Free Bill Gates by Jonathan Gatlin Page A

personal enemies—occur in other fields, they are particularly common in the computer business, for several reasons. It hasbeen fifty years since ENIAC’s components could fill an entire railroad boxcar. Thanks to the microchip, computers in that time have become small enough so that a machine that can be held in one hand can do more calculations more quickly than ENIAC could. Yet, as anyone in the field will tell you, computers are still in their infancy. Thus computer businesses, whether they produce hardware, software, or both, have a vested interest in the kind of cross-fertilization that creates further new developments. The vast possibilities that still lie in the future certainly create intense competition, but they also require that competitors quite often cooperate with one another in order to move the entire industry to a higher level. It is doubtful, in fact, if there has ever been another field in which the phrase “good for the industry” has been used so often.
     
     
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    B ut don’t conclude that computer processing speed is out just because I don’t use the very fastest personal computer available. Keep in mind that by many measures a 480 notebook computer like mine outperforms an IBM mainframe computer of twenty years ago—and costs perhaps one-five thousandth as much.
    —B ILL G ATES , 1995
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    Microsoft itself, in spite of a dominance that drives both competitors and the government to worry about monopolistic practices, has created opportunities for dozens of other companies to develop specialized applications for its own products. Just as Microsoft was given an enormous push forward by its association with the then dominant IBM in the 1980s, so many smaller companies in the 1990s have been able to prosper, or indeed have come into being, because of the standards Microsoft has set. Rivals may launch lawsuits or push the government to take antitrust action, but they may also suddenly find themselves cooperating with Microsoft because it makes good business sense for everybody.
    Again and again Bill Gates has defended his company’s practices, sometimes testily, sometimes in lofty terms. When asked by Time whether Microsoft was trying to create a monopoly by embedding its Internet browser into Windows, he replied, “Any operating system without abrowser is going to be f——-out of business. Should we improve our product or go out of business.” In softer terms, he told Charlie Rose, “Well, what Microsoft does is we ship software products and we keep trying to improve them. And so in that sense, yes, we are relentless. We’re always hiring smart people. When you ship a great software product, there’s nothing tough about it. There’s nothing mean about it. People take it, put it in their computer and they decide if they like it and it’s word of mouth that drives that.”
     
     
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    W hen you’re lucky and successful, it’s important not to get complacent. Luck can turn sour, and customers demand a lot from the people and companies they make successful. Big mistakes are rarely tolerated. I hope to remain successful, but there are no guarantees.
    —B ILL G ATES , 1997
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    It is also important to recognize that saying bad things about Bill Gates does not mean that he’ll never work with you again. Ron Glaser, the former Microsoft executive who was instrumental, as a subsequent part-time consultant, in pushing Gates to recognize the importance of the Internet in 1994, said of his former boss in January of 1997, “He’s Darwinian. He doesn’t look for win-win situations with others, but for ways to make others lose. Success is defined as flattening the competition, not creating excellence.” While Glaser also said he admired Gates’s vision, such remarks might be expected to cause Gates to seek retribution, right? Wrong. Seven months later, Microsoft announced a significant but undisclosed investment in Glaser’s own company, which specializes in computer sound systems.