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"Holy ad nauseam: If I hear anyone from Microsoft talk about the freedom to innovate one more time, I think I'll hurl a month's worth of cookies. Instead of worrying about whether or not the government will stop Microsoft from innovating in the future, the head honchos in Redmond ought to spend some energy trying to figure out what force has
prevented them from innovating over the past decade." "It seems clear that it will be very hard to increase browser market 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."
"[Microsoft's business strategy is] copy the product that others innovate, put them into Windows so they can't be unplugged, and then give it away for free." "We need to slaughter Novell before they get stronger." "Microsoft is like this intellectual roach motel: big brains go in and you don't see anything come out." -Paul Saffo, Institute for the Future "Some weeks it looks like Redmond feels entitled to capture not just part of what we save, but all of it. That just isn't going to fly with corporate America forever. When your margins are more sensitive to Bill Gates' pricing whims than they are the price of oil, that's an untenable position for a large company to be in." "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." -Samuel Miller, U.S. Justice Department "Microsoft's operating system is what has led to our loss of control over computing. The system is so complicated and so burdened with the legacy of its past that it has become unusable by mere mortals, or even by geeks like me." -Stewart Alsop, Fortune "In Microsoft world, you are always one click away from harming yourself." "Microsoft expends a significant portion of its monopoly power ... on imposing burdensome restrictions on its customers and inducing them to behave in ways that augment and prolong that monopoly power.." "If the price seems too good to be true, it generally is." -Microsoft attorney Jim Lowe "Even as a longtime critic of the company, I must admit that Microsoft occasionally flirts with the truth. Well, perhaps 'flirt' is too strong a word. Let's just say Microsoft sometimes honks and waves as it drives by her house." "And let's face facts. innovation has never been Microsoft's strong suite. We're much better at ripping off our competitors. For example, we did not invent either ASP or IE, we bought them!"
"But for Microsoft's interference, the market would be much more dynamic as new technologies and fresh innovations challenged the company's present
dominance." "I wonder if in part why so many people are angry at Microsoft is not just because their products frustrate them so much, but also because this frustration is ignored. The computer makes people feel like they are dummies, when in fact it is the computer that is stupid." -MIT Associate Professor Rosalind Picard "The common wisdom is that the person to worry about the most right now is Gates.... I think we've got to be careful." -Disney CEO Michael Eisner "As Internet technology itself vaults into new areas, so too does the Microsoft monopoly and its tried-and-true bag of tricks," -US Senator Orrin Hatch, (R) Utah "It's fair to say that the Internet promise has become the newest market in our economy, and access should not be controlled by any one company. Microsoft currently enjoys a monopoly that controls more than 90 percent of the desktop computer today." -Retired US Senator & former presidential candidate Robert Dole "The software empire that was built on a C:\ prompt, Microsoft has done for software what McDonald's did for the hamburger." -PC Magazine, June 1997 "Microsoft is now talking about the digital nervous system. I guess I would be nervous if my system was built on their technology, too." "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." -Antitrust attorney Gary Reback "DOS will be with us forever. We've learned how passionate people are about DOS." "Microsoft should put its own house in order on privacy rather than waving about a discredited blueprint as a model for others... This attempt to portray itself as a leader in consumer privacy is as preposterous as the notion that it has treated its competitors with high standards of business ethics." -Junkbusters President Jason Catlett "How dare the government intervene to stifle innovation in the computer industry! That's Microsoft's job, dammit." -MacAddict "Although UNIX is more reliable, NT may become more reliable with time." "Microsoft does not hesitate to use its operating system monopoly power and application program dominance to try to eliminate competition." "One of the early programs I wrote, not for money, was for Lakeside [where Gates went to highschool]. It scheduled students in classes. I surreptitiously added a few instructions and found myself nearly the only guy in a class full of girls. It was hard to tear myself away from a machine at which I could so unambiguously demonstrate success. I was hooked." - Bill Gates, The Road Ahead [2nd Edition] "I think Gates still thinks he can treat everyone like shit and he'll get his way eventually. I think he just got a big surprise." "An analogy [of Microsoft] would be the owner of a toll bridge, which is the only bridge across a river, paying the owner of land to deny access to a site where a competitive bridge is partly built." -Judge Robert Bork, former US Supreme Court nominee "The only thing wrong with Microsoft is that they have no taste." "In biology, if the members of a herd are too genetically similar, a single disease can wipe them out. Ditto with computer systems: as Microsoft becomes increasingly dominant, the users of its programs are open to weaknesses that they may not know exist -- until it is too late ... if nothing else, the problems of macro-viruses have shown the weakness inherent in Microsoft's dominance of both business software and home PCs." -Charles Arthur, The Independent "The fact that there's some e-mail here at MS that says, 'let's go up and beat this guy'...there's nothing wrong with that. That is capitalism at work for consumers."
"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." "He [Bill Gates] acted like a spoiled kid, which is what he was." "We are afraid of Bill Gates. And Bill Gates is afraid of us." "Pitting browser against browser is hard since Netscape has 80% marketshare and we have <20% ... I am convinced we have to use Windows-this is the one thing they don't have..." -Former Microsoft Vice President James Allchin in an internal memo "I think a lot." -Bill Gates "What Microsoft is doing is patently illegal. Think about it. If you want to build computers, you've got to ask Bill's permission. If Bill wanted to triple the price on Windows, what would you do? You'd pay, you wouldn't have any choice." "In the future, Microsoft wants Windows to run everything, from PCs to phones to cars to appliances. This is a terrifying prospect. If it happens, I'd be far more afraid that machinery everywhere would grind to a halt, planes would fall out of the sky, and civilization would crumble as a result of crummy embedded Windows design than any Y2K problem." -Paul Somerson, PC Computing "One World, One Web, One Program." -Advertisement for Internet Explorer
"Take away their operating system monopoly and Microsoft is a bunch of clueless thugs without an original idea in their heads. The 'real story' is how they do so little with so much and the relentlessly negative impact they've had on personal computing. While Bill-ionaire Gates was building a monument to his overblown ego, Jim Clark - for 10% of what Gates spent on his house! - turned the Internet into the hottest thing in computing. Gates and company slept through that one and the notion that they are particularly smart or plugged in is patently absurd." "I think the most thoughtful feature in Windows is the blue screen. Such a nice, soothing color, just when I need soothing the most. Now if only it could play that mellow newage startup music during hard hangs." -Unknown "When I want to do something mindless to relax, I install windows 95." "Ultimately, positive action to rein in Microsoft (and others, if need be) will be taken when the general public realizes they're being had; that as a society we're being forced to pay huge costs in lost productivity due to the unnecessary difficulty of using computers; and when the basically amoral and ruthless character of Microsoft's leadership is graphically revealed." "Bill Gates says banks are dinosaurs, well, some dinosaurs run real fast and bite the hell out of you." -Unknown "It is Microsoft's corporate practice to pressure other firms to halt software development that either shows the potential to weaken the applications barrier to entry or competes directly with Microsoft's most cherished software products." "Gates is trying to make sure that he has a proprietary position in controlling the tools that allow you and me to access information. And that's profitable by definition. How would you like to own the printing press?" "Bill [Gates] is just smarter than everyone else. There are probably more smart people per square foot right here than anywhere else in the world, but Bill is just smarter." -Executive Microsoft VP Mike Maples in The New Yorker, 01-10-94
"How many Win95 bugs did Microsoft admit to fixing in Win98? Over 3,000? What kind of amateur-hour design and testing process lets 3,000 bugs slip through?" "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." "The number of error messages we put in front of people is a tragedy."
"Once you've locked in a huge user base - DOS, Windows, whatever - you have to keep the technology backward-compatable. That slows you down in terms of innovation. It's like Napoleon trying to take Moscow: The further you go, the longer the supply lines get. A fast-moving start-up with a new technology doesn't have to worry. For Microsoft the problem gets worse every day." "When people understand what Microsoft is up to, they're outraged." "Anyone who doesn't fear Microsoft is a fool." -3Com CEO Eric Benhamou "Microsoft allowed us to [remove Internet Explorer from Windows] 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." "Hey, is it the tradition here to give Bill the finger when you go through these doors?" -Open Source advocate Richard Stallman to a student outside Stanford's Bill Gates Building
"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." "Asked how small software companies could compete on products that Microsoft wants to fold into Windows, [Microsoft COO 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.'" -Newsweek, March 1998 "This really isn't that hard. If you're going to kill someone there isn't much reason to get all worked up about it and angry -- you just pull the trigger. Angry discussions before hand are a waste of time. We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger." -Former Microsoft VP James Allchin in a 09-9-91 e-mail (as revealed in Caldera v. Microsoft) "Like any dictatorship, when things start to get tough Microsoft is going to discover that it has lots of allies, but very few friends." -Dan Gillmor, San Jose Mercury Columnist "I don't think 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." -Chasm Group President Geoffrey Moore "Winning Internet browser share is a very, very important goal for us." -Bill Gates "We are going to cut off their air supply. Everything they're selling, we're going to give away for free." -Paul Maritz, former Microsoft Vice President, referring to Netscape "Technically, Windows is an 'operating system,' which means that it supplies your computer with the basic commands that it needs to suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, stop operating." -Pulitzer Prize-winning Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry "The period since 1996 has witnessed a large increase in the usage of Microsoft's browsing technologies and a concomitant decline in Navigator's share. ... The relative shares would not have changed nearly as much as they did, however, had Microsoft not devoted its monopoly profits to precisely that end." "You'll read that Bill Gates envisioned it all, which is a crock. He didn't envision any of it. Nobody did." "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." -Knight-Ridder New Media President Bob Ingle "It's possible, you can never know, that the universe exists only for me. If so, it's going quite well I must admit." -Bill Gates "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." -John C. Dvorak, PC Magazine "We have increased our prices over the last 10 years [while] other component prices have come down and continue to come down." -Microsoft Senior VP Joachim Kempin
"The Microsoft corporate culture can be broken down into four key parts: a tremendous work ethic; Bill Gates is always right; an us-versus-them mentality; and Bill Gates is always right." -Michael Gartenberg, Gartner Group Vice President. "[Bill Gates] not only wants to win, but he wants to kill the competition. He wants to bury the wounded." -James Wallace, Seattle Post-Intelligencer "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." -Paul Somerson, PC Computing "The idea that people know what they want is wrong. They need to be pulled through the Web." -Former MSN Vice President Laura Jennings "It's like walking through the Vatican with the Pope." "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. ... 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." "In one piece of email people were suggesting that Office had to work equally well with all browsers and that we shouldn't force Office users to use our browser. This is wrong and I wanted to correct this." -Bill Gates, January 1997. "We had five or six major goals: Portability, reliability, extensibility, compatibility, performance." INTERVIEWER: "Do you think you achieved these goals?" "We certainly achieved extensibility and portability." "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." -Jesse Berst, ZDNet editor & columnist "Upgrading the operating system of a Windows personal computer is somewhat like ripping a house off its foundation and moving the structure to a new one that is almost -- but not quite -- the same size. ... The relocated house sits uneasily on this new foundation. You can still live there, but you never know when a wrong step will drop you through the floorboards." -Mike Langberg, San Jose Mercury Editor "Everybody in the communications business is paranoid of Microsoft, including me."-News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch "Self-serving. Boring. Wrong. He's not even looking ahead on the cover -- he's looking back to the days of over-priced, constantly-crashing, Wintellian PC monopolies, not forward to the days of universal communications, content, and computing (i.e. network-centric computing)."
"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.'" -Scott Rosenberg, Salon.com "...[Windows 98] must be a killer on shipments so that Netscape never gets a chance..." -Former Microsoft Vice President James Allchin in an internal memo "Their documents display a clear intent to monopolize, to prevent any competition from springing up. And they have used a variety of restrictive practices to prevent that kind of competition." -Judge Robert Bork, former US Supreme Court nominee "As Microsoft moves further and further from its core, it starts to run into competitors who are extremely good at what they do, know their domains a lot better than Microsoft, and are extremely proactive. Companies like Sun and IBM and Oracle don't just roll over and die." "Stop being paranoid. Gates is always whining about how any minute he can be out of business because things change so fast in the software business. The only companies put out of business in the software industry have been put out either by their own incompetence or by Microsoft. Give it a rest. I'm personally sick of listening to this one. In the early 1980s before Microsoft was public, Gates would go on and on about how he could always fall back on being a programmer if Microsoft went broke. Let's see, he's up to $50 billion in net worth. When does this thinking end? At this point it's pathological and unhealthy." -John C. Dvorak, PC Magazine "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." -Sybase Chairman Mitchell Kertzman "Microsoft is banking on Windows 2000 to be a Trojan Horse - they want to get this into companies and then start exploiting inter-relationships with the product. But I always say: beware of geeks bearing gifts." "Whenever I try to do serious work with any Microsoft OS, I constantly get EXCEPTIONS! It seems that exceptions are the rule with Microsoft." -Unknown "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." -Jerry Pournelle, Byte columnist "The internet is central to everything we are doing." -Bill Gates "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. ... Before 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?'" -Margie Wylie, C|Net "Faced with the prospect of rereading this book, I would rather have my brains ripped out by a plastic fork." "Instead of plug and play - in the Microsoft world you plug it in and play around with it for a few weeks..." -Sun Microsystems President Scott McNealy "I have no idea what you're talking about when you say 'ask.'"
"Microsoft thinks innovation is putting stuff into software. We think innovation is taking stuff out." -Oracle Vice President Jeremy Burton "I have a nice perspective on what it means to be in charge of the most important project in the history of mankind." "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." -AT&T Chairman Robert Allen |
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-InfoWorld Editor Nicholas Petreley - December 20, 1999
