Photo Credit: Microsoft

ADVERTISING

“We spend our money creating products, not sponsoring golf tournaments.”

Forbes, February 28, 1994

“Word of mouth is the primary thing in our business.  And advertising is there to spur word-of-mouth, to get people really talking about ‘the latest thing.’”

Advertising Age, December 19, 1994

AGE

“You know, when I’m 50, I’ll be a lot more thoughtful and wise than I am now, and I’ll evaluate things on a different basis that I do right now.”

Computer Reseller News, November 16, 1992

AKERS, JOHN

“… it was the misfortune of John Akers to be running IBM when it became absolutely apparent that structural change had overtaken the company.  Akers was an outstanding chief executive, very professional.  If he had run IBM during a stable era, he would be lauded today.  Instead he abruptly stepped down in 1993, in part to signal how much his company had to change.  I admire the way he put his company’s interests ahead of his own.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 19, 1995

ALLEN, PAUL

“…I had pushed him pretty hard.  He wanted to go out and prove he could do his own thing.  I tried to convince him to do that within the context of Microsoft, but he decided to do it himself.”

Hard Drive
“Paul obviously made his decision about the investment, and Microsoft made its own decision about doing the interactive thing [with DreamWorks].  I think that’s going to work out super well.  Paul and I spend a lot of time together.”

Los Angeles Times, March 23, 1995

“I’m more aggressive and crazily competitive, the front man in running the business day-to-day, while Paul keeps us out front in research and development. …  He loves to play and work with the products.  He has other people working for him that deal with the day-to-day operations.”

Los Angeles Times, May 7, 1995

“He’s got a wide range of things that interest him.  Paul makes high-risk investments.  He’d be the first to say some will do well, others will not.  That’s a risk you take.”

Los Angeles Times, May 7, 1995

ALLIANCES

“My alliance, is Jim Allchin and Paul Leech.”

PC Week, July, 1991

“What happens in these alliances is that [they] often think they have a common enemy  … when it’s over, they will still be their own worst enemies.”

InformationWeek, July 1, 1991

“Every combination of A with B has not only been thought about, there’s been at least one meeting on it.  … It would be new for us to do a major acquisition.”

The New York Times, August 4, 1991

“Our relationships in the computer industry are very complex.  You’re friends with everybody and competitors with everybody out there.”

St. Petersburg Times, August 14, 1991

“In this industry everybody is always forming alliances.”

The New York Times, August 25, 1991

“Our success in the PC world wasn’t that we did everything.  We created a company that was dependent on partners, that is in an industry where somebody other than us would do great chips, somebody other than us would do great systems, somebody other than us would do distribution and integration and we took a narrow splice and focused on that.”

USA Today, July 18, 1994

“In this whole new world you may see companies buying each other.  the more important dynamic will be partnerships like the one you’re seeing here.”

The Wall Street Journal, May 17, 1995

ALTAIR, COMPUTER KIT

“I decided that I better but one.  I thought it was a better use of my money than losing a poker.”

Inc., January, 1982

APPLE COMPUTER

“Apple needs to focus.  John Agrees.  Now let’s see if he picks the right areas.”

Wall Street Journal, May 21, 1990

“When Apple said it wanted to license Windows to make it part of the Macintosh, we said why don’t you license Macintosh as an optional thing torn on Windows?  For proprietary reasons, they won’t give our customers that choice.  So there’s an asymmetry there.”

Business Week, April 10, 1995

APPLE COMPUTER, LAWSUIT

“We both have this rich neighbor named Xerox, and you broke in to steal the TV set and found I’d been there first, and you said, ‘Hey, that’s not fair!  I wanted to steal the TV set.”

Fortune, February, 8, 1993

“The result of that lawsuit would have been the elimination of Windows from the marketplace.  Needless to say that would have had a measureable impact on Microsoft.

Wall Street Journal, March 22, 1995

“Apple sued us to shut down Windows.  It would have destroyed our company.  And yet, despite their action against us, we are their most serious developer.  Does Microsoft know how to turn the other cheek, the answer is yeah, just look at the track record.”

Business Week, April 10, 1995

“Now, our attitude towards the Macintosh is pretty amazing, because for seven years, Apple had a lawsuit to prevent us from selling Windows, and it would have had a dramatic effect on Microsoft if they’d succeeded in that lawsuit, and throughout that entire time where it cost us tens of millions of dollars and would have shut us down, we continued to be the most committed developer for the Macintosh, and– you know, so no matter what Apple does, we’re committed to our Macintosh customers.  We’ve turned the other cheek, no matter what, and, you know, nothing that’s gone changes that in any way.”

All Things Considered (NPR), April 19, 1995

“You know our ‘look and feel’ dispute with Apple?  I’ve spent over $4 million so far on that one lawsuit!”

Part of a conversation recalled by GO founder Jerry Kaplan

Fortune, May 29, 1995

APPLICATIONS

“It’s no secret what we’re doing.  We do get our applications division to bet that our systems software guys will be successful.”

Infoworld, August 7, 1989

“You spend millions of dollars to write an application.  There better be a lot of people that want to buy that thing.  Say only 1 percent of the people who have computers are interested in your dental software.  You hit that one percent penetration, you’re only looking at something like five million machines.”

New York Times, August 25, 1991

“Five years ago, a lot of improvements in applications were just throwing features in.  Now we have to understand what people want to do, what makes it hard to do those things, and design the interface around those ideas.”

Profit, Summer, 1992

ASHTON-TATE

“I think the reason you don’t see them on any bestseller lists has nothing to do with size but rather certain things that come out in the reviews of the products.”

Infoworld, August 7, 1989

BALLMER, STEVE

“I have a high-bandwidth relation with Steve.”

The New York Times, February 4, 1992

BANDWIDTH

“We’ll have infinite bandwidth in a decade’s time.”

PC Magazine, October 11,1994

“Assume that the supply of bandwidth will continue to go up dramatically.

Forbes ASAP
“Just because bandwidth reduces some of the need for compression doesn’t mean bandwidth reduces the demand for cycles.”

Forbes ASAP, 1994

BANKS

“Banks are dinosaurs, they can be bypassed.”

The American Banker, January 9, 1995 from a Newsweek interview in July, 1994

“The way banks reach out to their customers will be changing.  The key theme [to competition between traditional banks and nonbanks such a Microsoft] is that customers are going to win in this environment.”

The Wall Street Journal, June 7, 1995

BASIC, MICROSOFT

“Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC.  Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving, and adding features to BASIC.”

Computer Notes, Altair Newsletter

“The important thing [isn’t the money, it ] is that because so many people use our language, we’ve changed the way they see the computer.”

Fortune, June 29, 1981

“We turned software into an independent industry [with Microsoft BASIC].”

Inc., January,  1982

“Our primary emphasis was on a fail-safe BASIC that would always indicate user error instead of crashing or producing the wrong result.  Because we knew our software was going to be put in ROM where it couldn’t be updated, we needed to be extremely careful about subtle bugs.  Our other major worry was that our simulator might be incorrect.  …  The night before Paul went to Albuquerque, I stayed up reviewing everything to make sure it would run on a real machine.  Paul wrote the bootstrap loader on the plane.  Everyone, including ourselves, was amazed when this BASIC worked the first time.  Many MITS employees who couldn’t comprehend what to do with an Altair saw the value of the computer for the first time.”

The Computer Entrepreneurs,

“BASIC has evolved over the years along with the rapid development of powerful personal computers.  BASIC’s market potential is still very strong, and it combination of power and popularity make it a pivotal member of our language family and an important element in our future applications strategy.”

Business Wire, July 25, 1989

“It wasn’t a question of whether I could write the program, but rather a question of whether I could squeeze it into 4K and make it super fast.  It was the coolest program I ever wrote.”

Hard Drive, James Wallace and Jim Erickson
BIG COMPANIES

“…if someone’s larger than Microsoft, it has no effect on me.”

PC Week, April 16, 1990
“I think huge structures like Japan’s big trading companies or Germany’s conglomerates will become extinct as dinosaurs.”

Macleans, August 30, 1993

“The companies we compete with are virtually all larger than us.  So we are kind of small, and we’ll do our best.”

The Seattle Times, May 6, 1995

“The only big companies that succeed will be those that obsolete their own products before somebody else does.”

Financial Times, December 31, 1994

BIOTECHNOLOGY

“Other than computers, biotechnology is changing the world more than anything else.  it has the potential to solve many of the world’s diseases.  [Biotechnology is] exciting, but it’s a hobby.

Computerworld, June 22, 1992

“Two technologies will profoundly alter our world views as we move into the 21st century –  computers and biotechnology.”

The Seattle Times, June 20, 1993

“This is the information age, and biological information is probably the most interesting information we are deciphering and trying to decide to change.  It’s all a question of how, not if.”

The Wall Street Journal, May 30, 1995

BOB, MICROSOFT

“I kept saying, ‘Is that clown always going to be there?”

“We are just at the beginning.  The coming revolution in consumer computing is social.”

Washington Post, February 26, 1995

“Bob has been widely praised but other people have said ‘that won’t do.’  We got the same reaction when we introduced the graphic interface.  People didn’t take to it overnight.  It’ll take time to catch on.  But it is a commitment we have made to the future.”

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, April 26, 1995

BUFFET, WARREN

“The guy thinks, I love people who just think.  The conventional wisdom, they don’t fall into it.”

Forbes, December, 1992

BUSINESS

“Business is easy.”

DEC Professional, May, 1992

“Take sales, take costs, and try to get this big positive number at the bottom.”Playboy, July 1994
“Business is about providing great things to customers, not being in the same position.”

Wall Street Journal, May 1, 1995
BUSINESS LUNCHES

“We’re not in the software business anymore–we’re in the lunch business.”

The Seattle Weekly, April 1995

BUYING SOFTWARE

“If somebody is confused about which version of a product to buy, then they should ask a friend who really likes personal computers what to buy.  Everybody should have a friend who really likes personal computers.”

CANNAVINO, JIM

‘That asshole Cannavino!  He never did get around to saying anything meaningful….I kept wanting to say to Cannavino, ‘We need a shorthand because these meetings are taking too long.  Every time you say ‘thirteen,’ I’ll know that what that means is that all you want to do is what the customer wants.  And for every one of these gibberish slogans, we can also get little numbers.  There are a lot of small integers available.  We’ll just tighten these meetings up.’”

Big Blues, Paul Carroll

CAREER ADVICE FOR BUDDING SOFTWARE ENTREPRENEURS

“What I would advise a college kid looking to become a software entrepreneur?  Learn the ropes at an established software company.  Look for your niche.  Line up venture capital.”

The Seattle Times,

“You should lear how to program.  Take math science and physics.”

The Ottawa Citizen, July 29, 1995

CAULFIELD, HOLDEN

“[Caulfield is] sort of about being able to see things in a way people don’t understand.  You have this model in your head of what’s going on out there, and adults are sort of thinking that this guy’s just a kid.”

The Ottawa Citizen, July 18, 1992

CD ROM

“The new papyrus.”

Electronics, April 7, 1986

“[CD ROM is] similar to our decision to go into a graphics interface.  It’s an enabling technology that will open up a wide range of applications.  It will force the industry to look at all kinds of software and see how the technology can enable those applications.”

PC Week, February 16, 1988

“To get [a] machine on every desk in every home, you need something compelling and enticing, something like TV, with high-quality sound, yet that has the interactivity and specificity of a computer.  CD-ROM is very important in that sense.”

PC Week, February 16, 1988
“[CD ROM is] a gift from the consumer industry.”

Which Computer?, July 1989

“The CD offers the potential for a quantum leap in the kinds of things a PC can do.  But we’re still in the ‘when is it going to happen’ stage.  With any new technology, there’s a kind of bootstrapping that has to take place before it catches on.”

Wall Street Journal, November 10, 1989

“The compact disk provides a super medium for delivering large amounts of information to computer users.”

Modern Office Technology, November 1989

“By 1995, people will say, ‘Of course my PC has a CD.  Yours doesn’t?’”

Business Week, 1994
CEO’S ROLE

“No doubt the company would do well without me at this point, but I like to think the Microsoft clock runs faster because of me.”

Fortune, June 18, 1990

“I set a direction and I make sure we hire good people.  We have 16,000 people, 4,000 of whom are in product development.  I can set the fundamental framework, but I am not building the products.  I get to contribute a few ideas.”

The Irish Times, October 21, 1994

CHANGE

“I’d get bored if things just stayed the same.”

Fortune, June 18, 1990

‘I like to think of myself as youthful and willing to challenge the way things have been done.”

Playboy, September, 1991

“Every company is going to have to avoid business as usual.”

Financial Times, December 31, 1994

“When a company’s competitive environment is changing, it’s very helpful if the leader gets up and says: “Let’s get ahead of this.  Let’s avoid denial  Let’s take some of our resources and get our arms around this.  Unfortunately, this happens too infrequently.”

Seattle Post Intelligencer, July 19, 1995”

“When change is inevitable, you must spot it, embrace it and make it work for you.”

The Post Intelligencer, July 19, 1995

CHILDREN

“Kids are a problem.  Babies are a subset.”

The Ottawa Citizen, July 18, 1992

CHILDREN’S SOFTWARE

“Making it so a kid loves to use this, that’s quite a challenge.  They watch TV all the time, so that’s competition, and kids use video games so they want this stuff to be quick response, graphical interface, lots of fun, hidden things going on you wouldn’t expect.”

St. Louis Post Dispatch, December 8, 1993

CHINESE WALLS

“We do not restrict the flow of information between our systems division and our applications division.  We’ve never said that we’re creating some type of wall.”

The Orlando Sentinel, July 19, 1994

“There is no Chinese Wall.  We don’t block input going ether direction.”

The Wall Street Journal, March 22, 1995

“We do not restrict the flow of information.  We do encourage divisions to communicate.”

Electronics, July 25, 1994

COLLEGE

“The pace in school, is a little bit different [than at Microsoft].”

Fortune, June 29, 1981

COMMUNICATIONS

“The phone lines are valuable, but they can’t carry enough data.  You’ll never do it on copper.  It requires optical fibers directly to the home.  I don’t see that happening in the next ten years.”

U S WEST magazine, Winter 1990

“People are really starting to see the PC as a communications tool.  Look at the explosion of electronic mail, the Internet and growth in on-line services.”

Financial Times, December 31, 1994

COMPETITION AND COMPETITORS

“Hey nobody has a guaranteed position in this business.  We’ve done some good work, but all of these products become obsolete so fast and the structure of the business as it broadens out I going to be different.”

Forbes, December 7, 1992

“We have a whole department in charge of F.U.D. [fear, uncertainty and doubt].”

Sarcastic comment, Business Week, March 1, 1993

“We rent our place in this industry.”

Fortune, January 16,

“It’s always nice when a competitor screws up.”

Big Blues, Paul Caroll
CONFRONTATION

“Lots of people take me on in discussing things and it’s very good, it’s a high-bandwidth thing.”

Infoworld, August 3, 1992

CONNIE CHUNG, OFFENSIVE INTERVIEWS

“I don’t have to take any more of this.”

Comment ending a CBS television interview

CONVERGENCE

“A lot of industries won’t be separate in the future.  What’s cable?  What’s the Post Office?  What’s Federal Express?  What’s a TV network?  These all have something to do with information-on-demand capabilities.”

Computerworld, June 22, 1992

COMMITMENT

“Great organizations demand a high level of commitment by the people involved.  That’s true in any endeavor.

Playboy, July, 1994

COMMUNICATIONS

“Connectivity is a growing requirement for all customers.”

LAN Times, August 1990

“The PC is a communications tool.”

Communications Week, October 17, 1994

“You could say that the big insight for the next ten years is this: What if digital communications were free?  The answer is that the way we learn, buy, socialize, do business,   will be very different, and that we hope software and software standards will be important.”

Fortune. February 16, 1995
“And for this new era, communications is what’s becoming cheap.  So you get to thinking, well, what if communications was free, what could people do?  Clearly, computing isn’t free.  But the price is closer to zero than it used to be.  So it’s just a way of helping people think about the future.”

Business Times, January 21, 1995

COMPANY NAMES

“These people fucked up, because the product gets well known but nobody knows who the company is.  We didn’t know which of our products were going to be successful, and we don’t want to be called MS-DOS, that’s kind of a strange name for a company, so we stuck to the name Microsoft.”

Marketing, February 18, 1993
COMPETITORS

“Hey, when a guy from Novell, a guy from Word Perfect, and a guy from Lotus get up in the morning who do they think about causing trouble for?”

Infoworld, August 7, 1989

“Novel has a commanding lead in networking.  Apple is known for better ease of use.  Lotus has captured the market’s imagination with Notes, and we have been slow to respond.”

Chicago Tribune, January 24, 1994

“Anyone who doesn’t think [the industry] is very competitive isn’t understanding the dynamics of this business.  If you don’t improve [any product] in a very dramatic way that customers want….[it] will be very obsolete very quickly whether it’s a spreadsheet, word processor or operating system.”

Computer Reseller News, November 15, 1993

“…I don’t think any company will be the best in every area.  There’s too much innovation.  Too much happening.”

Computerworld, November, 1993

“Unstoppable by IBM is not unstoppable.  Just because a specific company doesn’t stop you doesn’t mean that no one can stop you.”

The Financial Post, September 7, 1993

“Predatory?  That’s called competition.  I’m making money.  If you want to see predatory, look at the people who aren’t making money.”

The Dallas Morning News, November 28, 1992

COMPUTERS

“[Computers can] get rid of the boring part of jobs.”

Unknown article entitled “DOS capitalist.”
“[They’re] fun because with the computer you can see if you are good at it.  It is a feedback you don’t have in most things.”

The Sunday Telegraph, May 2, 1993

CONTENT

“Every newspaper, phone company, media company will do their part in publishing.  Thousands of new companies will play a role in that.”

The Ottawa Citizen, July 29, 1995

CONVERGENCE

[I am amazed at] the feeding frenzy or the Gold rush, let’s say, around digital convergence.”

The Associated Press, August 5, 1993

“[Digital convergence] is taking all the information  –  books, catalogs, shopping approaches, professional advice, art movies  –  taking those things in their digital form  –  ones and zeroes  –  and being able to provide them on demand on a device looking like a TV, a small device you carry around or what the PC will evolve into.”

St. Petersburg Times, December 14, 1994

CORPORATE ACCOUNTS

“We spend as much on our field group that works with corporate accounts as we do on development of software.”

Information Week, June 1, 1992

CREDO

“Does it work, is it fast, is it small, does it get done?”

The Ottawa Citizen, July 18, 1992

CRITICS

“It’s pleasing to me when people try and come up with stuff about how we’ve done things wrong and they come up with so little.  I’m glad we have so many ombudsmen and referees.”

USA Today, January 16, 1991

“There’s no truth to what they [critics] are saying.  And whenever someone asks me about this thing I say “Just get somebody who is willing to put their name in print with these lies, because they are just direct lies.’”

USA Today, March 15, 1991

“When a company is a successful as we are, there are always companies that take shots at us, competitors who take whatever opportunity they’re given to get in a dig.”

St. Petersburg Times, August 14, 1991

“This backlash is a natural result of success.”

Playboy, September, 1991

“It doesn’t surprise me that DOS and Windows are under attack, because they are the most profitable products in the computer world.”

Chicago Tribune, March 15, 1992

“You do have these people who begrudge us the success that we’ve had.”

Associated Press, April 19, 1992

“I’ve never criticized a person.  I have criticized ideas.  If I think something’s a waste of time or inappropriate I don’t wait to point it out.  I say it right away.  It’s real time.  So you might hear me say ‘That’s the dumbest idea I have ever heard’ many times during a meeting.”

Playboy, July, 1994

“There are a few competitors who will speak up anytime they can get a pulpit.  That’s not surprising.  I’m not aware of any criticism of any kind from 95% of software companies.”

Business Week, April 10, 1995

CULTURE, CORPORATE

“[At the product development group] is the level where the culture exists.  They have Friday afternoon get togethers, they have awards for who did a good job.”The Associated Press, April 19, 1992
“I’m the biggest single influence in the corporate culture here.”

Business Week, February 24, 1994

“Customers make their own decisions.  They don’t wait for someone to tell them what to do.”

InfoWorld, January 29, 1990

CUSTOMER SERVICE

“It is frankly embarrassing that people have to wait so long on the phone to talk to us about problems in our products.”

PC Week, June 24, 1991
Internal memo

DA VINCI, LEONARDO

“Don’t expect me to make other bids like this one [$30.8 million].

Wall Street Journal, July 3, 1995

“While it has been known by a number of different names in the nearly five centuries since it left Leonardo da Vinci’s studio, it first came to widespread public attention as the Codex Leicester.  Much of the important scholarly literature refers to it by this bame as well, and I feel strongly that for the sake of continuity the name of Codex Leicester should be restored.

Chicago Sun-Times, July 31, 1995

DEMOCRACY

“The truth is that we use representative democracy to get an above-average group to think through problems and make choices that, in the short term, might not be obvious- even if they are to everybody’s benefit over the long term.”

Playboy, July, 1994

DEVELOPMENT TOOLS

“Windows’ success is gated by the quality of its development tools, not necessarily by sales of word processors and spreadsheets.”

PC Week, November 5, 1990

DOS

“You can hardly say that we’re using some willingness to bleed to do what we’re doing.  Nor are there any businesses we’re in that are cash cow businesses.  I mean, DOS is a good business, but we’re having to reinvest that in new versions of OS/2, and that’s very expensive.”

Infoworld, August 7, 1989

“DOS is a phenomenon that’s beyond comparison.”

Datamation, May 1, 1990

“If you just took the cash cow business and did not factor in the development costs of NT and Cairo, yes, you’d get huge profitability.”

Business Week, March 1, 1993

DR-DOS

“In no way did the [proposed acquisition of Novell] have anything to do with [DR-DOS].

Washingtonian, December, 1993

DREAMWORKS

“It’s fair to say that financial constraints will not be the thing that holds us back.”

The Seattle Times

“This is an opportunity to break all the rules.”

Eastside Week,

“You need the bast talents in terms of making the computer sing and dance and you need great entertainment talent.  [DreamWorks] will really be a meeting of the two worlds.”

Los Angeles Times, March 23, 1995

“In terms of DreamWorks, our interactive work is focused on adventure games and kid’s storytelling.”

Daily Variety, May 17, 1995

EARLY ADOPTERS

“Businesses will be the first users of these high speed networks.  In every computing technology, business has been the first adopter–because the financial benefits of having this technology are much more provable.

Washington Software Association meeting speech , 1995

EDUCATION

“The only thing I can get depressed about is that education for 90% of people isn’t as good as it should be.”

The Financial Post, April 7, 1992

“[The information] revolution, too, will reach out to many places.  By improving the educational system, in fact, it creates an equality of opportunity.  And by reducing distance, it allows a country to use its human resources more effectively.  Really, it’s more the equaling of opportunities between countries.  So although it will happen first in developed countries, it will actually benefit developing countries even more.”

Business Times, January 21, 1995

EIGHTIES, THE

“In 1980 there were million computers all incompatible.  Today [1990] there are 40 million machines and the vast majority of them run on MS-DOS operating systems.”

Forbes, January 8, 1990

ELECTRONIC COMMERCE

“You’ll see us pursuing the electronic commerce opportunity vigorously.”

The New York Times, May 21, 1995

ELECTRONIC MAIL

“Electronic mail is an early harbinger of the Infosphere.  With the telephone we moved away from written communication, and now with E-mail we are back to where you have to be articulate and thoughtful about how you send these messages….”

The Independent, December 6, 1994

“I’ve got 5,000 messages stacked up [as a result of the publication of his e-mail address].

Business Week, February 21, 1994
“I did not change my E-mail address [after it was published in the New Yorker], and I hope I don’t have to.  Many of the messages I get are just sent out of curiosity, and those I don’t have time to respond to, I’m afraid.”

Fortune, May 30, 1994

ELLISON, LARRY

“Oracle’s not doing that much.  Larry’s hype has expanded to fill his ego.”

Business Week, May 15, 1995

EMOTIONS

“I don’t have any historical or emotional feelings that impact my blind dedication to our customers and our strategy.”

The Seattle Times, April 5, 1992

ENTREPRENEURS

“A Japanese entrepreneur is a rare bird.  So is a European one.”

The Financial Post, April 7, 1992

FAILURE

“I’m sure we’ll have failures,  Some will be visible, and some won’t.  But we can afford to make a few mistakes now, and we can’t afford not to try.  Because the scope of opportunity, and with shareholder’s expectations for us to keep sales and profits growing, everything’s about big horizon’s as Microsoft now.  We’re expected to tackle big horizons.  We love big horizons.”

Fortune, January 16, 1995

“Lots of ideas are going to be tried and many are going to fail.  You need to part of the ones that don’t.”

Chicago Tribune, October 24, 1993

“I have had a lot of failures, a lot of mess-ups.  But in financial terms everything I’ve done, I’ve done well.

Computer Weekly, August 20, 1992

It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure….Frankly, one of the challenges facing Microsoft is that many of its employees have not suffered much failure yet.  As a result, success may be taken for granted, and that is dangerous….  When you’re failing, you’re forced t be creative, to dig deep and think hard, night and day.  Every company needs people who have been through that.  Every company needs people who have made mistakes — and made the best of them.”

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 26, 1995

FEATURES

“Only features end users see are of benefit, okay?”

Data Based Advisor, February, 1993

FEYNMAN, RICHARD

“[He] was an incredible person.  The thing that’s singular about Feynman is that he thought everything through for himself.  He wanted everything to be totally clear in his own mind, and he was totally independent.  He also was a playful, happy guy who enjoyed what he was doing and brought that sense of intelligence to the goofy things that he’d do.”

Computerworld, June 22, 1992

“His book “Surely Your Joking, Mr. Feynman,” is a favorite of mine.  I have videotapes of physics lectures Feynman gave at Cornell decades ago.  They are the best lectures I’ve seen on any subject.  He shared his enthusiasm and clarity energetically and persuasively.  I was going to meet Feynman in 1988, but I didn’t get a chance before he passed away.  It’s an opportunity I’m sorry I missed.”

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 11, 1995

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION, INVESTIGATION

“The worst that could come of this is I could fall down on the steps of the FTC [building], hit my head, and kill myself.”

Business Week, February 24, 1992

“I feel confident that as these guys study the software industry, they’ll see how competitive it is.”

The Washington Post, March 15, 1992

“We very careful people.  They can dig into every area.”

The Washington Post, April 14, 1993

“The only issues that seem to be active …  have been promoted very heavily by Novell in order to enable them to do a better job of selling their attempted clone product.  The goal here is to get us to raise our prices  …  so that they can compete more effectively.”

Associated Press, July 30, 1993
“Sure, if you want to be a Communist about it, we could [we could give advance copies of software to Novell to insure computability].

Reportedly said at the FTC, National Review, January 24, 1994

“I did seem to think [giving advance copies to Novel would be] rather socialistic.”

Later comment in The National Review, January 24, 1994

“I was quoted once — I think the quote was misinterpreted — as answering the question “what’s the worse case in your dealings with the FTC? with, ‘Well, if I trip on steps when I’m walking in and break my head open, that’s the worse case’.  …  What I meant was that you multiply low-probability events by their probability.  That’s how you judge them.  You don’t just take this one-in-a-billion thing and spend everybody’s time elaborating on it.”

Playboy, July, 1994

FEEDBACK LOOPS

“Once one thing gets ahead, then everybody works on stuff for that and because people do that, then it gets ahead more.”

New York Times, August 25, 1991

FINANCIAL SOFTWARE

“We’ll try to energize and make happen the digital revolution in how people manage their financial lives.”

The New York Times, October 16, 1994

FORD, HENRY

“There are many lessons about the dangers of success, and Henry is one of them.”

Fortune

FOREIGN SALES

“It does help us to have great overseas subsidiaries, [and] that’s more a matter of quality of management than size.”

Infoworld, “Perspectives” column, August 7, 1989

FREE SPEECH

“I recognize the value of a free and open press and the importance of the public’s access to information.”

Wall Street Journal, April, 14, 1995

“You know it’s this damn free speech thing.  It’s well established that communications is valuable for the efficiency of marketplaces.”

The Columbus Dispatch, June 19, 1995

FUN

“It’s fun if I create a good software product.  Like we created Windows 3.0 and that was a lot of fun.”

The Seattle Times, Emmett Watson

“Actually I get much of my fun by being Paul [Allen’s] friend.  Actually, I didn’t know how much fun I’d have going to those Trail Blazer games with him.  …  I think you’re allowed to have some random facts in your head.”

The Seattle Times, Emmett Watson

“Hey, who’s going to do cool products.”

Newsweek, May 21, 1990
“The whole notion that you can create a company and have a lot of impact is fun.”

Playboy, September, 1991

“There is one thing that is fun — I look out there and see fun people to work with, who are learning a lot.  That’s cool and that feels good, ….

Hard Drive, Wallace and Erickson, 1992

“I’ve developed a new view that being successful is not a fun thing sometimes.  There is just a phenomenon where people don’t like a company o be as successful as ours.”

USA Today, March 25, 1991

FUTURE, THE

“No one will know for at least four to five years whether we’re making the right partnerships and technical choices.”

Computer Reseller News, November 15, 1993

“The notion that people who have been lucky enough to make a lot of money know something or are worth listening to is a risky proposition.”

Chicago Tribune, October 24, 1993

“I’ve said many times that no high-tech company has ever made the transition from one era to the next.  Defining eras is pretty complicated.  But somewhere in there is a demarcation between a PC era and an information highway era.  If we have an important position in that era like we did in the PC era, that would be a pretty phenomenal thing.

USA Today, July 18, 1994

“Our past, does not ensure our future.”

InformationWeek, May 22, 1995
GATES, MARY

“She was energetic, ambitious, a good role model.”

The Sunday Telegraph Limited, May 2, 1993

“As I was growing up, my mom was the head of allocations for the local United Way.  I saw the tough trade-offs she had to make to make sure the money was used in absolutely the right way.  I was fascinated by the whole process.”

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, April 27, 1995

GATSBY, THE GREAT

“There is this whole naive optimism to Gatsby.  There is the part where he looks across the bay and sees the moonlight and it says: ‘He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.’”

The Sunday Telegraph, May 2, 1993

GENIUS

“The notion that you can isolate the top of the top, it gets very subjective, very fast.”

Wall Street Journal, May 24, 1993

GERSTNER, LOU

“I feel sorry for Lou.  We’ll all armchair the guy to death.”

Computerworld, May 24, 1993

GOALS

“If I were a guy who just wanted to win, I would have already moved on to another arena.  If I’d had some set idea of a finish line, don’t you think I would have crossed it years ago?”

Playboy, July 1994

“We still have lots of frontiers to conquer.”

Computing Canada, December, 1994

“It’s easy to lose focus on the future, because you don’t pay the price of long-term mistakes for a long time.  A company should have short-term goals, of course.  But long term goals and strategies are essential to long-term success.”

Seattle Post Intelligencer, July 19, 1995

GOLDMAN SACHS

“Well, they didn’t spill their food and they seemed like nice guys.  I guess we should go with them [as IPO underwriters].

Hard Drive

GOSSIP, INDUSTRY

“This is an industry where everyone talks to everyone.  All this speculation is fun stuff.  We’ll see what comes out of it.”

PC Week, June 17, 1991

GRAPHICS

“What the new graphics technology represents is a revolution in user interface.  The bottom line is that graphics are going to be a standard part of all computers.”

May 2, 1983

“We see the GUI as allowing people to get a lot more organization value out of PCs.”

Software Magazine, September, 1991

“Over the next few years three-dimensional graphics will transform the face of popular computing….Three-dimensional graphics will make computers more useful, entertaining and natural because the images that computers will convey will more closely approximate the real world.”

Seattle-Post-Intelligencer, May 24, 1995

HAPPINESS

“The answer to your oft-repeated question, “Are you happy?’ is YES, I am happy….”

Letter to Pam Edstrom, Microsoft Public Relations Consultant

“When I feel good at the end of the day, it’s because I find a product group that is doing better than I expected, or because I contributed a good idea that ends up in a product.”

Fortune, June 18, 1990

“The thing I enjoy most is spending time at Microsoft on great products.”

USA Today, July 18, 1994

HARDWARE COMPANIES

“We don’t invest in hardware companies.”

Financial Post, September 7, 1993

HIGH SCHOOL

“I lived in the computer room the summer we rewrote the class schedule system, and I got $4,200 plus all the computer time I could use.”

Electronics, April 21, 1981

HIGH STANDARDS

“All CEOs of companies with anywhere near the success record we have end up with [the reputation of being demanding].  I expect a lot, and the guys who work directly for me know that.”

Infoworld, August 7, 1989

HIRING

“I’ve hired all these smart guys; I wouldn’t have known they were smart guys if I wasn’t technical myself and I couldn’t keep them coordinated and tell them ‘no, don’t worry about that, just focus on this’, if I wasn’t technical.  But when it really comes down to the work, it’s their work.

PC User, October 25, 1989

“There are two levers in our business — head count and advertising.  Advertising expense you can change very easily, and you can make a mistake, it’s easy to correct.  With head count you have to be more conservative.  Once you allow managers to think that it takes 100 people to do something when it should be 20, that’s extremely hard to reverse.”

Fortune, June 18, 1990
“You can’t just put more people onto a development project to get it done faster.  You’ve got to pick a few people and really trust them   In programming, smallness is goodness.”

The New York Times, August 25, 1991

“It’s hard to predict, but in 10 years I think we’ll be double the size we are now without adding any more people.”

The Financial Post, April 7, 1992
‘There’s definitely still this attitude that if you get a few smart people together we can do anything.  We’ve never used management consultants.  We keep hiring smart people.”

The Associated Press, April 19, 1992

“In the end it’s really hard to separate out an individual’s role in an organization.  But in the end it comes down to what people I’ve hired.”

Marketing, February 18, 1993

“[I look for] ambition, IQ, technical expertise and business judgment.”

Gates, Manes and Andrews

“At my company, for example, we tend to hire people with potential over people with experience because potential is more valuable in the long run.  If employees threaten to quit if they don’t get a raise or promotion, we usually let them leave even though it creates short-term problems.  In the long run, the company is better off with consistent employment policies.”

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 19, 1995

HOLLYWOOD

“We spend a fair amount of time now down in Hollywood, which is kind of a new thing
for us.  There’s no doubt we could bomb.  I could take this, say $50 million a year and it could all be wasted.  That’s the name of the game.  But you know I’m the optimist, I’m the one who’s spending all the money — part of my money.”

The Associated Press, August 5, 1993

IBM

“They showed us that we were three months behind [on the IBM PC] before we started.”

InfoWorld, August 29, 1983

“I guess there was a kind of an anticlimax when I got a form letter from IBM a week after we’d finished the thing, which said, “Dear Vendor: You’ve done a fine job.”  But they’ve apologized an appropriate number of times for that.”

The Computer Entrepreneurs,

“We’ve changed how we measure quality, how we schedule projects, our security requirements and a lot of other things [because of IBM].”

Newsweek, July 11, 1983

“The IBM PC project was a super-exciting, fun project.  We were given, even for a small company, an incredible amount of latitude in changing how things got done as the project progressed….  We were the only vendor that understood what the project was about.  Even up to the announcement, most vendors were kept in the dark about the general scope and the general push of things.  So we enjoyed a really unique relationship,”

PC Magazine,

“Our relationship with IBM is hard to characterize.  There are elements of disagreement.”

Newsweek, June 24, 1991

“We will not attack IBM as a company and even our public attacks on OS/2 will be very professional.”

PC Week, June 24, 1991

“There is no company that has worked harder to have a unified strategy with IBM than this company.  But we seem to be going in different directions.”

United Press International, August 5, 1991

“IBM pays me an awful lot of money, so we do have a good relationship.  We just disagree about Windows, that’s all.  We’re continuing to work with IBM….”

PC User, September 11, 1991

“There’s got to be a way to configure this thing so it’s vibrant and profitable.”

Wall Street Journal, January 27, 1993
“Who’s there to fill the vacuum [left by IBM]?  Microsoft more than anyone else.”

Business Week, March 1, 1993

“IBM has a lot of opportunities now that people’s expectations have come down.  They have an opportunity to surprise people on the upside.  The have some very good work going on.”

The Financial Post, September 7, 1993

“The closed, account oriented strategy that IBM pursued so successfully is not a model to use going forward.  What business to split off is a very tough question.”

Computerworld, May 24, 1993

“We would have been glad at sometime to sell IBM part of the company.  We even proposed to IBM that they but part of Microsoft– I think it was 30%– and they turned us down.  At every stage of our relationship, they had project groups doing work to wipe us out.  We stayed ahead, but it wasn’t simple.”

Computerworld, May 24, 1993

“IBM has too many different strategies and that confuses everyone.  But we picked one — Windows–  and we’re going to stick to it for 10 years or so.”

USA Today, July 18, 1994

“IBM is one to remember all the time: A lot of smart people work there.  It’s a fine company that lost its way.”

USA Today, July 18, 1994

“IBM did well under its founder and one generation, thereafter, they stumbled because they missed where technology is going.”

The Irish Times, October 21, 1994

“Its all about specifics.  IBM did not have to fail.  It’s not some tragic script that is constantly played out.  The company had a 50 year run and did very well.  They just did not adjust to the microprocessor.  Something like that could come along for us, we just have to be humble enough and bright enough to see it coming.”

The Irish Times, October 21, 1994

“It’s like I was supposed to bend over just for the chance to have lunch with some guy from IBM.”

Big Blues, Paul Carroll

“Our efforts to work with IBM on software come to mind as one of the more painful experiences we’ve had.  It’s a very strange time to buy Lotus.  [Notes now] has the highest market share it will ever have.”

Wall Street Journal, June 8, 1995

“I just don’t think hardware companies can manage software companies.”

Time, June 19, 1995

“In a way, it’s kind of too bad [IBM purchased Lotus].  I think it’s nice to see software companies independent of hardware companies.”

Computerworld, June 12, 1995

“[The success of the Lotus acquisition] will come down to whether Lotus employees aspire to add IBM to their resumes.”

InformationWeek, June 19, 1995

INDUSTRIAL POLICY

“Every time you interfere in these markets, you have overall net negative effects, and in most cases, the opposite of the effect you intended to have.  Why don’t people just capture that in their minds, that screwing around with markets is tricky stuff?…It’s terrible, its subverting the market mechanism.”

Computergram International, May 21, 1993

“Government regulation in the economy is a tricky matter.  Centralized decision-making is terribly inefficient in contrast to the free market.  No matter how well-intentioned, government control almost inevitably protects a few favored companies and hurts just about everyone else –  especially consumers.”

Seattle Times, June 21, 1995

INFORMATION

“‘Information at Your Fingertips’ is a crusade in the same way the graphical interface was for us in 1983.”

PC Week, November 12, 1990

“Your personal computer will have the world’s largest hard drive because it’ll connect to all the information out there.  You won’t care where the information is and you won’t have to specify a string of servers or specific locations to find it.  Al you have to know is the name of the resource.”

PC User, September 23, 1992

“This is the information age.  If your business has anything to do with information, you’re in deep trouble.”

Fortune, June 14, 1993
“The nature of information itself is changing….This is just the beginning….We are crossing a technology threshold that will forever change the way we learn, work, socialize and shop.  It will affect all of us and businesses of every type in ways far more pervasive that most people recognize.”

Crains Detroit Business, January 2, 1995

“The emphasis [in information at your fingertips] is moving away from the computer and into what it empowers you to do.

Business Times, January 21, 1995

INFORMATION HIGHWAY

“The promise of the Information Highway is to provide all kinds of goods and services in an efficient way.”

Mortgage Banking, November 1994

“The when and where of the information highway is anyone’s guess. It may be a business where you have to lose money at first. There will be winnowing-outs.”

Forbes, February 28, 1994

“It’s not a highway, because governments build highways, and I certainly don’t want the government to build this.  It’s not a highway, because on a highway everybody goes down the same road.  This is more like a lot of country lanes.”

Chicago Tribune, October 21, 1993

“There is this non-existent business called the ‘information highway.’  It’s got zero dollars in revenue and a lot of uncertainty of when it will emerge.  I happen to be someone who believes very much in this business.  I don’t pretend to provide scientific proof that it will be a very large business.  The skeptics bring up good reasons why the think it is not going to be as big or early an opportunity as I happen to believe it is.  Microsoft has always focused on software products and software standards.  For this opportunity we are building software and are spending close to $100 million a year.”

Boston Globe, October 20, 1993

“[The information highway] is more complicated than the founding of the personal computer industry.  It just sort of happened.  One day Ken Olsen says PCs are a bunch of garbage and the next thing you know there are 50 million of them  And people say ’Whoa” Something happened here.’”

Boston Globe, October 20, 1993

Today, the PC is used as a primary tool for creating documents of many types — word processing, spreadsheets, presentations.  But by and large, when you want to find a document, archive it or transmit it, you don’t really use the electronic from.  You get it out on paper and send it.  In the coming information age, access to documents, broadly defined, will be done electronically, just by traveling across network that people now call an information highway.”

Playboy, July, 1994
“[The] incubation [of the information highway] is being done under the spotlight and so it does create some strange things where people try to overhype their role or how quickly it will happen.  No one knows who is going to succeed.

USA Today, July 18, 1994
“Reporters show up at our door and ask “What are you doing about the information highway?’  Your mom calls up and you have to say, ‘Hey,  mom, I’m driving spikes along the information highway,” and mom says, ‘Hallelujah!’”

Forbes, February 28, 1994

It is a huge investment and it is based on our belief that these kind of electronic applications will catch on in a very big way before the end of the century.  Our investment level is predicated on having millions of people hooked up to broadband networks within the next three or four years.”

Financial Times, December 31, 1994

“There are things that could slow [the Information Highway] down.  There are regulatory approaches and you could decide the government should have too broad a role, which might slow it down.  You could fail to come up with rules of privacy and end up with abuse.”

Fortune, January 16, 1995

“This new electronic world of the information highway will generate a higher volume of transactions than anything has to date, and we’re proposing that Windows be at the center, servicing all those transactions.”

Fortune, January 16, 1995

“I believe that the first application of this high speed communications will be business, because business can afford it at a higher price, and it’s of a more provable benefit to business.”

Business Times, January 21, 1995

“You don’t have to be a dreamer to know that the technology will not limit the information highway.”

Playboy, July, 1994

‘The information highway is the high capacity communications network that is expected to link homes and businesses over the next decade.”

Seattle Times, June 21, 1995

“Nobody knows when [widespread broadband networks] will come, but the opportunity is great enough that many companies are investing.”

Interactive Week, August 14, 1995

INHERITANCE

“I don’t think giving kids huge amounts of money is any big favor to them.”

The Sunday Telegraph, May 2, 1993

INNOVATION

“Our goal is to have the software industry continue to grow.  we help that by having a clear platform direction and lots of god evangelism.  By any measure you can imagine, the software industry is increasing its innovation and it is becoming easier to get that innovation to customers.”

InfoWorld, November 15, 1993

INTEL

“Intel themselves did not understand the importance of the advance they had made in building the microprocessor.  Paul Allen and I wrote to Intel to tell them what an unbelievable device they had created.  That was in 1974. Steve Jobs had nothing to do with the creation of the personal computer industry.”

The Financial Times, September 19, 1988
“When Intel these days wants to know what to design into a chip, who is it going to ask?  All it is really trying to do is run software well.  And who has really analyzed what software needs in a chip design in order to run fast?”

INTELLIGENCE

“I don’t like to manage people who aren’t smart, who are not capable of dealing with criticism, who can’t start off by very quickly agreeing on what’s going well and what’s going wrong…. Time is short and if people are repeating things I already know, or if they didn’t listen to something I said with some precision, then that’s not a good person for me to work with– they don’t belong in this team.”

Computer Weekly, August 20, 1992

“Just because someone with a calculator recently deemed me the richest businessman in the world doesn’t mean I’m a genius.”

The Seattle Post Intelligencer, July 19, 1995

INTERACTIVITY

“[Interactivity’s] our only hope.  I believe it.  I think human curiosity requires seeing more information that’s customized to your particular preference.”

Forbes, ASAP

“I’m a big believer that the interactive world [can co-exist with broadcasting].  The two can be very synergistic.”

The Wall Street Journal, May 17, 1995

INTERESTS

“[If Microsoft BASIC had failed, I would have liked] doing pure theoretical computer science or pure mathematics, or possibly being some kind of trial lawyer.  I think I could have ended up in AI research.”

Compute!

“I’m still fairly hard core.”

Time, April 16, 1984

“I have social skills.  But I can sit at a computer screen for hours and laugh at something wonderful.”

Unknown article entitled “DOS capitalist.”
“I was hard core before; I am hard core now; I’ll be hard core in the future.”

Computer Reseller News

“I just happen to have a very interesting job.  I wouldn’t recommend it to other people.”

Newsweek, June 24, 1991

“…if I had free time, I’d spend it funding a research center or working with biotechnology”

The Seattle Times, Emmett Watson
“Business, marketing technology are all things that fascinate me. So definitely being interested and excited about these different areas has been key in how I do my job  I say business is pretty easy, and good marketing isn’t super-complex.  Technology is the deepest of the three.”

Advertising Age, December 19, 1994

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

“The beauty of doing business outside the U.S. instaed od inside the U.S., is you have a company that is less driven by the economic cycles inside the U.S.  And so it tends to stabilize things … even if the state and the country are not growing as fast, we have this international component that would be counter to that [down] cycle.  So it is very positive.”

Chicago Tribune, June 18, 1989

INTERNET

“The lines between on-line services and the Internet are beginning to blur.”

Orlando Sentinel Tribune, April 29, 1995
“The Internet today lacks easy access, wide availability, a consistent user interface, easy navigation, and integration with other commercial on-line services.  Microsoft’s goal is to embrace and extent the Internet.”

PC Week, January 23, 1995

“[The Internet has become] a standard WAN.    Many companies hate been reluctant to open their networks to the Internet [because of the lack of security].”

PC Week, April 25, 1994

“…the success of the Internet signals a massive structural change in computing and communications industries.  …  costs are coming down so fast that the Internet can, in the forseeable furure, evolve into a network able to serve hundreds of millions of people.  Technical obstacles to the Internet’s success are falling by the wayside.”

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 19, 1995

“We’re taking tools offered in the PC world and making them authoring tools for the Internet.”

Computer Reseller News, August 7, 1995

“One thing that we’ll be making very, very clear … is how focused Microsoft is on participating in the Internet.  The growth here is really quite phenomenal.”

Seattle Times, August 13, 1995

INTUIT

“We don’t see competitive problems here.  In fact, we see increased competition coming through the kind of opportunities that we’ll be pursuing as the two companies join together.”

The Nightly Business Report, April 27, 1995

“Our enthusiasm for bringing Intuit and Microsoft together is very, very strong.
[The proposed merger] is very clearly in the interest of consumers.”

The Seattle Times, April 28, 1995

“It’s unfortunate that after such a broad government review, the merger faced additional months of uncertainty in the courts.”

The Daily Telegraph, May 22, 1995
“We’re disappointed not to be able to combine Microsoft and Intuit on a timely basis.  This is a fast-paced industry experiencing lots of change.  Progress toward realizing our goals could not wait until the Government’s lawsuit was resolved.”

The New York Times, Sunday, May 11, 1995

“Our focus is to build great software — that will not change.  In the future, we may wait s week or two before we decide to something like this {Intuit] again.”

The New York Times, May 22, 1995

“This is a very fast-moving business and delay would not have been in our business interests.”

Austin American Statesman, May 21, 1995

INVESTMENTS

“I devote my time to my job, so I want to make sure that I spend less than an hour a month thinking about any investments I might have, so I keep it awfully simple.”

Chicago Tribune, October 24, 1993

“Investing is a tech stock is a high risk.”

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 19, 1995

INVESTMENT ANALYSTS

“If you meet your projections, you can ignore the analysts.”

Chicago Tribune, April 8, 1992

JAPAN

“Most of the U.S. software companies are spoiled.  There’s this notion that the Japanese can’t write software, and it’s not true.  They’re a first class competitor.”

Newsweek, June 24, 1991

“The need to work closely with Sony, Philips, Matsushita, Thompson and other Japanese consumer electronics companies will require people in both Tokyo and Redmond.”

PC Week, June 24, 1991
“The United States dominates software.  Canada and Britain follow, but not nearly at the same level.  With other countries, there’s a language problem. In Japan, there is no one exporting standard software.  Software is about hard work and engineering.  Japanese do well at exporting video games, but not software.”

Macleans, August 30, 1993

“We have a disproportion of entrepreneurial people.  A Japanese entrepreneur is a rare bird.  so is a European one.  The world economy is going through changes that really favor us.  We underestimate ourselves.  Our strengths are also the way companies are organized and the entrepreneurship which will allow us to capture new opportunities.”

Macleans, August 30, 1993

“[Japanese are successful] for good reasons.  Great products.  A long-term approach.  Focus on engineering and what it takes to turn products around quickly.  Being able to adapt to what’s necessary to sell effectively in markets around the world.”

Playboy,

JOBS, STEVE

“He never turns it off.  He’ always pushing.”

Rolling Stone, March 4, 1984
“In terms of public relations, yes, Steve is the most successful in the industry.  But he does it by saying how crummy everyone else is.”

Fortune, October 9, 1989

“We always had to keep Steve updated because the guy had his quota of bozos at all times ….Steve and I had a lot of fun developing this [graphical interface] thing.  I was one of the few people who would stand up to Steve and tell him what was wrong.”

InfoWorld, January 29, 1990

“A genius and fun to work with.”

Computer Weekly, August 20, 1992

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

“If Justice wants to look at everything we’ve done, that’s fine …  There’s nothing that causes us the slightest concern.”

The Associated Press, August 5, 1993
“The Department of Justice makes their own decisions.”

Washingtonian, December, 1993

“In some ways, a lawsuit would have been a more just environment.  Things were just so random.”

The Seattle Times, July 18, 1994

“It is to be expected, when somebody is a successful as we are in an important part of the economy, that regulators would review the situation to see if it is a competitive market.  There are not many people who have had every electronic mail message and everything that they have done subjected to the kind of scrutiny we have had here.”

The Financial Times, December 31, 1994
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, CONSENT DECREE

“I can live with this.”

His acceptance of the offer by Justice, quoted in the Seattle Times, July 10, 1994

“None of the people who run the divisions are going to change what they do or think or forecast.  Nothing.  There’s one guy in charge of {hardware company licenses.  He’ll read the agreement.”

The Seattle Times, July 18, 1994,
“Reaching this settlement with the two government agencies eliminates something that could have been a major distraction.”

The Seattle Times, July 18, 1994

“In no way does Microsoft believe it has ever done anything at all inappropriate or illegal.  Microsoft is proud of the way it does business.  We took the investigation very seriously.  We are eager to move ahead and have the opportunity to do more with great products.”

United Press International, July 18, 1994

“The first thing to know about a consent decree is that it involves absolutely no admission of anything in any way.  So your question is, did we do something wrong?  Absolutely not.  Have we at any time done anything wrong? Absolutely not.

Business Week, April 10, 1995

“You should understand that [‘splitting-up’ the company is not ] being considered in any way shape or form  You know, we can talk about, you know, Mars exploding  It has as much relevance to what’s going on.  What’s going on is that the Justice Department, after being part of a five year process has said that they were incredibly thorough, which they certainly were.  And the only thing they had any concern about, the only thing, was one of our licensing practices.

All Things Considered (NPR), April 18, 1995

KAHN, PHILLIPE

“When we got into the Apple lawsuit, [Phillipe Kahn] said, ‘Oh, Windows – it’s like waking up and finding out that your partner might have AIDS.’  That was his quote in Time.  In another magazine, I think it was Business Week, he chose to compare us to Germany in World War Two.”

Playboy, July 1994

KAPOR, MITCH

“Of all the guys in the industry, Mitch has the best feel for what users want next.”

Fortune, June 10, 1985

“Mitch is obviously down on me.  I mean, ‘Kingdom of the Dead?’ Where do I go from there?”

Playboy, September 1991

KILLER APPLICATIONS

“The ultimate killer application for the PC is communication.  That’s been hidden from us up to now because most of PC functionality has been very stand alone functionality; most communications has simply been either broadcast or point-to-point voice communication.”

Washington Software Association Meeting, 1995

“Many people are talking about the applications here– until its all available no one can say for sure which of these applications will catch on– for example, when the PC first came out the idea of a spread sheet was not well understood.”

Washington State Software Association Meeting, 1995

KNOWLEDGE-BASED SOFTWARE

“The forefront for the next few years is knowledge-based software.”

The New York Times, December 30, 1984

LAWSUITS

“No amount of lawsuits will deter us from doing what is right for both PC and Macintosh customers.”

Wall Street Journal, March 22, 1995

LEADERSHIP

“Most of what I do is leading.  Managing applies to the people who work directly for me.”

Electronic Business, August 15, 1988

LEVERAGING

“Say Joe Smith wants to take on Coke with a new Cola.  Does Coke have an advantage with its distribution power?  That’s all to the good.”

Wall Street Journal, May 1, 1995

LICENSING

“If you’re suggesting we raise our prices [to please Novell], that’s a very anti-consumer point of view.  It’s ludicrous for somebody to say, ‘Why don’t you raise your prices to help out these poor guys at Novell?’”

Washingtonian, December, 1993

LOTUS

“We talked to Lotus four years ago about a 50-50 merger.”

Computer Reseller News

MACINTOSH

“The Mac [is] far easier to use than anything we have seen before.”

The Computer Entrepreneurs, quote from 1984

“The demonstration we were shown was impressive, and the pricing strategy very aggressive.  We knew that the Macintosh was going to have immense mass appeal.”

Financial Times, February 28, 1984

“We picked the Mac and they didn’t.  And that’s not an issue of size at all.  They just didn’t do it.”

Infoworld,  August 7, 1989

“At [the] time {Microsoft committed to the Macintosh] we decided our app strategy would be to emphasize the Macintosh and win there, then roll back to the PC when graphical interfaces become popular.”

InfoWorld, January 29, 1990

“”…the Macintosh is not a new graphical interface in any way.  There was a public machine called the Lisa with drop down [menus] and edit, cut and copy, paste [commands, icons  —  everything.  So ignore Steven P. Jobs and ignore the Mac. There is a guy who wrote the first graphical editor and that was Charles Simonyi, who wrote Bravo.  He came to work at Microsoft in 1980, before Steven Jobs ever met Lisa.”

InfoWorld, January 29, 1990

“We’re bulletproof in our commitment to the [Macintosh] platform.”

PC Week, July 20, 1992

Microsoft is the company that made the first commitment to the Mac.  It has invested the most in the Mac.  The Mac has benefited immensely from that early and ongoing commitment.  Our Mac products do super well.”

MacWeek, January 31, 1994

“Microsoft is very committed to its Macintosh customers.  I think Macintosh has a bright future.”

Letter to Spindler,  April, 1995

MAINFRAME COMPUTERS

“The mainframe will have to compete with other devices for the role as the enterprise machine.  It has a huge advantage because it’s already there and it runs a lot of software.  But as you add new databases and advanced image applications, or taking paper information and putting it on-line, you’ll look not only at mainframes, but also other architectures to provide that new capacity.”

Software Magazine, September, 1991

MALONE, JOHN

“Malone is straightforward in terms of talking about technology and strategy.  He and I are damn similar.  He worked at Bell Labs and understands both business and technology.”

Playboy, July, 1994

MANAGEMENT

“I think if you give any credit to me it should be more for assembling those people and keeping them working together than for specific ideas I’ve come up with.  I can’t do it all.”

InfoWorld, August 3, 1992

“The complexity of the industry and its technology means that a lot of my time is spent just trying to keep up rather than coming up with new product ideas.”

Computer Reseller News, June 22, 1992 quoting May 1991 internal memo

MAPLES, MIKE

“Mike has been a key architect in [Microsoft’s] growth and success– few business leaders could claim a better record during a similar time.”

Seattle Times, May 15, 1995

MARGINS

“I’ve always said 25 percent margins are not a forever thing.”

Forbes, February 28, 1994

MARKET SHARE

“I want to meet the gut who doesn’t think we’re gaining market share every day.  The guy’s not awake.”

Business Week, February 24, 1992

“It’s all about scale economics and market share.  When you’re shipping a million units of Windows software a month, you  can afford to spend $300 million a year improving it and still sell it at a low price.”

Fortune, June 14, 1993
“Your current market share is not a predictor of market share.  Windows, if I just kept it as is, would be wiped out in two years, three years.  Are we clever enough to obsolete our own product and build something new?

USA Today, July 18, 1994

MARKETING

“We’re past the point where technology is all important.  It’s the marketing, the reputations that are important now.”

Time, June 20, 1983

“Marketing is a lot broader than advertising.”

Advertising Age, December 18, 1994

MARRIAGE

“I expect it to free up quite a bit of time.  Being single takes a lot of time….It will be so simple.  I will know who I go home to, where I go home to.  And she knows what I like.”

The Sunday Telegraph, May 2, 1993

MATHEMATICS

“Most great programmers have some mathematical background, because it helps to have studied the purity of proving theorems, where you don’t make soft statements, you only make precise statements.  In mathematics, you develop complete characterizations, and you have to combine theorems in very non-obvious ways.  …  Math relates very directly to programming, maybe more so in my mind than in other people’s minds, because that’s the angle I came from.”

Programmers at Work, Susan Lammers

MEMORY

“You can do a lot in 192k.”

Byte, April, 1983

MICROPROCESSOR

“Nobody could understand why we wanted [an Altair 8800, the first microprocessor based computer].”

Puget Sound Business Journal, April 23, 1990

“The semiconductor guys are still providing us with the magic.”

U S WEST magazine, Winter, 1990

‘The real vision that was central to Microsoft came that year, in ‘71, as Paul Allen and I were talking about the microprocessor.  Everyone up to then considered computers as an organizational tool, not something to sit on your desks.  Then we thought, not only are these new computers very interesting, but they can be very, very cheap.  which means that they can be used by an individual, not just a company.”

Business Times, January 21, 1995

MICROSOFT

“From the very beginning, we’ve been the most profitable software company.  We started out with a long-term vision about what microcomputers could become.  And we’ve helped shape what’s happened.”

Electronic Business

“We have a very productive software factory.”

Computerworld, November 2, 1987

“…if you asked which is the one company that has been thinking through the pieces and how they’re going to work together, including networking and graphics, and in the distant future things like information products using CDs, we have done more of that than anyone.”

Computer Decisions, March, 1989
“Microsoft is positioned to play the central role in the PC industry’s future.”

Puget Sound Business Journal, April, 23, 1990

“This company is my life.”

Fortune, June 18, 1990

“Microsoft changed the computer world in a big way.”

Playboy, September, 1991

“I’m long on Microsoft.  I’m betting on our company.”

Chicago Tribune, March 15, 1992
“Microsoft is taken very seriously.  We’re a very serious company and we’ve had a serious impact.”

InformationWeek, June 1, 1992

“We’re just a software company, and every year we learn more and more about how to build great software products.”

Advertising Age, December 19, 1994

MISTAKES

“When your sales slow down, its probably because of some horrible mistake you made a couple of years ago.  By the time your sales go down, you’re dead, because it’s too late to do anything about it.”

Forbes, January 16
“Microsoft may be making big mistakes at the moment in attempting to predict what will happen, but we will not know whether our current strategy is off the mark for three or four years.”

Upside, April, 1995

MONOPOLISTS

“A monopolist charges high prices for products that it makes no effort to improve, safe in the certainty that no one is able to compete.  Microsoft behaves in exactly the opposite way.  We keep our prices low and innovate as fast as we possibly can because we are keenly aware of the large number of companies that are single-mindedly working to displace us in every software category.”

Upside, April, 1995

MOORE’S LAW

“When things are improving so rapidly, how do you create a model in your head ?  Computers are doubling in power, relative to the price, about every 18 months.  You know, most humans don’t have a situation where something doubles in its power every two years.”

Source Lost

“I see it from the supply side, the supple of computing power.  And this is the miracle story of the microprocessor, wher every two and a half years they can make a computer chip that’s twice as fast.  if you look at an industry where you have such a rapid increase in supply, usually that’s pretty bad, like when radial tires were invented, people didn’t strat drining their cars a lot more, and so it means the need for production capacity went way down, and things got all messed up.  The tire industry is still messed up.”

New York Times, August 25, 1991

“When you have the microprocessor doubling in power every two years, in a sense you can think of computer power as almost free.  So you ask, Why be in the business of making something that’s almost free?  What is the scarce resource? What is it that limits being able to get value out of that infinite computing power?  Software.”

Playboy, July 1994

“The original insight for Microsoft was this: What if computing was free? The answer: Individuals would use computers as a tool, and software standards would become the critical element in making this happen.”

Fortune, January 16, 1995

MOTIVATION

“Motivating people is just a case of giving an individual a clear challenge.  People need to feel they are involved in a positive feedback loop.”

Computer Weekly, August 20, 1992

MS-DOS

“Any user who uses MS-DOS is running out of steam.”

PC Week, October 17, 1988

“In the last 10 years, MS-DOS has become the foundation of the PC Industry.  It takes a lot to get people to move up to a new system.”

The Associated Press, June 12, 1991

“The PC industry has flourished over the past 10 years because of MS-DOS and the support it has had from PC manufacturers, software developers and PC users worldwide.

The Financial Times, June 12, 1991

MSN

“[MSN] is just an advertisement.”

The Christian Science Monitor, August 7, 1995

“We are simply cross-promoting the Microsoft Network and Windows 95.  We think it is very pro-competitive.”

Information Week, July 31, 1995

“Think of MSN as an Internet community.”

Communicationsweek International, August 7, 1995

“We’ll lose what it takes to keep growing our subscribers.  Unless we chicken out.”

Seattle Times, August 16, 1995

MULTIMEDIA

“The PC industry is the foundation of the multimedia industry… With multimedia titles, the shift is toward providing content to customers.”

CD-ROM Professional, May, 1991

MURDOCH, RUPERT

“Murdoch’s a fairly quiet guy.  Clearly brilliant.”

Playboy, July, 1994

MUSIC

“If you look through my CD collection ,you’d see that I like Western rock.  And I probably know the songs of more musicals than most people.  I have almost a complete collection of songs from musicals.”

The Seattle Times, Emmett Watson

MYHRVOLD, NATHAN

“Other than myself, Nathan has more impact on our long term strategy than anyone else.”

Scientific American, February, 1993

NAFTA

“Our manufacturing productivity is so much better here, we won’t have to move jobs to Mexico.”

Sacramento Bee, November 9, 1993

NEGOTIATION

“I’m not in charge of negotiating, I’m not known inside Microsoft as being a good negotiator.”

Marketing, February 18, 1993

NETWORK, THE MICROSOFT

“We have about 50 things that even in the first version will be far better than the on-line services have.  We will make it very easy for people to do electronic mail, use bulletin boards, make purchases on-line…Even eight or nine months before we get into business we have had an impact.  Established companies are starting to think: ‘Oh, we had better get more content, do better marketing.’  Already we are making the market more competitive.”

Financial Times, December, 31, 1994

NeXT
“The Macintosh was truly unique, but I personally don’t understand what is so unique about Steve’s new computer.  …  Which one is more modern?  Presentation manager is color, his is black and white.  Is compatibility with existing standards important?  OS/2 and presentation manager will run all the old IBM PC programs.  NextStep isn’t compatible with anything.”
“I’m not sure the world is ready for more standards as present because customers don’t want to start over again.  But Steve is a creative guy and we’ll see what he can some up with.”

Computer Weekly, November 12, 1992

NINETIES, THE

“In the Nineties, the theme will be information at your fingertips.  With a few clicks of the mouse you’ll see, and be able to play around with the data.  It will make companies more productive, allow people to be more creative and eliminate the need for a lot of the things we’ve had to do in the past.”

Forbes, January 8, 1990

“…the challenge of the 1990s will be to make computers more personal and integrated with the way people work.

Telecom World, August 1992

“Even in the 10-year time frame, computers will be very pervasive.  Flat-screen technology, wireless communications, compressed audio and video, optic fibers being wired will make information at your fingertips a serious part of the business.  People expect these tools to be on their desktop and wherever they go.”

Computerworld, June 22, 1992

“The next 10 years will be as fast as the last 10.”

The Washington Post, April 14, 1993

We can expect by the end of the [1990’s] that most products we use in the home won’t have their familiar form.”

St. Louis Post Dispatch, December 8, 1993

“This next era that we’re moving into is much different than the original PC era.  That one was done simply by having a few companies believe they could spring it on the world and it was a complete surprise.  Here we have thousands of companies and it’s talked about all the time.”

AP Worldstream, November 14, 1994
“The big insight of the next ten years is this: “What if digital communications were free?”

Fortune, January 16, 1995

NISHI, KAY

“For a guy from Japan, Kay’s more like me than probably anybody I’ve ever met.  But he just went overboard.”

Wall Street Journal, August, 27, 1986

“[He] may be Japan’s only true entrepreneur.”

“Kay’s kind of a flamboyant guy, and, when he believes in something, he believes in it very strongly.”

Wall Street Journal, August 27, 1986

“If Microcomputer software based on a standard is not a good thing, then hey, we’re not going to do much business.  If that’s wrong, then God bless Kay Nishi and I hope he finds a raft that floats, because I’m on this ship tied to the wheel.”

Los Angeles Times

“The guy’s life is a mess.”

Los Angeles Times, June 10, 1990

“Kay’s more like me than probably anybody I’ve ever met.”

Hard Drive, James Wallace and Jim Erickson

NOTES

“Notes is an application platform in a weak sense, compared to Windows.  Notes is in no way a substitute.”

Wall Street Journal, June 12, 1995

“Notes is a product, not a strategy.  It has a position we think Exchange may dent as it comes to market.”

Fortune, July 10, 1995

NORDA, RAY

“Ray has a tremendous vendetta against us.”

National Review, January 24, 1994

NOVELL

“[Buying Novell] would be interesting.”

The New York Times, August 4, 1991

“Novell is so dominant in their market. They have such a monopoly position.”

Washingtonian, December, 1993

“As the multivendor distributed-computing  environment expends, our customers have asked Microsoft and Novell to work together behind the scenes to provide accurate, coordinated technical support.”

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 18, 1995

OBJECT ORIENTATION

“The only trick in software is to use code that’s already been written.  Object orientation is just a development technique.  Yes, all the new tools are object oriented, and good companies should factor in objects as they write code.  There’s more C++ code written at Microsoft than anywhere else on the planet.  But the idea that there’s something magical about it really bothers me.  Anybody who’s been in the computer industry more than five years has seen these things come and go 10 times.”

Computerworld, May 24, 1993

There is a thing going on architecturally called object orientation.  This is a misused term, but it means we’re making the way you put the pieces together more flexible than the fixed-style applications we’ve been using on PCs.  You’ll be hearing massive amounts over the next two or three years about how we’re using object orientation at the system level, at the language level, but most importantly, enabled by changes at the application level.”

Computer Decisions, March, 1989

OFFICE EQUIPMENT

“All these pieces of office equipment grew up independently.  Nobody was thinking too much about how they worked together.  Nobody’s really tried to bridge the gap.  I figured there had to be an opportunity for somebody smart.”

The Seattle Times, February 12, 1995, quote taken from the New York Times, 1993

OFFICE, MICROSOFT

“The Microsoft Office brings customers all the software they are likely to need, as well as documentation that is easy to use….”

Modern Office Technology, November, 1989

OLSEN, KEN

“Under Ken Olsen, Digital pioneered the minicomputer and later scaleable hardware architecture, the VAX.  When PCs began to become popular, Ken followed his engineering inclinations and built a better one — only better, in this case meant incompatible with the Intel standard, and the products didn’t succeed.

DEC Professional, May 1992

“[He’s] done an amazing amount.  he’s persevered through ups and downs, driven things forward and had a commitment.  DEC has the challenges of a changing industry, but when you look back on what he did, it was very impressive.  I actually grew up on a DEC computer….”

Computerworld, June 22, 1992

ON-LINE

“Microsoft’s holy grail is to provide the Yellow Pages for an electronic marketplace of on-line information systems.”

Fortune, June 14, 1993

“If on-line succeeds, it will succeed because it’s doing big numbers and people are doing unique work there.”

Reuters, May 16, 1995

“[Video] is the future [of on-lineservices].  [On-line services have] got to change in order to move away from just simply dumping text that came from other places and having that be what’s up there.”

Columbia Journalism Review

OPEN SYSTEMS

“This word ‘open’ has been defined a lot of ways.  Any way you define it, though, the most open system in the world is the PC.  People can switch hardware vendors every day of the week.  They have more choice is software than for any other platform.”

Software, September 1991

“If open means where do you have the most hardware and software choices, then the approach Microsoft has taken in working with lots of partners is the most open.  If open means the bigger committee you have, the more open you are, then things like ASCII or the Open Management Group are the most open things in the world.”

Computerworld, November 1993

“Microsoft’s openness with Windows has been key to its success.”

Time, June 26, 1995
OPERATING SYSTEMS

“Being involved in operating system software gives you a central role, but if you combine that with our key characteristic of taking a long-term view, and our desire to see all the pieces fit together, then we have a unique role.”

The Financial Times, September 19, 1988

“You can’t sell an operating system without lots and lots of applications.”

PC Week, November 6, 1989

“Everything is happening as planned.  It takes lots and lots of applications to make an operating system popular, and they take time to develop.  With Windows you have quite a few applications and its beginning to sell.”

InfoWorld, January 29, 1990
“Microsoft has an operating systems strategy to establish Windows very pervasively on the desktop.”

The Seattle Times, April 5, 1992

“Is DOS popular because of OEMs or because of al the applications available for it?  Is Windows?  It’s absurd to think that operating system popularity is due to anything but evangelizing the OS to third parties.”

PC Week, October 5, 1992

Microsoft has decided for business reasons to promote the use of its operating systems by a wide range of software developers and spent an immense amount of money on this evangelization.  …  We do applications development internally and do get some benefit from being one company due to our reputation and marketing.  We do have an advantage but we give other people an opportunity as well.

Computer Reseller News, July 25, 1994

“We ship a product called Windows that gets richer and richer.  It has always included application content.  The Windows product is not just an operating system  Nor is there any fixed boundary. Is the graphics interface part of the operating system?  More and more, it is.  The operating system keeps improving in order to keep this field growing.”

Business Week, April 10, 1995

OPTIMISM

“Of course, I’m considered an optomist.”

The Wall Street Journal, November 10, 1989

OS/2

“We see distinct roles for OS/2 and the Unix system.

?

“What’s our strategic operating system product?  OS/2.  What’s our second most strategic operating system product?  Windows!”

PC User, October 25, 1989

“At the time, we were going to just port Windows on top of OS/2.”

InfoWorld, January 29, 1990

“We now are projecting that OS/2 won’t fully eclipse DOS sales for another three or four years.”

PC Week, February 5, 1990

“People said we’d fail with Windows.  Now they’re saying we’ll fail with OS/2.  We won’t.”

The Wall Street Journal, May 21, 1990

“There is no negative.  This is Microsoft vs. Microsoft vs. Microsoft.”

Business Week, May 21, 1990

“IBM is proposing to take over the definition of PC desktop operating systems.  Why are they willing to lose so much money on systems software?  The answer I is that they have a plan to design the operating system so that their hardware Micro Channel architecture and applications are tied in.”

PC Week, June 24, 1991
“OS/2 is tied [to the] concept of IBM using software to regain hardware market share….Only one operating system can get the momentum.  It’s really too late for another operating system to come along even if it could live up to all the claims that have been made.”

Computing Canada, April 13, 1992

“Bugs in Boca Raton?”

Associated Press, April, 7, 1992

“IBM is so desperate to maintain some dignity on [OS/2] that they’re almost giving it away….  The marketplace has made a decision….”

The Washington Post, March 15, 1992

“Customers who use [OS/2] are going down a dead end?”

InformationWeek, July 6, 1992

“Believe me, OS/2 has no future.”

Forbes, February 28, 1994

“OS/2 just did not reach critical mass.  When we think about our competition, we don’t think about IBM. …  The only time I get asked about OS/2 is when I come to Florida.  …  OS/2 has about four or five months of life left until Windows 95 is out.”

Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale), April 30, 1995

PATENTS

“Do you know how many patents there are”  There are tons and tons of patents out there.”

The San Francisco Examiner, November 17, 1993

“If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.

I feel certain that some large company will patent some obvious things related to interface, object orientation, algorithm, application extension or other crucial technology.  If we assume this company has no need of any of our patents, then they have a 17-year right the life of a patent to take as much of our profits as they want.  The solution to this is patent exchanges with large companies and patenting as much as we can.”

PC WEEK, June 24, 1991
Internal Memo by Bill

PATIENCE

“We’re very patient people.”

PC Week, February 5, 1990

“A lot of technology takes a long time to develop.”

Puget Sound Business Journal, April 23, 1990

“We’re a company that’s always been willing to take a long-term approach, whether it’s technology or how we work with employees and customers.

Advertising Age, December 19, 1994

“People’s patience in this industry is so short.”

Windows Sources, March, 1993

PARTNERS

“Ask IBM who its most important partner is, ask Apple, ask AT&T.”

The Financial Times, September 19, 1988

“Make lots of strategic alliances.  Partner up with everybody who looks good, but don’t do it for the long term.  maybe three years, not much more.”

The Chicago Tribune, October 24, 1993

PC

“Eventually the price of a desk top work station won’t be much greater than the desk it sits on.  And we’ll provide the software.”

Electronics, September 30, 1985

“Computers are still extremely hard to use. And PCs are still just these little word processing and spread sheet machines.  We have an immense distance to go, and some would say we as an industry aren’t moving that fast.  So, we jump in and make a contribution.”

Infoworld, August 7, 1989

“As we look at what the established computer companies are doing relative to PCs, it’s important to remember that the entire PC industry exists without any help from them with the exception of IBM.  It’s been a phenomenon largely driven y new computer companies, and, most importantly, by end-users.”

Release 1.0, January 1990.

“We take a very broad view of what the PC is.  We’re going to put Windows on palmtop machines and machines that are faster than the biggest mainframe.”

The Associated Press, April 19, 1992

“The biggest impact of [the PC] has been the way it has helped individuals to be more productive.  When we wrote the first version of basic for an early personal computer, it was hard to anticipate the tremendous productivity gains for people who are using desktop computers in business and home.”

Computer Reseller News, June 22, 1992

“[PCs will become] the indispensable tools people reach for when they want to be educated, informed or entertained.”

Telecom World, August 1992

PENTIUM

The amazing thing is [that the Pentium] will be able to work on multiple instructions at the same time.”

PC Magazine, March 14, 1989
“It was a fantastic Christmas, way better than market forecasters had expected.  The Pentium thing didn’t change demand for those machines.”

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, January 7, 1995

PERFECTION

“Nothing is ever perfect….”

Letter to Pam Edstrom, Microsoft Public Relations Executive

PERSEVERANCE

“[Perseverance] has been characteristic of our great success.  there have been a lot of cases where others got in early but didn’t stick with it….The idea that computer manufacturers would all want the same operating system so we could sell microcomputers in high volume and have lots of competition was not widely accepted.  yet the industry we have today is based on that very idea.  We’ve been behind things that tool a lot of perseverance that [today] are key to where the industry is going.”

Computerworld, June 22, 1992

PERSONAL FOCUS

“The focus of my life is my work, certainly in my 30’s and probably in my 40’s.”

New York Times, August 25, 1991

“My focus continues to be my job at Microsoft…  For quite some time I’ll be doing the best I can in this job….”

The Seattle Times, May 6, 1995

PHILANTHROPY

“I don’t have time to figure out what charities make sense.  And to the degree Microsoft can do well, it’s just that much more to give later.”

New York Times, August 25, 1991

PIONEERS

“They’re so many early guys who did so much good stuff in this industry, but who just didn’t have the drive or the commitment to either building a company or leading one.”

New York Times, August 25, 1991

PIRACY

“[Piracy can ] prevent good software from being written.  Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? …  The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software.. but there is very little incentive to make this software available ….”

Computer Notes, Altair Newsletter, February 3, 1976
“…neither Microsoft nor anyone else can develop extensive software without a reasonable return on the huge investment in time that is necessary.”

Computer Notes, Altair Newsletter, April, 1976

POLITICS

“I’m a software person, not a politician.”

PC User, September 11, 1991

“The thing about this communications infrastructure is that it effects your businesses and your education system.  I believe there will be a political imperative to make sure that such investment is attractive.”

Source Lost

POPULATION CONTROL

“World population growth and our ability to balance human needs with limited resources will be an important chalenge of the next century.”

Seattle Times, July 1995

PRAISE

“Microsoft is very parsimonious in its praise, and so when it is given you know we are incredibly sincere and impressed….”

Letter to Pam Edstrom, Microsoft Public Relations Consultant

PREANNONCING

“People should chose what they think is valuable, in terms of when people talk about the future.  It’s up to them.  The availability of that information is just a plus — it’s people saying what they think is going to happen.  If you’re a company that says it’s going to do something and then don’t do it, you’re going to lose your customer.  It’s a capitalistic environment.  If somebody says to me ‘is the next version of Excel going to work with Novell’ I’ll say yes.  What do you want me to say “I can’t possibly comment’?  Then what are they supposed to think — that I’m going to make it incompatible or something?  It’s crazy.”

PC User, April 24, 1991

PRESS

“I don’t let [reporters] spend time with me to gather other knowledge.”

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 6, 1991

“We have been very successful in business.  You wouldn’t know that fro reading the articles about us.  I guess we’ll get some good press when we’re not doing well as a business, when our products are not popular.”

Business Week, April 10, 1995

PRINT

“Print is very portable.  It’s inexpensive.  It’s very familiar.  It never surprises you about how it works.  Its got things like table of contents and indexes.  It’s very advanced.”

The Seattle Times, June 2, 1991

PROBLEMS

“I’d say there’s as much screwed up now [at Microsoft] as there always is.”

Wall Street Journal, May 21, 1990

PRODUCT NAMES

“We decided to call [the next version of Windows NT] because it was an exotic city.  Chicago [the name for the next version of Windows] is the most non-exotic location.”

Chicago Tribune, May 25, 1993

PRODUCTIVITY

“People in business understand paying money to be more efficient.”

Forbes ASAP

PRODUCTS

“Sometimes I feel it would be fun to focus on one product for a month, but I have people who work for me who get to do that.”

Compute!
“Tracking product methodology is one of the most important priorities a company should have.  This way, instead of a product taking you a year to develop, you may be able to get that down to six months.  That allows you the luxury of polishing the product so that by the time it’s ready to go, it’s flawless.

PC Week, May 8, 1984

“The only mechanism we have here is to hire great developers, come up with innovative ideas, and put the products in the boxes.  We don’t get to say how much market share we get.”

Infoworld, August 3, 1992

“To get features into the marketplace, you can’t have these huge leaps where you have to buy a very big system and do new things. Evolution is more appropriate.”

Computerworld, June 22, 1992

“If we do not use our products internally, how can we expect others to use them.”

InformationWeek, September 21, 1992

“We’re not powerful enough to cause products that are not excellent to sell.”

The Guardian, May 17, 1993
“Our success is based on only one thing: good products.  It’s not very complicated.  We’re not powerful enough to cause products that are not excellent to sell well.”

Business Week, March 1, 1993

If a company takes its eye off improving its products, if it tries to do anything that would be viewed as an exercise of power, it’ll be displaced very rapidly.

Playboy, July 1994

PROFIT MARGINS

“The kind of profit margin we’ve had in the past will be very unlikely to achieve in the future.”

USA Today, April 1, 1993

PROGRAMMING

“It’s kind of painful sometimes when you have somebody else working on [a programming project]. They never code stuff exactly the same way you like to see it coded.  I remember when we were working on BASIC, I’d go back and recode other people’s section of code, without making dramatic improvements.  That bothers people when you go in and do that, but sometimes you just feel you have to do it.”

Programmers at Work,

“[Programming] has this element of art.  There are so many thousands of judgments people are applying, and they have an aesthetic about how much they care about their programs being good.  But ther is in the end a test of ‘Does it work, is it fast, is it small, does it get it done?’”

New York Times, August 25, 1991

PROGRESS

“‘Isn’t this great, is not the solution to pushing things forward.    You’ve got to keep driving hard.”

Hard Drive, Wallace and Erickson

PUBLIC OFFERING

“The whole [public offering] process looked like a pain and an ongoing pain once you are public.”

“All I’m thinking and dreaming about is selling software, not stock.”

Fortune ?

RADIO SHACK MODEL 100 (Laptop)

“That’s another Kay Nishi story.  He brought out a piece of paper with the design on it and explained that Hitachi was able to make the 8-line liquid-crystal display in volume ….
We sat there and looked at the thing and realized it was possible.

InfoWorld, August 29, 1983

REENGINEERING

“We’ve always had view that if we end up with too many people in a certain skill area, we’ll try to find them jobs in other areas, that we’ll work with them a lot or offer a very generous severance package.”

Chicago Tribune, October 24, 1993

“At the heart of the corporate reengineering movement is the idea that information technology can streamline complicated processes, such as purchasing or order tracking.  As processes get simpler, employees are called upon to perform a wider range of tasks and make more decisions.  Productivity rises.”

Personal News column

RELIGION

“Well, Einstein may have believed in God but it did not help him any.  I mean look at his work….I don’t regard myself as a particularly religious sort of person.”

Calgary Herald, May 3, 1992

RESEARCH

“The price of success is that people fail to allow the kind of investments that will lead to incredible profits in the future.  For example we have gotten away without funding any internal or external research.”

PC Week, June 24, 1991
Internal memo

“Because we’re a software company, we can take research ideas and get them into products very rapidly.”

Chicago Tribune, December 27, 1992

RISK

“There’s all sorts of risks and challenges, and there will be surprises that will come with it.  But we’re pretty organized, pretty focused.”

Advertising Age, December 19, 1994

ROYALTIES

“We don’t pay royalties on system software.”

GATES, Manes and Andrews

SALES

“There’s only one deep fatal sin, and that’s not to say that you’re losing an account.  It’s okay to lose it, as long as you spotted that you’re going to lose it. {pause} Actually, it’s not okay to lose it”

Forbes, February 28, 1994

SCIENCE

“Science is changing the world and biotech and high tech will optimize our standard of living.  there are short-term economic problems both in the U.S. and Canada but in the long run my view is that products will keep getting better and the world will keep getting wealthier.”

The Financial Post, April 7, 1992

SEATTLE

“I don’t see any circumstance where I’d move to another city.  I grew up here, my business is here.”

The Seattle Times, Emmett watson

SIZE

“If’ you go back and look at last calendar year’s sales, you’d find that Microsoft is the 20th largest company in the industry. …We’re just a piece of the hardware business, the service business, and we have decided to focus on only one aspect, and that is building software products.”

COMDEX, 1995

SLOGANS

“Our very first slogan was “We set the standard.”  Eventually when it became true we thought hey, that’s kinda cocky so we’d better get rid of it and come up with another one.”

Marketing, February 18, 1993

SLOAN, ALFRED

“I think Alfred Sloan’s My Years with General Motors is probably the bast book to read if you want to read only one book about business.  The issues he dealt with in organizing and measuring, in keeping [other executives]happy, dealing with risk, understanding model years and the effect of used vehicles, and modeling his competition all in very rational, positive way is inspiring.”

Fortune, January 16, 1995

SMALL COMPANIES

“One of the surprises of the personal computer, for me at least, is that it has done even more for small businesses than for big ones.  …  Small businesses are destined to become even more important as electronic networks make it easier for them to find clients and customers.”

SOFTWARE

“There are tons of software out there.  Much of it is pathetic.  I’ve bought programs that don’t work, and with some I can’t even get past the manual.  Over the next two years, we’ll come up with software that will actually meet people’s needs all the way.  Right now much of the software is either bad or too hard to use.  But these barriers are coming down.”

Money, November 1982

“After years of taking a back seat to hardware, [software] has finally come into its own.”

Financial Times, August, 12,1983

“No one has proven they have a software business [rather than a software product].”

The New York Times, October 16, 1983

“[People should] understand that [software] is a volatile business. Software companies come and go but there are a few that stick around.”

The Financial Times, September 19, 1988

“Before we did MS-DOS there really was not much of a software industry.  There were guys doing mainframe packages and a few personal computer packages.”

The Financial Times, September 19, 1988

Look, there’s a reason I’m the second-biggest computer company in the world….  The reason is, I write software, and that’s where the profit is in this business right now.

Chicago Tribune, March 15, 1992

“Software is about hard work and engineering.”

Macleans, august 30, 1993

Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.  When you finally get done and get to appreciate what you have, it is like a part of yourself that you’ve put together.”

The Software Entrepreneurs

“Microsoft will never have an easier product to sell [than Office].  It’s all features.  Systems are hard.”

Forbes, February 28, 1994

“[In 1968] I knew that software was fascinating, and that I had a deep curiosity about how computers worked.  And every time I wrote a program, it worked.  that was fun.  And I wanted to understand it better.”

Business Times, January 21, 1995

SOUL OF A NEW MACHINE, THE (TRACY KIDDER)

“I don’t know how many people have read Tracy Kidder’s new book The Soul of a New Machine, but [creating the IBM PC] was like that– and everybody really did get their just desserts of being recognized and knowing what part they put into it.  People worked incredibly hard.”

PC World, quoted in The Computer Entrepreneurs

SPORKIN, JUDGE STANLEY

“This will go down in the annals of justice.  This is really unique, a judge who goes off and gathers evidence on his own.  He reads this book, ‘Hard Drive’ to help him make his decision, a book that spelled my mother’s name wrong.”

Los Angeles Times, April 24, 1995

STANDARDS

“Before 1980, all machines were incompatible.  We decided to set the standard.”

Article entitled “DOS capitalist” in unknown publication

“Microsoft’s success in the software industry is largely due to adoption of key standards.”

PC Week, March 8, 1988

“In this phase of computing, where the PC is so much in the center, the role of Microsoft in setting standards and providing tools is much broader than it used to be.”

Software Magazine, September 1991

“It’s the very presence of standards that allows there to be a software industry.”

Forbes, December 7, 1992

“Money is made by setting de facto standards.”

?

“If Congress in 1980 has dictated that, in the interest of interoperability, all PCs had to use the same technical standards as mainframe computers, it would have sheltered mainframe makers from the incredible competitive forces that have driven personal computers to astonishing performance levels.  But computers would have been the big losers.  When the marketplace chooses standards, they aren’t frozen.”

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 21, 1995

STOCK OPTIONS

“Grants of stock options are a central part of our corporate culture.  They are a mechanism that permits Microsoft employees to share in both the risks and rewards of our business.”

Upside, April, 1995

SUCCESS

“If you look at us from a financial point of view we are wizards, but we have made many products that have faded.”

Calgary Herald, May 3, 1992

“We create software products.  We put them in a box, and people decide whether to but them.  Our success comes through great products, such as Windows, Excel spreadsheet, or Word.”

Source Lost

“…successful companies tend to get complacent.  They tend to miss new technical things.  And so, every day we have to renew ourselves.  And that’s why we work hard, and have to make sure that we’re the ones replacing the products we have out there.”

USA Today, July 18, 1994

SUITES, SOFTWARE

“We realized that each of [our] product groups was trying to figure out where solutions providers were and how to work with them, and that it made sense to pull that all together into one broad thing.”

Computer Reseller News, November 16, 1992

SUN COMPUTER

“Sun is a lot like Microsoft.  They understand there’s a few key wins that if you don’t win you’re dead — just dead!

Forbes, February 28, 1994

“Sun is funding Gary L. Reback and saying they’re concerned about retaliation?  Help me with that one.  No reporter seems to get it.  It’s a joke.  Sun’s prices are being brought down because the PC industry is so much more competitive than the industry they’re in.”

Business Week, April 10, 1995

TECHNOLOGY

“Technology has got out of control.”

Money, November 1982

“A lot of technology takes a log time to develop.”

Puget Sound Business Journal, April 23, 1990

“If you take anything that’s a human skill — speech, listening, handwriting, touch — it’s totally predictable that those are key technologies … That people should invest millions of millions of dollars in.”

Computerworld, May 18, 1992

“I contend technology breakthroughs can happen by extending what we already have.”

Fortune

TELEVISION

“Television is passive entertainment.  We’re betting that people want to interact, chose different paths and get feedback from the machine about what they really learned.”

1985

“I doubt I’d finish the Economist every week if I had a TV sitting there.”

New York Times, August 25, 1991

“I have nothing against TV. It’s purely a time allocation decision.”

Playboy, September, 1991

“The big flat glass panel in various rooms of your house.  Right now it’s, what? A TV, which can also serve as a movie player and a game machine.  …  The TV screen is going to become the general purpose entertainment and information device.  That same screen is going to be your newspaper, your TV guide, your phone book.  The kids textbooks will be on that display.  And when they finish the homework, they’ll watch TV or play games on the same screen.”

Chicago Tribune, March 15, 1992

“[I’m] not completely out of touch with TV, but I’m no expert either.  Don’t ask me what happened on the latest episode of Melrose Place, who slept with whom.”

Advertising Age, December 19, 1994

“Once television becomes interactive, it may be possible for people to call up any current show or rerun or any movie whenever they want.  …  Television programs that survive today only because they don’t face strong competition in their time slot may well die, because every show will compete all the time with every other show.”

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 11, 1995

“We feel that we can really contribute to developing new ways for consumers to get more from their TV experience through interactivity.”

The Washington Post, May 17, 1995

THINKING

[My week long ‘think week’ retreats are ] the hardest thing I do.  There isn’t a minute that I’m not working.  Reading, thinking, reading, thinking.  No interruptions.  And then at the end, I write a bunch of memos.”

Computer Reseller News, November 16, 1992

TIME

“I don’t like to waste time.  I’m not the kind of guy who goes an hour before the flight leaves, let’s put it that way.”

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 6, 1991

“Time is a big limiter.  I have to sleep every night, and it wastes so much time.”

Chief Executive, July, 1994

TIMING

“Corporate graveyards are full of CEO’s who offer the market to little, too early.”

Source Lost

“You have to know when to hold back.  If the takeoff curve in something is very gradual, then the early guys who pay the extra money and take some extra risk aren’t protected.”

The New York Times, August 25, 1991

TOWNE, JAMES C.

[He] was sort of random,”

Fortune

TOYS

“Instead of buying airplanes and playing around like some of our competitors, we’ve rolled almost everything back into the company.”

Seattle Business Journal, October 19, 1981

“Some people ask me why I don’t own a plane.  Why?  Because you get used to that kind of stuff and I think that’s bad.”

The Seattle Times, May 7, 1995

TIME HORIZON

“We’re a company that has always been willing to take a long-term approach, whether it’s technology or how we work with employees and customers.”

Advertising Age, December 19, 1994

TRANSACTIONS

“This new electronic world of the information highway will generate a higher volume of transactions than anything has to date, and we’re proposing that Windows be at the center servicing all those transactions.”

Fortune, January 16, 1995

“It’s not like it’s an overnight crisis or something, but in the long run, Microsoft’s got to get most of its revenue from repeat customers rather than new ones.  That’s a fundamental shift in our business model, and now we have to start to change our selves, our products, and our strategies now to do that.  I don’t think the software industry as a whole has perceived this yet.”

Fortune, January 16, 1995

“Capturing transaction revenue requires a lot more than selling an operating system”

Fortune, July 10, 1995

TUXEDOS

“This is the first time I have ever been sober while giving a speech in a tuxedo.”

Speech at the Economic Club of Chicago

Chicago Sun-Times, April 23, 1995

UNIX

“…Unix has been very fragmented.  The way Unix vendors used the word “open’ anticipated more unification in the Unix market than has come to pass,  So unfortunately, the term, which is a very important term, people are almost cynical about because Unix did not come together.”

?

“UNIX System V and the 80386 are a perfect technological match.”

Modern Office Technology, October, 1987

“In a sense, there’s no such thing as Unix because there’s so much variety between the different ones.  And once you pick one, your applications are tied to that one.”

Modern Healthcare, March 6, 1995

“There’s no such thing as a Unix application.”

Lotus, March, 1990

UPBRINGING

“I didn’t grow up hungry.”

Sarcastic comment, USA Today January 16, 1991

UPGRADES

“If we can keep coming up with great new versions, say very year and a half, and sell an upgrade to that installed base for something close to $100, that is a very good business for us.”

Chicago Tribune, October 14, 1993

“We think with Windows 95 we’ll create the biggest upgrade phenomenon the industry has ever seen.”

Reuters, March 22, 1995

USER FRIENDLY

“Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more ‘user friendly.’  The best approach, so far, has been to take all the old brochures and just rubber stamp them with ‘user-friendly’ on the front cover.”

Byte, August, 1982

“Computers are still extremely hard to use.  And PCs are still just these little word processing and spreadsheet machines.  We have an immense distance to go, and some would say we as an industry aren’t moving that fast.  So, we jump in and make a contribution.”

InfoWorld, August 7, 1989

The primary thing is familiarity, to use concepts that are well-known to the user, and to draw on the incredible wealth of training and knowledge that you have as a human being.”

PC User, September 23, 1992

USERS

“Users don’t wake up each day and say, ‘Oh, which way is the wind blowing today?’  They go out and get copies and use them to decide what they want.  Their decisions aren’t based on a comment in some speech.”

Infoworld, January 29, 1990

“”The end-user part of [the PC industry] is something that isn’t fully appreciated.  As we talk about examples, we always talk about large corporations and the top-down decision-making that was done.  That tends to make up a small part of what goes on in personal computing.”

Release 1.0, January 1990

“Who’s in control here? It’s the person walking into the software store… and they decide whether to buy the product or not.  They have the power.”

NBC Special “Tycoon, ” May, 1995

VACATIONS

‘I like to sail in the morning and read in the afternoon.”

The Sunday Telegraph, May 2, 1993

VALUE

“Supply is the killer of value.  If you tell me that all the movie cameras in the world got jammed today and nobody can make movies, then talk to me about studios like MGM and what a great asset they have.  That’s why the computer industry is such a strange industry.  We’re dealing with amazing increases in supply.”

Forbes, December 7, 1992

VALUES

“I’m very well grounded because of my parents and my job and what I believe in.”

The Seattle Times, May 7, 1995

VEGETARIANISM

“I got into it because of the relationship [with a girlfriend].  And almost as soon as I started, the relationship ended.

The New York Times, August 25, 1991

VERTICAL APPLICATIONS

“We’ve never done vertical applications.  We haven’t and we won’t.  It’s not our expertise.”

Moderrn Healthcare, March 6, 1995

VIDEO

“We have only begun to tap the potential delivery of video to the personal computer to enrich the consumer experience.”

The Washington Post, May 17, 1995

VISION

“I’m going to make my first million by the time I’m 25.”

Recalled by High School Classmate Bill Hucks in Hard Drive by James Wallace and Jim Erickson

“This is a great time to apply vision.”

U S WEST magazine, Winter, 1990

“I usually have a pretty clear picture of the next four to five years.  But in ten years, this industry can take you by surprise.”

U S WEST magazine, Winter 1990

“I think that our industry has to come to a common vision”

Marketing Computers, September 1991

“Part of our charter when we started in 1975 was “a computer on every desk and in every home”  To get this kind of machine on every desk in every home, you need something compelling and enticing, something like TV, with high-quality sound, yet has the interactivity and specificity of a computer.

Source lost

“The amount of opportunity for new products in this digital future and the role that Microsoft can play in creating that and meeting that, is more obvious now than its ever been.   It’s our original vision….., because there are just so many exciting opportunities out in front of us.”

Computer Reseller News, November 16, 1992
“If we made a mistake in [the original vision] it was that we forgot to say and in every pocket and in every car and a bunch of other places as well.  So we would only amend it to make it more outrageous– 18 years after it was first uttered and viewed with some derision at least by the broad computer industry.

Boston Globe, October 20, 1993

“I think I have vision, and I’d like to be seen as a leader who says, ‘Let’s go do it’ and then sets an example of energy and enthusiasm.”

Computer Reseller News, June 22, 1992

“When people say ‘Bill’s vision” they don’t mean ideas that are all my ideas. I’m drawing very heavily on other people’s stuff….It’s a shorthand for Microsoft’s vision, as articulated by the person who gets to pull it all together and make the choices.”

Infoworld, August 3, 1992.

“Microsoft employees have a sense that I provide a unified direction.  They like the succinctness of that.”

Electronic Business, August 15, 1988

“Having a vision is one thing.  Understanding technology’s another.  But you don’t know what to build unless you have a sense of other areas.  The ideal is where you have one person who loves to go to computer stores, see how things are going on, talk to customers and [then] sit down with the engineers and say ‘Can we do this?  Shouldn’t we be figuring out how to do that?’  That’s where the leverage is.”

Advertising Age, December 19,1994

“Our original vision of a computer on every desk must be amended to include a computer in every pocket, car and wallet.”

Chief Executive, July, 1994

“Just a ton of people are speculating about the future.  That’s pretty easy as long as you set the time frame out far enough.”

USA Today, July 18, 1994

“Being a visionary is trivial.  Being a CEO is hard.  All you have to do to be a visionary is to give the old ‘MIPS to the moon’ speech — everything will be everywhere, everything will be converged.  Everybody knows that.  that’s different from being the CEO of a company and seeing where the profits are.”

Source Lost

“The real vision that was central to Microsoft came that year, in ‘71, as Paul Allen and I were talking about the microprocessor.  Everyone up to then considered computers as an organizational tool, not something to sit on your desks.  Then we thought, not only are these computers very interesting, but they can be very, very cheap.  Which means they can be used by an individual, not just a company.”

Business Times, January 21, 1995

“Microsoft was founded based on my vision of a personal computer on every desk and in every home.  We’ve never waivered from that vision.”

Encarta, Willian H. Gates III

WARNOCK, JOHN

“We made John Warnock cry.”

Gates, Manes and Andrews

WEALTH

“I Paul and I want to get rich quick, we’d issue a bunch of stock to the public.  But we want to continue to grow and advance the state of computer software art more than we want to get rich.”

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 19, 1981

“I’ve got suitable clothes and I can have someone keep my house clean.  [Dwelling on my wealth is] stupid.  The company is a high-tech stock, and high-tech stocks are volatile.  The price is not a reflection of the contribution we’re making.”

Fortune, October 12, 1987

“I don’t feel any different.  I don’t look up the stock price and go through the multiplications.”

United Press International, October 13, 1987
“Let’s say the stock price dropped in half or a third.  Big deal.  I don’t have a short term interest in that issue.   I have an infinite amount of money.  I would still order the same hamburger.  Believe me I am not thinking about the stock price, I’m thinking about software products.”

USA Today, March 25, 1991

“Billionaire is, uh, mathematically accurate, but it has a tendency to imply that the reason I like my job has something to do with the economic value it’s created, which would be completely off the mark.”

Playboy, September 1991

“I never really expected we would be in this position.  The last time Jim Manzi and I really talked at length was at the PS/2 introduction in April 1987.  Jim was saying to me, God, Bill your company is fully valued.  And I said to him, God, Jim, you’re right.  You know it is fully valued!”

Forbes, December 7, 1992

“95 percent of [my wealth] I’m just going to give away.”

Playboy, July, 1994

“I don’t own dollars.  I own Microsoft stock.  So it’s only through multiplication that you convert what you own into some scary number.”

Playboy, July, 1994

WEDDING

“If I had known the circumstances of your arrest, I would not have approved of it.  I sincerely regret the way you ere treated while you were on assignment on Lanai, as well as any harm done to your reputation.

The Seattle Times, April 13, 1995
WINDOWS

“This isn’t just another software product — it’s a change in the foundation that people built software on top of.”

The Computer Entrepreneurs, quote from the end of 1983

“[Windows] is the center of the universe for us now.”

Associated Press, July 27, 1990

“[I’ve] gone hard core around the bend evangelizing Windows.”

January 29, 1990

“The key thing to remember is that Windows is built on DOS.  If they think Windows is dead, wait until they see the new version.”

Lotus, January, 1990

“Windows is the center of the Universe for us right now because it represents such a tremendous opportunity.”

United Press International, July 26,1990

“We think everything lends itself to a Windows format.”

The New York Times, June 9, 1991

“In many ways, the Windows environment has been very hostile to the developer.  We are going to see over 10 times as many Windows applications written in the nest year as we have in the years past.”

The New York Times, June 9, 1991

PC Week, February 16, 1992

“If you look at Windows now, it’s not that we’ve evolved to be more graphical, it’s [that] the capability of the chip and the resolution of the screen [have improved].”

“Windows is a worldwide phenomenon.”

The Associated Press, April 7, 1992

Computerworld, June 22, 1992

“When we were working on Windows in 1981, I would have said, ‘Well, that’s a product that’s going to have a huge impact in about two or three years.’  In a certain sense, in terms of its most dramatic impact, [Windows] would be viewed as something of not much importance by most in the software industry until 1990.  So, I guess you could say that I was working on a product that was nine years away from really changing the business.”

Computer Reseller News, November 16, 1992

“Our strategy is the Windows strategy: to connect Windows to all the existing systems, to get more applications and tools running on windows.  Windows NT is the industrial strength version of Windows.”

Computerworld, November 1993

“The operating system is an engine of innovation.  Stop that, and you stop the industry …. Is Windows a regulated business?  Can any competitor stop anything they want to stop?

Computer Reseller News, july 31, 1995

WINDOWS NT

“I think that we will get all the mainframe and workstation applications moved to Windows NT, so people won’t have to make choices like they did in the past.”

PC Week, April 13, 1992

“Windows NT is a form of Unix as much as any different Unix that  is offered.”

Datamation

“It’s important to differentiate our desktop strategy — where we see Windows being pervasive to the point where people can build corporate applications on the desktop strictly around Windows — versus our server strategy — where we see a variety of servers, whether it’s minicomputers, mainframes, UNIX, OS/2.  We see that people have a lot of those, and we need to get at them…. Windows NT will be one of those servers.”

Datamation, July 15, 1992

“I do expect over time that NT will be available on all the popular chip architectures.”

PC Week, July 20, 1992
“If you use a computer in your rec room or kitchen, you probably don’t need NT.”

Chicago Tribune, May 25, 1993

“We have modest initial expectations for Windows NT sales compared with the overall sales of Windows.”

Business Week, May 31, 1993

“Windows NT represents nothing less than a fundamental change in the way all companies can address their computing requirements.”

The Scotsman, June 1, 1993

“Businesses now have a single platform on which to deploy client-server solutions and personal productivity applications.  They can downsize business-critical applications, provide high-performance personal computing and integrate their existing desktop applications.  They will be able to pull together corporate data from all over the company to solve business problems and meet competitive demands quickly.”

Business Wire, May 24, 1993

“I don’t see the [combination of NT and Windows 95] happening any time in the next three years.”

Infoworld, June 12, 1995

“[Windows NT is] not the mainstream.  People who think that are exagerating.  NT’s success is way in front of us.”

Computer Reseller News, July 31, 1995

WINDOWS 95

“We believe with Windows 95 we will see the biggest instaled base upgrade the industry has ever seen.”

Wall Street Journal, March 22, 1995

“Our priority is to have a really first-class product.  We realize that it is not just something that affects Microsoft, but the entire industry.”

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, April 25, 1995

“I don’t expect the injunction.  I expect [Windows 95] to come out August 24.  We are manufacturing a million copies a week, and we expect everything tp go according to plan.”

News Tribune, July 29, 1995

“MSN is not bundled with Windows 95.  All we are doing is using Windows 95 as a distribution mechanism,”

Interactive Week, July 31, 1995

“You may have noticed that we’ve had some good publicity about Windows 95.”

Interactive Week, July 31, 1995

“We think [an injunction is] quite unlikely, but don’t quite know what they are doing.”

USA Today, July 31, 1995

WOMEN IN THE COMPUTER INDUSTRY

“The fact that nearly 90 percent of computer science graduates are male tends to stack the deck in favor of male-dominated senior management teams in the computer industry.  there is no quick fix to this situation, but government mandates hold little hope.  At Microsoft, approximately 40 percent of our work force is female, and it’s the quality of results that speak for the person.”

Working Woman, November, 1992

WORD

“If you’re trying to write the most popular word processor for the IBM PC, That’s world class competition.”

Source lost, 1986

“Word for Windows is the Word Processor for the 1990’s.  Traditionally, word processors have been standalone applications in a multi-tasking environment. Word processors are evolving into tools that are integrated with other office systems and with other applications to solve specific end-user needs.”

Business Wire, October 31, 1989

WORRYING

“My job is to worry.  Pick any year and you’ll find 10 people going for my throat.”

PC Week, July 29, 1993
“In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself.  Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.”

Playboy, July, 1994

YOUNG PROGRAMMERS

“I have always felt that only young people could develop software for personal computers–people with no tie, working with a Coke and a hamburger– only such people could make a personal computer adequate for other young people.”

{check to see if Gates said this, could be an NEC official}  Wall Street Journal, August 27, 1986

XENIX

“I want to get in on the ground floor of the 16-bit market now with our Xenix operating system and follow it up with a whole lot of support software.”

Electronics, April 21, 1981