mb RAM. Needless to say, if we were not sure about the move before then, we were afterwards."
"Since Intel and Microsoft stock is getting so pricey, I'm going to invest in hard drives and DRAM, because every time MS has an upgrade everyone has to buy a bigger hard drive and more DRAM."
"When you say 'I wrote a program that crashed Windows', people just stare at you blankly and say 'Hey, I got those with the system, for free'."
"I used to be interested in Windows NT, but the more I see of it the more it looks like traditional Windows with a stabler kernel. I don't find anything technically interesting there. In my opinion MS is a lot better at making money than it is at making good operating systems."
"If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot of different places, just write a Unix operating system."
"We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds."
"Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had."
"Hoping the problem magically goes away by ignoring it is the 'microsoft approach to programming' and should never be allowed."
"I don't think Microsoft is evil in itself; I just think they make really crappy operating systems."
"Besides, I think Slackware sounds better than 'Microsoft,' don't you?"
"It's hard to love Microsoft, and these OEMs are involved in an uneasy alliance of convenience. If Microsoft is tamed in any fashion, it would give more negotiating leverage to OEMs, and there would be a lot more room for these guys to push back on Microsoft." [Link]
"Anyone who's surprised at delays in Microsoft's shipping schedule hasn't been awake for the past few years." [Link]
"The first and most urgent necessity in the area of government policy [with respect to monopolies] is the elimination of those measures which directly support monopoly."
"The choice between the evils of private monopoly, public monopoly, and public regulation cannot, however, be made once and for all, independently of factual circumstances. If the technical monopoly is of a service or commodity that is regarded as essential and if its monopoly power is sizable, even the short-run effects of private unregulated monopoly may not be tolerable, and either public regulation or ownership may be a lesser evil."
"Monopoly raises two classes of problems for a free society. First, the existence of monopoly means a limitation on voluntary exchange through a reduction in the alternatives available to individuals. Second, the existence of monopoly raises the issue of "social responsibility", as it has come to be called, of the monopolist."
"All of you people should be ashamed of yourselves! MicroSoft is the reason there are so many people in my IS department, and the reason half of us have jobs. If Sun had won, we could probably get by with two people sleeping like the Maytag man. But because of MS, there are eight people gainfully employed as highly paid contracters, looking busy, feeding their kids. And the way it looks, I stand to be employed and wealthy for a long, long time." [Link]
"I sat laughing snidely into my notebook until they showed me a PC running Linux... And oh! It was as though the heavens opened and God handed down a client-side OS so beautiful, so graceful, and so elegant that a million Microsoft developers couldn't have invented it even if they had a hundred years and a thousand crates of Jolt cola." [Link]
"Microsoft should be leading the charge to put information technology in service to society, not vice versa. Instead, they undermine their advertising rhetoric by their tone deafness to useability. There ought to be a new category of social crime for perpetrating the fundamental brokenness of Windows 95." [Link]
"In a nutshell, I would offer my view that Microsoft has, regrettably, seen fit to deploy a massive public relations campaign grounded in spin control and misdirection, as opposed to engaging the American public, on the basis of the facts and the merits." [Link]
"Microsoft via the genius of Bill Gates invented the mouse-windows user interface, reliable operating systems, affordable computing, and the Internet; if you don't think all that is true, ask someone who has never used a computer and whose only exposure to the industry is through mass media." [Link]
"Our industry is an embarrassment. When a Honda engineer goes to a party, it would be rare for another guest to say "Oh, you design cars for Honda? You know, last Friday my husband's Accord just exploded while he was pulling out of the garage." But admit that you're a programmer and you can't get out of the room without hearing about somebody's crashed Macintosh or Windows machine. Furthermore, to the extent that there have been any software innovations in the last 40 years, the Microsoft Monopoly either gets credit for them or keeps them from getting into users' hands." [Link]
In response to Judge Jackson's Findings Of Fact:
"I think [Bill] Gates still thinks he can treat everyone
like shit and he'll get his way eventually. I think he
just got a big surprise." [Link]
On the Findings Of Fact:
"If Microsoft didn't deserve this so richly I
would say it was brutal -- I've seen nothing here
with which I would disagree." [Link]
"Microsoft has shown that it will decide the ways in which innovation takes place in this industry, and that any innovation which threatens Microsoft's platform monopoly will be squashed. We will live, as it were, in a Microsoft world in which choices are the choices that Microsoft makes. I don't think that's good for consumers, but those effects have only just begun." [Link]
On the DOJ anti-trust trial:
It's so characteristic of Microsoft to not prepare their case
meticulously, but rather ship first and try to debug in the field.
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