| Quote: | If you can't make it good, at least make it look good. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Comment: | Once we are familiar with this attitude, we know that "good looks" of Microsoft products do not necessarily reflect on the degree of attention spent on their functionality. |
| Quote: | If you don't know what you need Windows NT for, you don't need it. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Comment: | At last, something we agree on. |
| Quote: | Strangely, after the court of appeals decision [denying public access to the depositions], [Mr. Gates] suddenly became available for tomorrow morning. |
| By: | David Boies, Special trial counsel for the DOJ |
| Quote: | All modern computer operating systems include integrated Web browsing. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Quote: | Microsoft shall, within fifteen (15) days of this order, notify its customers of this order and the corrective steps to be taken. Such notice shall expressly indicate that the court has preliminarily found that Microsoft has violated its licensing agreement to Sun's Java Technology and that if a final judgment is entered consistent with the court's preliminary findings, Microsoft's keywords and compiler directives not contained in Sun's Java Language Specification (i.e. 'multicast,' 'delegate,' '@dll,' '@corn,' and 'security') may be prohibited from being included in any future Microsoft software development tool for Java. Such notice shall be prominently posted on Microsoft's website and included in the next quarterly-release of the Microsoft- Developer Network. |
| By: | Preliminary injunction against Microsoft |
| Quote: | To the extent that it is relevant, it demonstrates the truth of what the witnesses have been saying, which is that this is a market in which companies simply can not compete with Microsoft in areas where Microsoft is free to use its monopoly over the operating system to frustrate consumer choice. (..) [There's] a lot of evidence that what you see here is an exit strategy for Netscape. |
| By: | David Boies DOJ chief attorney |
| Quote: | The core of this trial is consumer choice and the premise is that consumers ought to make that decision, not Microsoft. Microsoft's argument that says Java would have died anyway is a little bit like saying if somebody shoots you they can defend [themselves] by saying you have cancer. |
| By: | David Boies lead trial attorney DOJ |
| Quote: | Note: Third-party, non-TrueType scalable font products that were supported by Windows 3.1 are not supported by Windows NT. These products include Adobe Type Manager (ATM), Bitstream Facelift, and Atech Publisher's PowerPak. |
| By: | MS developer documentation |
| Quote: | I was a little surprised they [Microsoft] didn't deal with the evidence presented yesterday. |
| By: | David Boies, DOJ lead attorney |
| Reference: | Microsoft: U.S. misinterprets evidence |
| Quote: | Gates has clearly won, the revolution is over, and the free-wheeling innovation in the software industry has ground to a halt. For me it's the Kingdom of the Dead. |
| By: | Mitch Kapor |
| Reference: | "Hard Drive", p. 375 |
| Date: | 1999-08-01 |
| Comment: | No date available for this quote, but probably around 1991. Context is discussion of initial FTC investigation of Microsoft and reactions from around the software inudstry. |
| Quote: | Bill [Gates] is not a nasty guy to compete with. I do know of instances where he used his influence, but who wouldn't? This isn't a race where there's a handicap. Bill doesn't go around carrying a 10-pound sack on his back. That's what some people think should happen. |
| By: | Gordon Eubanks Yes, it's the same Gordon Eubanks who testified for Microsoft in the DOJ anti-trust trial. His qualifications to speak on Bill Gates as a competitor are writing a competing BASIC language in the late 1970's. Later, he was CEO of Symantec, a software utilities vendor, but that was more a symbiotic relationship than a competitive one. |
| Reference: | "Hard Drive", p. 376 |
| Date: | 1999-08-03 |
| Comment: | No, Bill Gates doesn't go around with a 100-pound sack on his back. It's more like he goes around with a rocket blaster on his back (i.e. his monopoly in an essential facility, the dominant Windows operationg system) with which, of course, none of his competitors are equipped. |
| Quote: | "It was strange to see the richest man in the world come to talk with a software guy. He got tripped up in the conversation and was not making much sense. It's almost like there is something he wants to prove that he can't prove. I almost felt he was envious because he knew what I was showing was my design, and that everyone was saying it was great software. I think that hurt him more than if he lost his $12 billion." |
| By: | Philippe Kahn Founder and former CEO of Borland |
| Reference: | "Overdrive" by James Wallace, p. 273 |
| Date: | 1997-08-04 |
| Comment: | Philippe Kahn recounting the Windows95 launch event. |
| Quote: | Gates looks at everything as something that should be his. He acts in any way he can to make it his. It can be an idea, market share, or a contract. There is not an ounce of conscientiousness or compassion in him. The notion of fairness means nothing to him. The only thing he understands is leverage. |
| By: | Philippe Kahn |
| Reference: | "Overdrive", by James Wallace, p.36 |
| Date: | 1999-07-13 |
| Quote: | Our [customers] describe [sic; probably meant 'decide'] the negotiation process and decision process they go through in deciding which volume level and which form of license they choose. A minority choose per processor licenses. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | "The Microsoft File: The Secret Case AGainst Bill Gates", by Wendy Goldman Rohm, p. 146 |
| Date: | 1999-07-08 |
| Comment: | Gates neatly side-steps the fact that a per-processor license for DOS/Windows is substantially cheaper and more attractive than alternatives such as a per-copy license. Also, the "minority" that choose per-processor licenses happen to be the largest computer vendors. |
| Quote: | To me, Bill is the great white shark that looks at minnows with no more consciousness than we look at a plate of food. The shark has no soul. The shark knows no boundaries. All it has is an appetite. When the shark gets hungry, it thinks "I'm hungry", so it eats. |
| By: | Mitch Kertzman former CEO of Sybase, a Microsoft competitor in the database arena |
| Reference: | "The Plot to Get Bill Gates", p. 263 |
| Date: | 1999-07-21 |
| Quote: | You hid things even if it would blindside people you were working with. ... [Gates is a] Darwinian [who] doesn't look for win-win situations with others., but for ways to make others lose. Success is defined as flattening the competition. |
| By: | Rob Glaser Glaser, before starting Real Networks in 1993, was one of Bill Gates' trusted lieutenants. He speaks of negotiations with Microsoft's (perhaps prospective) partners. |
| Reference: | "The Plot to Get Bill Gates", p. 98n |
| Date: | 1999-07-21 |
| Quote: | There won't be anything we won't say to people to try and convince them that our way is the way to go. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | (on Microsoft marketing) |
| Comment: | Gates seems to be unaware that "saying anything" will harm the credibility of those who are unfettered by facts and logic. |
| Quote: | Based on the evidence before it at this time, the court finds that Bristol has clearly shown that it is indeed a competitor of Microsoft.(..) Bristol has thus shown a substantial likelihood that it will be able to prove antitrust injury at trial. (..) Moreover, there is ample evidence that Microsoft intended to harm Bristol with respect to limiting the effectiveness of its Wind/U product. |
| By: | Federal Judge Janet C. Hall |
| Reference: | 30 December ruling in Bristol-Microsoft case |
| Quote: | The Linux community may not be the most genteel group ever assembled, but when it's war its members start fighting. |
| By: | Mary Jo Foley |
| Reference: | 6 November 1998, ZDNet UK |
| Quote: | They bought DOS, they bought Windows - they stole Windows, excuse me; they bought PowerPoint, they bought Word, Excel, they bought WebTV, they bought their browser technology, they bought Hotmail, they bought a billion dollars of Comcast: they bought, they bought, they bought. What have they innovated? Goose egg. Now just let's make this innovative company innovative for the next five years without buying anything. That would be the simplest remedy. |
| By: | Scott McNealy CEO Sun MicroSystems |
| Reference: | Interview by The Register |
| Quote: | Gates went on to argue that Linux is the equivalent of the first Windows NT kernel, which he noted is about 4 per cent of NT. "It's an important 4 per cent, but if that's all we were delivering, our R&D budget would be dramatically less than it is," he said. The inference is, you see, that Linux can't hold a candle to NT because there's so much more built into NT than into Linux. |
| By: | Don Tennant |
| Reference: | found at ProComp |
| Quote: | Companies and individuals in rich countries will have to contribute technology and cash to kick-start a truly global Information Revolution. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | Titans Talk Tech: Bill G. and Michael D. |
| Quote: | Anything that accelerates broadband deployment in the home is good for consumers. |
| By: | Hank Vigil vice president of consumer strategy and partnerships, Microsoft |
| Reference: | ABC News: War of the Wires |
| Quote: | The ink is not yet dry on the letter of intent, and AOL already is making noises that it intends probably to keep IE as the default browser for its customers, and affirming how valuable the real estate on the Microsoft splash screen is. If AOL really wants to suck up to Microsoft's Salome, what greater gift can it offer than the head of John the Baptist on a platter? |
| By: | T. Guilbert |
| Reference: | am-info mailinglist, http://lists.essential.org/am-info/msg06932.html |
| Quote: | At bottom, the Open Source movement is an expression of the Western academic tradition, innovation and discovery through the free exchange of ideas. You rig that system at your peril. You have only to look at the stagnation of Soviet science and industry under a centralized autocratic system, versus the innovation that happened in our free markets, to see what fate you have in store for yourselves if you succeed. |
| By: | Tim O'Reilly |
| Reference: | An open letter to Microsoft |
| Quote: | Microsoft is too smart a company to sacrifice long-term vitality for short-term advantage. Instead of trying to crush Open Source, you should follow the lead of companies like O'Reilly, IBM and Silicon Graphics, who are supporting various Open Source communities while finding ways to build commercial added-value products on the open platforms these communities provid. |
| By: | Tim O'Reilly |
| Reference: | An open letter to Microsoft |
| Quote: | The collaborative, massively distributed development process behind the Internet and Open Source projects is not your enemy. It is your friend, the source of basic research that you can turn into your next generation of products. |
| By: | Tim O'Reilly |
| Reference: | An open letter to Microsoft |
| Quote: | If anything, I think your problem is with your witness, not with the way in which his testimony is being presented. |
| By: | Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson |
| Reference: | answering Microsoft's motion to prohibit the DOJ from using Gates' deposit as evidence by playing it |
| Quote: | On Feb 3, 1998, Mr. Jobs sent an email message to Mr. Gates expressing Apple's concerns about the threatening behavior of Microsoft's employees. On Feb 13, 1998, I had a lunch meeting in Cupertino with Don Bradford of Microsoft. The purpose of this meeting was to discuss the problems described in Mr. Jobs' message to Mr. Gates. At this meeting, Mr. Bradford conveyed the same proposal that Microsoft had presented in the past. Specifically, if Apple would abandon the playback segment of the business, Microsoft would be willing to endorse QuickTime as the solution for the authoring portion. Mr. Bradford told me that Mr. Gates thought that this would be a way to resolve our dispute. |
| By: | Avadis Tevanian vice president Apple |
| Reference: | antitrust case testimony |
| Quote: | While AOL viewed the Netscape and Microsoft browsers as comparable, distribution and promotion in the Windows operating systems was something that Netscape simply could not provide. |
| By: | David M. Colburn, AOL's senior vice president of busine |
| Reference: | AOL exec details choosing IE |
| Quote: | Because a large majority of the personal computers sold in this country include the Windows operating system, Microsoft was thus to achieve virtually costless distribution of MSN to almost every new computer user. |
| By: | David M. Colburn, AOL's senior vice president of busine |
| Reference: | AOL exec details choosing IE |
| Quote: | The bundling of MSN with Windows 95 and the inclusion of an MSN icon on the desktop created a sense in the marketplace that MSN's commercial success was inevitable. |
| By: | David M. Colburn, AOL's senior vice president of busine |
| Reference: | AOL exec details choosing IE |
| Quote: | The value of distribution through and promotion on the Windows desktop was something that Netscape could not provide. |
| By: | David M. Colburn, AOL's senior vice president of busine |
| Reference: | AOL exec details choosing IE |
| Quote: | As a result of the Microsoft agreement, AOL must and does strictly limit its distribution, promotion, and advertising of Netscape Navigator. Microsoft has sought to strictly enforce these restrictions, and has carefully monitored references to Navigator or Netscape on the AOL service. |
| By: | David M. Colburn, AOL's senior vice president of busine |
| Reference: | AOL exec details choosing IE |
| Quote: | AOL would not have been prepared to accept the restrictions on its distribution and promotion of Netscape Navigator had Microsoft not insisted on those restrictions as an element of the licensing agreement. |
| By: | David M. Colburn, AOL's senior vice president of busine |
| Reference: | AOL exec details choosing IE |
| Quote: | Netscape was saying, "We're not really interested. Our focus is not consumers, so we're not terribly interested in working with you." We lost another opportunity to take charge of another 10 to 12 million browsers. |
| By: | Ram Shriram, Netscape executive |
| Reference: | AOL exec details choosing IE |
| Quote: | 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. |
| By: | Scott McNealy |
| Reference: | AOL/Netscape Deal Not Linked To DOJ Case - Sun's McNealy |
| Comment: | This is a comment on Microsoft's claim that the DOJ's case has lost its driving reason by AOL's takeover of Netscape. |
| Quote: | 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. |
| By: | Scott McNealy |
| Reference: | AOL/Netscape Deal Not Linked To DOJ Case - Sun's McNealy |
| Comment: | Describing Microsoft's contention that if three of their competitors do bundle forces - none of them monopolists and together being about a quarter of the size of Microsoft - this changes the landscape of the industry. |
| Quote: | 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. |
| By: | Scott McNealy |
| Reference: | AOL/Netscape Deal Not Linked To DOJ Case - Sun's McNealy |
| Comment: | Describing Microsoft's contention that if three of their competitors do bundle forces - none of them monopolists and together being about a quarter of the size of Microsoft - this changes the landscape of the industry. |
| Quote: | 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. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | back of an old Digitalk Smalltalk/V PM manual, 1990 |
| Comment: | One wonders why Microsoft adopted "Visual Basic" instead of Smalltalk. |
| Quote: | We're giving away a pretty good browser as part of the operating system. How long can [Netscape] survive selling it? |
| By: | Steve Ballmer |
| Reference: | Barksdale's 3rd Mar. 1998 Senate Judiciary Comittee testimony |
| Quote: | There has certainly been a lot of free software out there for the last 20 years. The main thing that has held that back is that because it's free software there's no central point of control. So what you see with Linux, and other things, is you get proliferations of different versions and everybody can go into the source code, and everybody does. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | Book presentation plus interview in New York |
| Quote: | We put things into our system like systems management that's not that much fun for university developers. Linux doesn't have that stuff. It doesn't have the graphics interface. It doesn't have the rich set of device drivers. So certainly we think of it as a competitor in the student and hobbyist market. But I really don't think in the commercial market, we'll see it in any significant way. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | Book presentation plus interview in New York |
| Quote: | Gates argues that the choice we face today is between a future where innovation in high-technology markets is dictated by the government or the private sector. But the real choice is between a future where innovation is determined in a competitive marketplace or is dictated by Microsoft. The world is a vastly different place than it was in Senator John Sherman's day. One thing that has not changed is that companies that run afoul of the law seek to justify their behavior by arguing ''we're different.'' That argument is one Microsoft product that ought to crash before it loads. |
| By: | Dan Oliver chairman of the Federal Trade Commission from 1986-89 |
| Reference: | Boston Globe |
| Quote: | Leadership is important in all human endeavors, but Wind ows is bigger than any one person or even one company. Windows is an authentic industry phenomenon with thousands of software companies, millions of developers, dozens of high-volume, sophisticated [original equipment manufacturer] developers that are driving this forward. |
| By: | Ed Muth |
| Reference: | Business Week Interview |
| Quote: | Monopoly exists when a specific individual or enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it. |
| By: | Milton Friedman |
| Reference: | Capitalism and Freedom |
| Comment: | Microsoft has a full 100% monopoly on what they call the "Windows standard". |
| Quote: | 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. |
| By: | Milton Friedman |
| Reference: | Capitalism and Freedom |
| Quote: | 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. |
| By: | Milton Friedman |
| Reference: | Capitalism and Freedom |
| Quote: | The essence of a competitive market is its impersonal character. No one participant can determine the terms on which other participants shall have access to goods or jobs. All takes prices as given by the market and no individual can by himself have more than a negligible influence on price though all participants together determine price by the combined effect of their separate actions. |
| By: | Milton Friedman |
| Reference: | Capitalism and Freedom |
| Quote: | It is widely believed that politics and economics are separate and largely unconnected; that individual freedom is a political problem and material welfare and economical problem; and that any kind of political arrangements can be combined with any kind of economic arrangements. |
| By: | Milton Friedman |
| Reference: | Capitalism and Freedom |
| Quote: | We have been saying for some time that Windows NT Workstation is appropriate for [enterprise] users and Win 95 and Win 98 for home users. In general, if you're a customer who has Win 95 and you're debating which direction to go today, there's no question it should be to Windows Workstation 4.0. |
| By: | Craig Beilinson Windows product manager, Microsoft |
| Reference: | ComputerWorld |
| Quote: | Each of these business strategies is, from the analytical standpoint, the construction of a sphere of monopoly power. The purpose of advertising, of product differentiation, of market segmentation and price discrimination, and especially of technological change is to beat the competition. It is to create a fief, or an empire, where the competition cannot reach. It is to isolate oneself from the hypothetical brutality of textbook competition, from competition that forces price to marginal cost and eliminates economic profit. The point of the game, played in a bewildering variety of ways, is to defeat the rules of the competitive model. |
| By: | James K. Galbraith |
| Reference: | Created Unequal |
| Quote: | Ha-ha. There has been a history of free
software coming out of the university environments. The original
browser was a free product. There's a webserver called Apache there's a
free product. And in almost any category of software you find free
software.
Typical what we have with Linux is essential UNIX as it was defined twenty years ago. And people get a kick out of having the source code - gives the possibility to play around with that. What we're trying to do with Windows is solve a different kind of problem. We're trying to create a system that is much richer in terms of the graphics and system management. |
| By: | Bill Gates CEO Microsoft |
| Reference: | Danish National radio broadcast, 5 February 1999 |
| Quote: | Q: Why was that a concern? Gates: Because Intel was wasting its money by writing low quality software that created incompatibilities for users, and those negative experiences weren't helpful for any goal that Intel had. Q: Were they harmful to any goal that Microsoft had? Gates: Only in the sense of hurting PC popularity by creating negative user experiences. |
| By: | Chairman Gates |
| Reference: | deposit antitrust case |
| Quote: | I just said to them [Intel] that if they
would -- whatever software work they were doing that was intended to
help Windows, they should talk to us about it early on if they wanted
to have the highest probability that it would, in fact, achieve that
goal. And unfortunately, we never achieved that result; that is, they would do things related to Windows that [sic] without talking to us in advance, and then once they had done the work, there would be some incompatibilities between what they had done and Windows itself. |
| By: | Chairman Gates |
| Reference: | deposit antitrust case |
| Quote: | The government is trying to get extra witnesses by putting Bill's [videotaped] deposition on. |
| By: | Jim Cullinan |
| Reference: | DOJ ready for turn, may see Gates |
| Comment: | After badmouthing the competition, Microsoft
is now claiming that their own CEO and founder gives the same
impression as a videotape. Note that a videotape has no busy scheme like Mr. Gates. Apparently, the problem of making Mr. Gates available for the deposits had less to do with his busy scheme than with Microsoft's reluctance to show him answering difficult questions. |
| Quote: | [I]f you disclose any confidential issues in a non privileged context, you will be doing the Company a great disservice. All of the audit reports you have created so far would generally be discoverable in the US . . . and could be fertile ground for an astute litigator. |
| By: | Mike Brown CFO Microsoft |
| Reference: | e-mail to (afterwards fired) chief internal auditor Charles Pancerzewski after the latter reported i |
| Quote: | Our DOS gold mine is shrinking and our costs are soaring--primarily due to low prices, IBM share, and DR-DOS. I believe people underestimate the impact DR-DOS has had on us in terms of pricing. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | e-mail to Steve Ballmer |
| Quote: | I actually think tying the payment to their shipping IE is a great idea, though I would not do this formally. |
| By: | Cameron Myhrvold Microsoft |
| Reference: | E-mail to subordinate Geoff Hughes on supposedly non-IE related $500,000 UUNET Pipex deal |
| Quote: | To combat NSCP we have to have [sic] position the browser as 'going away' and do deeper integration on Windows. The stronger way to communicate this is to have a 'new release' of Windows and make a big deal out of it. We will thus position Memphis as 'Windows 98'. |
| By: | Paul Maritz senior vice president Microsoft |
| Reference: | Email to Microsoft executives, January 1997 |
| Quote: | I am convinced we have to use Windows - this is the one thing they [Netscape] don't have. [Windows 98] must be a simple upgrade, but most importantly it must be a killer on OEM shipments so that Netscape never gets a chance on these systems. |
| By: | James Allchin senior vice president Microsoft |
| Reference: | email to Paul Maritz discussing IE and Windows, January 2, 1997 [Government Exhibit 48] |
| Quote: | The SOFTWARE PRODUCT is licensed with the HARDWARE as a single integrated product. The SOFTWARE PRODUCT may only be used with the HARDWARE as set forth in this EULA. |
| By: | Microsoft |
| Reference: | End-User License Agreement |
| Quote: | I've had my whole group of guys - finance, marketing, product development - here around this table ... And we pore over [Netscape's] 10-K and financial statements. We know exactly where they make their money ... we're giving away a pretty good browser as part of the operating system. How long can they survive selling it? |
| By: | Steve Ballmer President Microsoft |
| Reference: | Forbes Magazine |
| Quote: | 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. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | Forword of ``OS/2 Programmer's Guide'' |
| Comment: | Aside from Mr. Gates role in not fulfilling the promises to IBM to support OS to the degree that one would expect from this statement, this surely reflects badly on Mr. Gates ability to foresee the future of computing. |
| Quote: | The industry is moving to a complete Intel architecture and Microsoft NT solution from server to client device. Microsoft's Win CE mobile computing platform, code-named Jupiter, and Intel's StrongArm processors will make significant inroads in the handheld and PDA markets. |
| By: | Martin Reynolds, Dataquest analyst |
| Reference: | Gartner group sees no threat to Wintel |
| Quote: | There are no significant threats to the Intel or Microsoft desktop PC franchises through 2003. |
| By: | Chris Goodhue, Gartner Group analyst |
| Reference: | Gartner group sees no threat to Wintel |
| Quote: | Gates has been busily criss-crossing the nation this week, just before the Justice Department's case goes to trial, set for Monday. He appeared publicly Tuesday in St. Louis and on Monday in Bloomington, Ind., and in Denver. He was scheduled to appear in Charlotte, N.C. later Wednesday. |
| By: | Associated Press |
| Reference: | Gates defense brings some hisses |
| Comment: | Apparently, Gates seeks to raise sufficient public support to annihilate the antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft. |
| Quote: | The threat to cancel Mac Office 97 is certainly the strongest bargaining point we have, as doing so will do a great deal of harm to Apple immediately. I also believe that Apple is taking this threat pretty seriously. |
| By: | Ben Waldman, Microsoft manager |
| Reference: | Gates deposition tape aired |
| Comment: | This was written in June 1997 to Chairman
Gates and other Microsoft executives. Mr. Gates forgot all about this
mail when asked about it in the deposit. Apparently, Microsoft was more willing to abandon those "millions of customers" on the Mac platform than they said a week before this statement was made public by the DOJ. |
| Quote: | [MS Office is]the biggest Apple carrot. |
| By: | Paul Maritz, senior vice president Microsoft |
| Reference: | Gates deposition tape aired |
| Comment: | Clearly, Microsoft is not interested in merely satisfying their customers on the Mac platform. |
| Quote: | The comparison between Gates and John D. Rockefeller reveals eerie parallels and demonstrates how the art of public relations has evolved over 80 years. Rockefeller passed out dimes on the street on advice of his PR firm; Gates passes out spare change (with inflation, millions of dollars) to politicians, appears on Oprah, and revels in expensively produced book tours. But no company - and no man - no matter how rich and powerful, is exempt from the law. At least John D. Rockefeller ultimately came to court to defend himself. Why won't Gates? |
| By: | Michael Pettit executive director ProComp |
| Reference: | Gates Fiddles While Defense Burns |
| Quote: | Number two is move Netscape out of the win32 client area. |
| By: | Paul Maritz, Microsoft's senior vice president for Cons |
| Reference: | Government throws heavy blows on day 6 |
| Comment: | This snippet was written to spell out company strategy to Chairman Bill Gates. It corroborates Netscape's contention that they were to be restricted to Windows 3.11 and non-Windows platforms. |
| Quote: | Apple needed to ensure that Microsoft would continue to provide MS Office for Mac or we were dead. They were threatening to abandon Mac. Trading card was making Internet Explorer default browser. |
| By: | Frank Anderson, CFO Apple |
| Reference: | Government throws heavy blows on day 6 |
| Comment: | Microsoft's defense consists of telling the
other conditions of the deal with Apple that were Microsoft's investing
$150 in non-voting Apple stock and a settlement of a long-standing feud
over patents Apple says were violated by Microsoft in Windows. Microsoft's present moves to retract product after product from the Apple platform show that Apple had good reason not to count on Microsoft's inclination to support Office on the Mac. Did Apple need something only Microsoft could give them? Yes. Did Apple have to give something in return that was aimed to hurt a competitor of Microsoft? Yes. No more is needed. |
| Quote: | To combat NSCP we have to have [sic] position the browser as 'going away' and do deeper integration on Windows. The stronger way to communicate this is to have a 'new release' of Windows and make a big deal out of it. We will thus position Memphis as 'Windows 98'." |
| By: | Paul Maritz, senior vice president Microsoft |
| Reference: | Government to show Gates tape |
| Comment: | This quote from a memo by a Microsoft vice president to other Microsoft executives in January 1997 is pretty damning as it shows that Microsoft's decision to integrate MSIE and Windows was really inspired by the desire to fight Netscape. Microsoft's claims that they made the decision as early as 1994 - supported only by vague phrases referring to "internet technology" that is to be included in Windows at a time Windows didn't even support tcp/ip (the basic internet networking protocol) - is severely damaged by this statement. And so is Microsoft's credibility. |
| Quote: | One smaller motivation which, in part, stems from altruism is Microsoft-bashing. |
| By: | Vinod Valloppillil works under Ed "Sheriff of Nottingham" Muth, a group product manager at Microsoft |
| Reference: | Halloween I |
| Date: | 1999-09-29 |
| Quote: | Because it owns the operating system, Microsoft is the essential utility of the information age. It acts as a kind of gatekeeper to the pipeline of computing innovation, sitting there and deciding whether to help some innovation or slow it down. |
| By: | James F. Moore, president of Geopartners Research Inc. |
| Reference: | How a giant software maker played the game of hardball |
| Quote: | If we had licensed our technology to Microsoft and stepped aside, the best we could have hoped for was becoming a company with sales of $100 million or so and hoping to be bought out by Microsoft. We didn't start Netscape for that. |
| By: | James Clark, founder Silicon Graphics Inc.,co-founder Netsca |
| Reference: | How a giant software maker played the game of hardball |
| Quote: | Microsoft's take-no-prisoners strategy backfired, all but inviting retaliation from competitors, the Government and even customers. (..Emphasizing that he was offering no legal judgment...) I think Microsoft could have achieved 90 percent of what it did without crossing the line as much as it did. |
| By: | David Yoffie, Harvard Business School |
| Reference: | How a giant software maker played the game of hardball |
| Quote: | Whenever you license technology to Microsoft, you have to understand it can someday build it itself, drop it into the operating system and put you out of that business. |
| By: | Douglas Colbeth, president of Spyglass |
| Reference: | How a giant software maker played the game of hardball |
| Quote: | We are totally dependent on tremendous relationships with key companies like Compaq. |
| By: | Bob Herbold, Chief Operation's Officer, Microsoft |
| Reference: | How a giant software maker played the game of hardball |
| Comment: | Microsoft's dependence is at best gradual as other companies are more than eager to take over Compaq's business. On the other hand, if Microsoft would retract the Windows license from Compaq, that company would be out of business per immediately. |
| Quote: | After we agreed to its Internet Explorer browser, Microsoft allowed us to be bundled on the Windows desktop. It was an example of Microsoft's pragmatic side. |
| By: | Stephen M. Case, CEO America Online |
| Reference: | How a giant software maker played the game of hardball |
| Comment: | Microsoft claims to set a "standard" for others. Unlike other standards there is only only party that delivers products according to this standard: Microsoft. Thus Microsoft controls the only standard-conformant desktop and has clearly used it to create market share in new markets. |
| Quote: | I guess that leaves us washing machines and toasters. |
| By: | Ruthann Quindlen, venture capitalist |
| Reference: | How a giant software maker played the game of hardball |
| Quote: | We're disheartened because Microsoft helped W3C develop the very standards that they've failed to implement in their browser. We're also dismayed to see Microsoft continue adding proprietary extensions to these standards when support for the essentials remains unfinished. |
| By: | George Olsen Web Standards Project |
| Reference: | http://www.32bitsonline.com/news.php3?news=news/199903/nb199903189&page=1 |
| Quote: | 24. Insofar as Blue Mountain can
ascertain, Microsoft's e-mail filter relegates e-mail greeting cards
sent from Blue Mountain's web site to a 'junk mail' folder for
immediate discard, rather than receipt by the user. 25. Not until late November, at the beginning of its peak holiday season, did Blue Mountain discover that these trial ('beta') versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5.0 and Outlook Express currently being released by Microsoft contained features that disrupted and blocked Blue Mountain's ability to provide its greeting cards to its customers. Upon learning that delivery of its cards was being blocked, Blue Mountain promptly complained both orally and in writing to Microsoft representatives, and demanded that Microsoft remedy the problem immediately. 26. A Microsoft representative, Mike Culver, informed Blue Mountain that the problem was caused by a 'bug' in Microsoft's junk mail filter. The Microsoft representative agreed that Blue Mountain greeting cards are not 'junk mail' and should not be sent to the 'junk' mailbox. He said Microsoft would fix the problem immediately. Microsoft still has not fixed this problem despite Blue Mountain's repeated complaints. Indeed, Mr. Culver recently told Blue Mountain that Microsoft would not fix the problem until its next release of Internet Explorer, an unspecified date in the future. |
| By: | Blue Mountain Complaint against Microsoft and WebTV |
| Reference: | http://www.bluemountain.com/home/bluemountain_vs_Microsoft.html |
| Quote: | Two years after you ship a product, no one will remember if you were two months late. Everyone will remember if you ship a bad product. |
| By: | Windows 2000 Marketing Manager Jim Ewel |
| Reference: | http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2224729-2,00.html |
| Quote: | It is a relief and a joy when I see a regiment of hackers digging in to hold the line, and I realize this city may survive - for now. But the dangers are greater each year, and now Microsoft has explicitly targeted our community. We can't take the future of freedom for granted. Don't take it for granted! If you want to keep your freedom, you must be prepared to defend it. |
| By: | Richard Stallman |
| Reference: | in: ''Open Sources - voices from the open source revolution'' |
| Quote: | I thanked Rose for all of his trips to Seattle and his willingness to distract a lot of time for the lawsuit. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | internal e-mail |
| Quote: | We do NOT want to ship the 'standard' with Windows because we want to make the native APIs more attractive. We want to evolve the standard APIs rapidly, and not have ISVs [independent software vendors] spending time on something that is cross-platform. Java standard server APIs are bad news for us. I veto any cooperation with this group unless someone comes and convinces me otherwise. |
| By: | Chairman Gates |
| Reference: | internal email |
| Quote: | Don't encourage new, cross-platform Java classes, especially don't help get great Win 32 implementations written/deployed. (..) Do encourage fragmentation of the Java classlib space. |
| By: | Ben Slivka Microsoft |
| Reference: | internal email |
| Quote: | It is ironic to me that in the United States, the bastion of capitalism, where people have given of their work lives and capital to create a huge industrial economy, we are now asked to surrender the very same factors of production-our labor and our capital-to develop software that will be open and free for all. I do see some qualified benefits to open software, but I wanted to get your views on the big picture before going any deeper. |
| By: | Michael Dertouzos |
| Reference: | Interview with Bill Gates |
| Quote: | [The new test] resolves once and for all any questions about the reliability of our evidence. |
| By: | Mark Murray Microsoft spokesperson |
| Reference: | Introducing the (as it later turned out) failed attempt to repeat the test presented in a forged vid |
| Quote: | Instead of providing copies of the materials identified, Microsoft has produced stripped-down versions that cannot be used or analyzed in an efficient manner. |
| By: | DOJ |
| Reference: | Justice Dept.: Microsoft should produce databases |
| Comment: | Apparently, Microsoft is once more invoking the January approach to "comply" with judge Jackson's order to unbundle MSIE. They only possibilities they offered either brougt the OS back several years or crippled it entirely. If they had used the "uninstall" option, which tells the user "Do you want to remove this program and all of its components?", the OS wouldn't have been crippled. Now who would have thought of that at Microsoft? |
| Quote: | We have cooperated 100 percent in the government investigation and we will continue to do whatever we can to assist because we think the facts are on our side. |
| By: | Mark Murray |
| Reference: | Justice Dept.: Microsoft should produce databases |
| Comment: | This is the stock Mark-Murray-100% statement that you find in just about every article where he serves as Microsoft spokesperson. In the present case, the DOJ went back to court as Microsoft refused to cooperate. |
| Quote: | As we discussed, in the spirit of
reinstating mutual cooperation and trust we would like to resolve the
above mentioned Notice of Intent to Terminate letter in as a quick and
mutually agreeable manner as possible. To accomplish this, Microsoft is requesting that Compaq replace the Microsoft Network and Internet Explorer icons on the Windows 95 desktop on all Compaq Presario machines. Specifically we are asking that these icons be put back on the Windows 95 desktop so they look and function exactly the same as how they were originally provided by Microsoft and/or Authorized Replicators. This means the icons should not be just Windows 95 shortcuts, since the functionality is different. In addition, the Microsoft Network and Internet Explorer icons and Internet Setup Wizard icon should also be put back into their original locations and functionality under the 'Start' button on Windows 95. If you are willing to give Microsoft a clear written assurance that the above will be implemented on all Compaq Presario machines within sixty (60) days of the date of this letter, Microsoft will withdraw its Notice of Intent to Terminate letter addressed to David Cabello and dated May 30, 1996 once such written assurance is received by Microsoft. |
| By: | Don Hardwick Microsoft Group Manager OEM Sales Division |
| Reference: | Letter to Celeste Dunn, Compaq Vice President Consumer Software Business Unit, 6 June 1996 |
| Quote: | It is always difficult to predict the economic impact of events, but should the DOJ or state Attorneys General seek to interfere with the launch of Windows 98, there are likely to be broad, negative consequences not just for Microsoft but for the entire PC industry. The impact would be felt by PC manufacturers, companies that develop software products (often called ISVs, or independent software vendors), companies that manufacture hardware peripheral devices supported by Windows 98 (such as digital cameras or digital video devices), resellers and retailers who sell computer and software products, value-added providers who provide service and support, and thousands of others whose success is tied to Windows. |
| By: | Greg Maffei, Chief financial officer, MSFT |
| Reference: | Letter to Wall Street |
| Comment: | Even the major media couldn't oversee that these claims rather contradict Microsoft's other claims that they exist in a very competitive market. Apparently, no other company offers anything that can be substituted for their products and dependence on them is widespread. |
| Quote: | 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. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | MacWEEK, 1/9/90 p. 23 |
| Quote: | 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 letters like N and T. |
| By: | Scott McNealy |
| Reference: | March 1998 Senate Judiciary Committee hearings |
| Comment: | This doesn't appear in his written testimony at the referenced URL -- apparently he made this rather witty analogy off-the-cuff. |
| Quote: | I feel we are much too smug in dealing with Novell. Perhaps they didn't hurt us in DOS yet -- but it's not because of product or their trying. It's because we already had the OEMs wrapped up. |
| By: | Jim Allchin Microsoft |
| Reference: | March 26, 1992 |
| Quote: | We are a very predictable company. What we did with Windows on the desktop, we're doing with Windows NT on the server. What we did with Office on the desktop, we're doing with BackOffice on the server. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: |
May 1997 Fortune interview
|
| Comment: | This appears on page 27 of the referenced document at the URL given above. |
| Quote: | Microsoft has to innovate beyond standard protocols. We would lose differentiation if we did not, and we would not be able to solve problems that other people could solve if we stayed with standard protocols.Our strategy is to find ways to solve customer problems that are not being solved by commodity protocols. |
| By: | Ed Muth, enterprise group manager Microsoft |
| Reference: | Memo angers open source advocates |
| Comment: | So now it is official. Microsoft WILL NOT support open standards. |
| Quote: | (..) current PC technology is totally sufficient for most office tasks and consumers desires and (..) any performance bottleneck is not in today's PC's but in today's COM pipes. This in itself might slow down replacement cycles and life time shortening until we find true MIPS eating applications - a priority not only Intel should subscribe to. |
| By: | Joachim Kempin senior vice president for OEM sales, Microsoft |
| Reference: | Memo to Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Paul Maritz, December 16, 1997 |
| Quote: | We have increased our prices over the last 10 years [while] other component prices have come down and continue to come down. |
| By: | Joachim Kempin senior vice president, Microsoft |
| Reference: | Memo to Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Paul Maritz, December 16, 1997 |
| Quote: | Today's announcements underscore our continued belief in the Mac as a platform for applications and leading-edge Internet technologies. Microsoft has millions of customers who rely on Macintosh technology and they can be assured that Microsoft products for the Mac will continue to be available. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | Microsoft and Apple Affirm Commitment to Build Next Generation Software for Macintosh |
| Comment: | Well, look at Microsoft's dropping Mac support for Encarta and MFC somewhat over a year later. So much for Mr. Gates' "assurance". |
| Quote: | The danger is that Microsoft is using strategic monopolistic pricing in the education market, with the government's assistance, to turn our state university systems into private workforce training programs for Microsoft. |
| By: | Nathan Newman |
| Reference: | Microsoft Goes to College: The Education Software Market and Microsoft's Expanding Monopoly |
| Quote: | The answer, interestingly enough from Microsoft, is that software choices should not be left up to the marketplace and are better made collectively by government fiat. Instead of targeting individual students with discounts, Microsoft has declared that cost savings will come from, "Colleges and universities grappling with the issue of software standardization," in the recent words of Rebecca Needham, Microsoft's Education marketing manager. So the best solution is "working out custom agreements with institutions, like the University of Texas system." |
| By: | Nathan Newman |
| Reference: | Microsoft Goes to College: The Education Software Market and Microsoft's Expanding Monopoly |
| Quote: | If a company fails to demonstrate serious charity that is not directly connected to its core business, one can fairly suspect that "charitable" donations such as Microsoft's software gifts are more about marketing and illegal economic dumping than about civicness. Add in monopoly deals like the Indiana and Texas university systems and you have a pattern of aggressive product dumping that merits full investigation by all legal authorities. |
| By: | Nathan Newman |
| Reference: | Microsoft Goes to College: The Education Software Market and Microsoft's Expanding Monopoly |
| Quote: | You can speculate about what might happen, but not about any type of breakup. It's not on the radar screen. It's not something that anybody is suggesting. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | Microsoft Latin America Enterprise Solutions Conference '99 |
| Quote: | So what's going on in court is the government is learning about the technology business... and we have very little doubt that at the end of the day our whole approach to business will be held to be a fantastic thing and very beneficial to consumers. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | Microsoft Latin America Enterprise Solutions Conference '99 |
| Quote: | Politicians need to make sure that the right rules are in place governing who can see and use that information. [Privacy issues] haven't had the visibility they've deserved. They are really political questions. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | Microsoft Latin America Enterprise Solutions Conference '99 |
| Quote: | Windows 2000 is a superambitious product. We think we're getting close to finishing it. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | Microsoft Latin America Enterprise Solutions Conference '99 |
| Quote: | That kind of speculation is really inappropriate because the government has never stated any interest in anything of that kind [like breaking up Microsoft]. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | Microsoft Latin America Enterprise Solutions Conference '99 |
| Quote: | I actually don't know the status of the discussions with the government... I'm sure the lawyers will do their best to simplify the thing, but it's not worth speculating on. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | Microsoft Latin America Enterprise Solutions Conference '99 |
| Quote: | Academic research, while perhaps only an incidental target in Microsoft's court battle against Netscape, could be a victim in this major antitrust suit, according to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). The faculty organization fears that Microsoft's demand for research gathered by two professors could have a chilling effect on faculty research by ending researchers' ability to promise confidentiality to people they interview. It also could restrict future research, as faculty members may limit their areas of work to topics that are free from controversy. |
| By: | American Association of University Professors |
| Reference: | Microsoft May Net Academic Freedom in its Fishing Expedition |
| Comment: | Unfortunately, the professors represent the antitrust case of the DOJ vs Microsoft as a "court battle" of Microsoft against Netscape. |
| Quote: | I have been shown what you produced and it doesn't make any sense to be. It's gibberish. |
| By: | Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson |
| Reference: | Microsoft ordered to give DOJ access to databases; trial delayed |
| Comment: | Note that Microsoft spokesperson Mark Murray said of the same topic: "We have cooperated 100 percent in the government investigation and we will continue to do whatever we can to assist because we think the facts are on our side." From the judge's verdict we can derive that Microsoft did not everything it could do to assist and it did not cooperate 100 percent in the government investigation. Mr. Murray has misinformed the public about Microsoft's actions and this reflects negatively on his credibility. |
| Quote: | Efforts to demonize Bill Gates in the opening statement are emblematic [of the government's] approach. |
| By: | John L. Warden |
| Reference: | Microsoft refutes government's opening |
| Comment: | Here Mr. Warden uses a innovative definition that says that demonization means: attacking someone's credibility by indicating inconsistent statements and showing that someone was involved in certain decisions. |
| Quote: | Our core competence is building software and so we're not controlling any communications companies. We are just a software company. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | Microsoft's third annual Fortune 1000 CEO meeting |
| Quote: | The government is lying with statistics through this document. Microsoft's operating systems are still a very, very small percentage of the cost of a personal computer. |
| By: | Mark Murray |
| Reference: | Microsoft: Netscape a |
| Comment: | Economist Warren-Boulton concluded on the
basis of documents from Microsoft that there has been a "really
dramatic increase in the cost of the operating system relative to the
other components" Clearly, this doesn't necessarily conflict with the statement that "Microsoft's operating systems are a very small percentage of the cost of a personal computer" [I left some adjectives]. Therefore, Mr. Murray says that the government is "lying" without even going so far as to point out a misrepresentation. |
| Quote: | Microsoft hasn't denied consumer choice, it IS consumer choice. |
| By: | John L. Warden, Microsoft's lead attorney |
| Reference: | Microsoft: U.S. misinterprets evidence |
| Comment: | The second doesn't exclude the first, but the former can cause the latter. |
| Quote: | Netscape had what the government would consider a monopoly in the market for Internet browsers, until the great Satan, Microsoft, came along. |
| By: | John L. Warden, Microsoft's lead attorney |
| Reference: | Microsoft: U.S. misinterprets evidence |
| Comment: | Burn the straw men! |
| Quote: | These [exclusive] contracts [with OEM's and ISP's] were pro-competitive because they reduced Netscape's dominance. They gave consumers a choice. |
| By: | John L. Warden, Microsoft's lead attorney |
| Reference: | Microsoft: U.S. misinterprets evidence |
| Comment: | Mr. Warden should go back to junior high school and learn to count: 1 - 1 + 1 = 1, while 1 + 1 = 2. His enthousiasm about the regulatory measures that caused the first equation should be measured against the value of the second equation: 2 > 1. |
| Quote: | Isn't it a fact that the June 21, 1995, meeting was held for the purpose of creating something that could be called a record to be delivered to the Department of Justice to spur them on to action against Microsoft? |
| By: | John Warden, lead attorney Microsoft |
| Reference: | Microsoft: We were set up |
| Comment: | Microsoft's paranoia is going wild. |
| Quote: | 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. |
| By: | Jim Allchin |
| Reference: | MS memos show execs keen on leveraging Windows strength |
| Comment: | This was written to Microsoft vice president Paul Maritz. |
| Quote: | We should dedicate a cross-group team to come up with ways to leverage Windows technically more. |
| By: | Jim Allchin, Microsoft |
| Reference: | MS memos show execs keen on leveraging Windows strength |
| Quote: | I do not feel we are going to win on our current path. We are not leveraging Windows from a marketing perspective and we are trying to copy Netscape and make IE into a platform. We do not use our strength -- which is that we have an installed base of Windows and we have a strong OEM shipment channel for Windows. |
| By: | Jim Allchin, Microsoft |
| Reference: | MS memos show execs keen on leveraging Windows strength |
| Comment: | This was written to Microsoft vice president Paul Maritz. |
| Quote: | I am convinced we have to use Windows -- this is the one thing they don't have. We have to be competitive with features, but we need something more -- Windows integration. |
| By: | Jim Allchin, Microsoft |
| Reference: | MS memos show execs keen on leveraging Windows strength |
| Comment: | This was written to vice-president Paul Maritz. |
| Quote: | If you agree that Windows is a huge asset, then it follows quickly that we are not investing sufficiently in finding ways to tie IE and Windows together. |
| By: | Jim Allchin, Microsoft |
| Reference: | MS memos show execs keen on leveraging Windows strength |
| Comment: | This was written to Microsoft vice-president Paul Maritz. |
| Quote: | The major reason for this is: to combat [Netscape] we have to position the browser as "going away" and do deeper integration on Windows. The stronger way to communicate this is to have a "new release" of Windows and make a big deal out of it. We will thus position Memphis as "Windows 98". IE integration will be the most compelling feature of Memphis. |
| By: | Paul Maritz, vice-president Microsoft |
| Reference: | MS memos show execs keen on leveraging Windows strength |
| Comment: | This was written in reply to a series of suggestions by Jim Allchin. |
| Quote: | A great lie! An unbelievable lie. Did anyone utter those words? Our e-mail, every piece of it, has been searched. I wish we had found somebody who said it. Then we could take him out, and we could hang the guy, then we'd say OK, mea culpa. We found him - the guy who said, `I'll cut off your oxygen.''' |
| By: | Bill Gates refers to the "We're going to cut off their [Netscape's] air supply. Everything they're selling, we're giving away for free." quote attributed to Microsoft VP Paul Maritz in the US DOJ's evidence at the anti-trust trial |
| Reference: | New Yorker magazine interview |
| Date: | 1999-08-08 |
| Comment: | Gates is being his usual misleading self when he implies that this quote could be found in Microsoft's e-mail. In fact, it came out in the federal and states anti-trust trial that Intel exec. Steven McGeady admitted recounting the quote in question to the New York Times. The New York Times, in turn, published Maritz's quote and cited an "anonymous source." The quote did not come from Microsoft's e-mail. |
| Quote: | 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. |
| By: | Scott McNealy CEO Sun |
| Reference: | Newbytes 24 Nov 1998 |
| Quote: | Mindcraft takes a full-service approach
to satisfying your testing needs. We work with you to define the goals
you want to achieve via testing. Then, we take over the management and
execution of the testing project from the test plan development to the
final report. (...) We report the results back to you in a form that satisfies the test goals. (...) Mindcraft does performance testing in its own test lab or in yours, depending on the requirements of the project. |
| By: | MindCraft |
| Reference: | Our Services |
| Quote: | Microsoft did sponsor the benchmark testing and the NT server was better tuned than the Linux one. Having said that, I must say that I still trust the Windows NT server would have outperformed the Linux one. |
| By: | Ian Hatton Windows platform manager, Microsoft South-Africa |
| Reference: | Outrage at Microsoft's independent, yet sponsored NT 4.0/Linux research |
| Quote: | So then we underwent a fairly exhaustive review of the options both in terms of the technology review as well as a broader understanding of the business implications, and it was as we walked down that process and learned more about the Microsoft technology strategy, it was clear to us that the modular architecture would make sense in terms of building it seamlessly into AOL. |
| By: | Steve Case, CEO AOL |
| Reference: | PARTIAL MICROSOFT RESPONSE TO WRITTEN TESTIMONY BY GOVERNMENT WITNESS DAVID M. COLBURN |
| Comment: | Microsoft derives from this statement that AOL chose MSIE for its technological merits. However, we do read that also a "broader understanding of business implications" was at stake and saying that "we learned more about the Microsoft technology strategy" and the "modular architecture" may very well refer to the upcoming integration of MSIE in Windows, which effectively outcasts Netscape. |
| Quote: | Nail down the chickens. We're coming. |
| By: | Ed Muth Windows NT product manager |
| Reference: | PC Week interview |
| Quote: | The profit motive will end up ruining and tarnishing the altruism people use to promote this thing. |
| By: | James Allchin senior vice president Microsoft |
| Reference: | PC World: OK, Win 2000 Still Needs Polish |
| Quote: | Microsoft never asked me if it was OK to send in this number, and they never said it was being sent. They are apparently building a database that relates Ethernet adapter addresses to personal information. |
| By: | Robert M. Smith |
| Reference: | President Phar Lab Software |
| Quote: | Credibility hasn't been injured and doesn't matter in any event. |
| By: | John Warden chief trial attorney for Microsoft |
| Reference: | Press statement after last witness had been heard |
| Quote: | The moment you start to discuss factories, mines, mountains, or even political authority, as perfect examples of some eternal principle or other, you are not arguing, you are fighting. That eternal principle censors out all objections, isolates the issue from its background and its context, and sets going in you some strong emotion, appropriate enough to the principle, highly inappropriate to the docks, warehouses, and real estate. And having started in that mood you cannot stop. A real danger exists. To meet it you have to invoke more absolute principles in order to defend what is open to attack. Then you have to defend the defenses, erect buffers, and buffers for the buffers, until the whole affair is so scrambled that it seems less dangerous to fight than to keep on talking. |
| By: | Walter Lippmann |
| Reference: | Public Opinion, 1921 |
| Quote: | You shouldn't get overly paranoid thinking that Microsoft's a broad competitor and it's not possible to work with us. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | PUBLISHERS' CONVENTION April 1997 |
| Quote: | The government is not trying to destroy Microsoft, it's simply seeking to compel Microsoft to obey the law. It's quite revealing that Mr. Gates equates the two. |
| By: | government official |
| Reference: | quoted in the Washington Post |
| Quote: | This is a tiny, tiny part of a very long tape and it doesn't stand for anything more than things can happen with software. |
| By: | William Neukom senior vice-president of corporate affairs and law, Microsoft |
| Reference: | Reaction on false evidence introduced by Microsoft into the trial |
| Quote: | (From ClieNT Server NEWS - The Only Independent Observer of Microsoft, Windows NT and other Phenomena)Redmond Blunders In Name Game Again; Oh Brother, How Dumb Can You Get by Stuart ZipperThis is so absolutely delicious we can't stop chuckling. Microsoft forgot to do its homework when it decided on the name Windows 2000 for what was originally going to be NT 5.0 (see story inside). The name was trademarked two-and-a-half years ago by Robert Kerstein, the former cellular CFO of McCaw Cellular Corporation, on behalf of his Encyberpedia reference web site.Microsoft pulled the same stunt with Internet Explorer, going to market with the name despite the fact that it had already been trademarked by someone else. Redmond bought its way out of that one, setting a precedent that's left Kerstein pondering his options. It will also be recalled that Microsoft's choice of the name NT originally raised eyebrows at Northern Telecom which said it was their nickname.he news that it's done it again left Redmond's spokesmen stuttering. At press time, we were still waiting to hear back from Microsoft for an explanation of how it could happen, and just what Redmond plans to do about it. Kerstein says he's never been called by Microsoft.Surely somebody in the Redmond chain-of-command should have noticed... |
| By: | Stuart Zipper |
| Reference: | Redmond Blunders In Name Game Again; Oh Brother, How Dumb Can You Get |
| Comment: | I quote the article in its entirely, as its URL (a top level index page) is bound to be changed. |
| Quote: | If it [the timing of the donation] had anything to do with the antitrust case, we would have told someone |
| By: | Ms. Stonifer director William H. Gates Foundation |
| Reference: | Responding to the question if the timing of Gates' $3.3 billion gift to the foundations carrying his |
| Quote: | I regret the remark [at Microsoft's campus that the judge presiding over the Microsoft antitrust case is a second- or third rate judge], which was wrong. The case is at a sensitive point in the negotiations, and the last thing I want is to interfere with or impede the case. |
| By: | Senator Gorton Washington State |
| Reference: | Seattle Times: ``Gorton regrets criticizing Microsoft judge'' |
| Quote: | [As shown by '98Lite',] Windows 98 without Internet Explorer 4 is a working operation system and Internet Explorer 4.0 is not an vital part of Windows 98. |
| By: | Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols |
| Reference: | Sm@rt Reseller |
| Quote: | The merger of Digital and Compaq is a good thing for Microsoft. Customers look to Compaq for PCs and Digital for services. ... But a lot of times we had questions about Digital. Now customers can get the best of both worlds. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | speaking at: NationsBanc Montgomery Securities Technology Week Conference in San Francisco |
| Comment: | What we see at present is that Compaq is rapidly dismantling the part of Digital that competed with Microsoft. How well did the FTC look at the influence of Microsoft on Compaq when it considered whether the merger could take place? |
| Quote: | If Microsoft is permitted to crush the incipient threat to its PC operating system monopoly that independent browsers and cross-platform technologies pose, the adverse consequences for competition and innovation are likely to be substantial. They include the reinforcement of barriers to entry into the operating system market and the reduction of incentives to innovate by other firms, especially new technologies whose independent provision may be regarded as a substitute for, or threat to, the Windows operating system. |
| By: | Frederick R. Warren-Boulton |
| Reference: | testimony antitrust case |
| Quote: | In each case [browser, java, QuickTime, Intel's NSP], Microsoft was prepared to act to preclude the supplier of a potential platform-level software from succeeding in offering the platform, even if such actions did not ''make sense from a business standpoint.'' |
| By: | Franklin M. Fisher |
| Reference: | Testimony US vs Microsoft |
| Quote: | Nothing in our economic policy is so deeply ingrained, and so little reckoned with by economists, as our tendency to wait and see if things do not improve by themselves. |
| By: | John Kenneth Galbraith |
| Reference: | The Affluent Society |
| Quote: | Open standards are what create jobs-not regulation or the old, vertically integrated computer-industry model our competitors seek to resurrect. Open standards are the reason why PC sales have soared |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | The Economist, June 1998 |
| Quote: |
|
| By: | Ray Noorda |
| Reference: | The Microsoft File: The Secret Case Against Bill Gates, p. 49 |
| Date: | 1999-07-08 |
| Quote: | One person in Helsinki can quickly write the core of a sophisticated operating system. |
| By: | John Warden, lead attorney Microsoft |
| Reference: | The money's too good |
| Comment: | We are speaking of the efforts of hundreds of
people over a period of seven years on the kernel alone. If everything
that Microsoft says is part of the "OS", many more hundreds should be
added for utilities, the graphical toolkit, and the desktop. Clearly, Microsoft's judgment on technology is not to be trusted when stated in court. |
| Quote: | If the operating system is in fact a natural monopoly, then what could be better than having an operating system that nobody owns? |
| By: | James Love |
| Reference: | The people's revolution |
| Quote: | Interviewer Alex Vieux: Many entrepreneurs I talk to are afraid to partner with Microsoft because they are afraid that you will rip off their technology. If you were a 25-year-old entrepreneur today with a new software product, would you partner with Microsoft? Bill Gates: In terms of computer industry successes over the last several years, there's a pretty clear pattern. Look at who our partners have been: Intel -- look how well they have done; Compaq, Dell .. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | The red eye takes on Bill Gates again |
| Comment: | In a characteristic evasive move, Mr. Gates elaborates on the success of hardware companies that partnered with Microsoft, when asked about the possibilities of software companies to enter into partnership. |
| Quote: | (..)if you have a product that is less than revolutionary, then you have to decide whether or not it will end up being a feature in Windows. We've had incredible success in our acquisitions. Go back to when we bought PowerPoint, FoxPro, or more recently WebTV and Hotmail. This is certainly one path an entrepreneur can take. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | The red eye takes on Bill Gates again |
| Comment: | Note that in this article Mr. Gates fails to spell out any other path. Apparently, the possibilities of entrepreneurs are limited to a market where Microsoft is the single-buyer. That looks like a pretty bleak outlook to me. |
| Quote: | IBM's early business decisions, which grew out of its rush to get the PC to market, made it easy for other companies to build compatible machines. The architecture was for sale. The microprocessor chips from Intel and Microsoft's operating system were available to any startup. This openness was a powerful incentive for component builders, software developers and everbody else in the business. |
| By: | Chairman Gates |
| Reference: | The Road Ahead (2nd edition) |
| Quote: | I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. |
| By: | Adam Smith |
| Reference: | The Wealth of Nations (1776) |
| Comment: | When read in combination with Microsoft's repeated claims that they are working for the good of society, not for that of their shareholders, this quote of Mr. Smith is refreshing. |
| Quote: | Even for the next ten years, [DOS] will have a significant role to play. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | Timeline of Microcomputers (1990-1992) |
| Comment: | How right he is, since even with Windows '98,
we have all that DOS cruft embedded in for that sacred cow, backwards
compatibility. This also happens to reduce the efficiency and
reliability of the OS. |
| Quote: | I thanked [Compaq's John] Rose for all of his trips to Seattle and his willingness to distract a lot of time for the lawsuit. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | Trial exhibit ... |
| Comment: | John Rose claimed to have had contact with Microsoft only when Microsoft request him to testify at the trial. From Gates e-mail we glean that Mr. Rose did not speak truthfully. |
| Quote: | the number of developers working on improving Linux vastly exceeds the number of Microsoft developers working on Windows NT |
| By: | Paul Maritz Microsoft senior vice president of Systems |
| Reference: | trial testimony |
| Quote: | Any outcome to this lawsuit that would require Microsoft to allow computer manufacturers to pick and choose which parts of Windows they would like to install would destroy its most valuable feature: the compatibility across a wide range of hardware and software products made possible by the cohesive, well-defined operating system service it provides. Absent such compatibility, the development of new products for use with Windows will be slowed, costs will rise, computers built on Windows will generally be less useful, and demand for such computers will decline. |
| By: | Paul Maritz senior vice-president Microsoft |
| Reference: | trial testimony |
| Quote: | What we made it clear to Apple is we would not continue to do future versions of MacOffice. so, the issue here was our continuing to put effort into developing applications for an entity that was essentially trying to put us out of business. (..) What he [MS Chief Financial Officer Greg Maffei] told apple was that in the context of a patent suit, that we would be compelled to announce to the world that we would not be doing future versions of MacOffice. |
| By: | Paul Maritz senior vice-president Microsoft |
| Reference: | trial testimony |
| Quote: | Linux is a very complete and sophisticated operating system. And there is a lot of work being done to improve it in and of itself, particularly to make it easier to use and easier for people to set up on their personal computers. |
| By: | Paul Maritz senior vice-president of platforms and applications, Microsoft |
| Reference: | trial testimony, 28 Jan 1999 am session |
| Quote: | In a recent conversation, Microsoft's counsel asserted that these are sufficient to link together the tables within each database. However, the data supplied to us contains tables whose names do not appear in the documentation, and the documentation appears to list tables that were not included in the data we received. The documentation provided also identifies but does not otherwise define or describe the variables included in the tables. |
| By: | DOJ |
| Reference: | UNITED STATES' AND PLAINTIFF STATES' MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF RENEWED MOTION TO COMPEL MI |
| Comment: | It is becoming interesting to seek to distinguish a pattern in Microsoft's unwillingness to provide information, either to the public or to any party such as Caldera or the DOJ that has to return to the court to request that Microsoft is compelled to pass over the requested information that they are entitled to. |
| Quote: | No corporate PC manager, in fact no one outside of the Microsoft organization, has ever described a Web browser to me as operating system software or as part of Windows 95 or any other operating system. |
| By: | Glenn Weadock |
| Reference: | US vs. Microsoft testimony |
| Quote: | David Boies: So you don't remember
what you were thinking when you wrote it and you don't remember what
you meant when you wrote it; is that fair? Chairman Gates: As well as not remembering writing it. |
| By: | deposit antitrust case |
| Reference: | Video shown in court 16 Nov 1998 |
| Quote: | It just tells you how desperate Microsoft is for a competitor that they're holding up a software box produced by 100 guys in the hills of North Carolina. Who are they trying to kid? |
| By: | Robert Young CEO Redhat Software |
| Reference: | Washington Post |
| Quote: | Robert Young (CEO Redhat
Software): We are absolutely not a viable competitor at this time. We
have every intention of being one. But how long will it take?
Realistically, it will be 20 years. [Washington Post: Microsoft executives scoffed yesterday at Young's two-decade prediction.] Tod Nielsen (Manager Microsoft developer relations): I think that is ridiculously pessimistic. Paradigm shifts happen in our industry every six months, and any attempt to predict more than a few years into the future becomes very doubtful. |
| By: | Robert Young |
| Reference: | Washtington Post |
| Quote: | We're excited to be working with JavaSoft on such an important advance in the state of the arts, and WebTV is very excited to be the first licensee of PersonalJava. |
| By: | Phil Goldman, co-founder and senior vice-president WebTV |
| Reference: | WebTV drops plans for java support |
| Comment: | Of course, collaborating with Sun is a no-go no that Microsoft has acquired WebTV. Java is out and will return only when WebTV has remodelled its product on Microsoft's WinCE that is to contain a proprietary non-standard derivative of java. |
| Quote: | Most of our users don't know what an URL is. What people don't realize about WebTV is that the main characteristics that people buy it for are reliability and ease of use, not innovation. Innovation is something we have to slip in without compromising reliability and ease of use. |
| By: | Steve Perlman, co-founder and president WebTV |
| Reference: | WebTV drops plans for java support |
| Comment: | Ergo, they will adopt WinCE, but not PersonalJava. |
| Quote: | [The Department of Justice's antitrust case is] a return ofthe Luddites, reactionaries who went around smashing machines with sledgehammers. |
| By: | John Warden, lead trial attorney Microsoft |
| Reference: | What are the standards for Microsoft? |
| Comment: | Strange, the DOJ doesn't seem to be adverse to the technology of other party's. |
| Quote: | Test results like these help explain why Windows NT Server 4.0 has so much support. |
| By: | Microsoft |
| Reference: | Windows NT Server 4.0 faster, more scalable than Linux as a file and Web server, tests show |
| Quote: | 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. |
| By: | Jesse Berst |
| Reference: | ZDNet Anchordesk |
| Comment: | Indeed, Intel fights those delivering "plug-compatible" products by defining new and closed interfaces to keep them at bay. Furthermore, Intel is alleged to be not very pretty to small companies producing specialized chips that dependent on Intel. But then, these practices are familiar from Microsoft too, and ... Intel at least has plug-compatible competition, which Microsoft has not. |
| Quote: | You can stand on your head. I cannot accept your word anymore. You have lost your credibility. |
| By: | Judge Sporkin to Microsoft lawyer Richard Urowsky |
| Reference: | ``Overdrive'' by James Wallace, p. 253 |
| Quote: | Interviewer: Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer?Gates: No, the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system. |
| By: | Bill Gates |
| Reference: | ``Programmers at Work'' by Microsoft Press, interview with Bill |
| Comment: | Given their secrecy about sources, Microsoft is clearly an uninteresting organization for those who want to learn the trade of programming. If Mr. Gates is right, open source software holds more promise to skill and therefore career, than Microsoft does. |
