Microsoft Quotes

"In a manner that would have left the robber barons of the late 19th century gaping in absolute awe, Microsoft is approaching something unprecedented: a monopoly that could well own the choke points of tomorrow's commerce and communications."

-DAN GILLMOR, San Jose Mercury News Computing Editor

"Most curious is the desire to standardize on one OS and one CPU architecture. Depending on a single company for all future OS innovation and on another for all future CPU innovation would be tragic for an industry driven by technology."

-TOM R. HALFHILL, Sr. Editor, BYTE Magazine

"You could argue that Microsoft is the product of clever strategy, mediocre technology, and a hell of a lot of increasing returns."

-BRIAN ARTHURE, Economist

"I think anybody who is savvy about this market knows that Microsoft is getting away with stuff it probably shouldn't get away with."

-GEOFFREY MOORE, Marketing Guru

"With the exception of the Justice Department's opposition to Microsoft's proposed buyout of Intuit Inc. -- a deal that even this gang couldn't ignore -- the antitrust division has played charades with the public interest. The apparent policy: keeping Microsoft under constant surveillance when it comes to innocuous activities -- and, of course, finding nothing untoward -- while ignoring the company's more obviously anti-competitive moves."

-DAN GILLMOR, Computing Editor, San Jose Mercury News

"If Microsoft had been the innovative company that it calls itself, it would have taken the opportunity to take a radical leap beyond the Mac, instead of producing a feeble, me-too implementation.

...

"The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place."

-DOUGLAS ADAMS, Author, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [Click here for the full text.]

"Microsoft's ability and willingness to control proprietary standards that span the world's computing resources is in fact dangerous."

-JOHN BLACKFORD, Editor, Computer Shopper [Click here for the full text.]

"The government has gone 'soft on Microsoft' and failed to inhibit fundamentally monopolistic practices that are hurting consumers, not just competitors. In particular, Microsoft is stifling innovation by engaging in predatory pricing and the acquisition of competitors."

-AUDRIE KRAUSE, Executive Director, NetAction

"You'll read that Bill Gates envisioned it all, which is a crock. He didn't invision any of it. Nobody did."

-ED ROBERTS, Inventor of the PC and Gates' First Boss

"There won't be anything we won't say to people to try and convince them that our way is the way to go."

-BILL GATES [News Media Catch Bill Gates in a Lie]

"The software empire that was built on a C:\ prompt, Microsoft has done for software what McDonald's did for the hamburger."

-PC MAGAZINE, June 1997

"What P.T. Barnum earned by convincing everybody in the nation that they just had to buy a ticket to see Jumbo the elephant amounts to peanuts compared to the billions that Bill Gates of Microsoft has taken in from sales of Windows, a big, expensive, and (in its early versions) clunky imitation of the Macintosh graphical user interface. What made so many people rush to buy Windows? Gates made it seem like the only relief in sight from the cumbersome DOS program he had foisted upon his customers in the first place."

-THEODORE ROSZAK, The Cult of Information

"Windows 95 is merely a spiffed up version of the same old DOS and Windows ... Windows 95's incremental capabilities, like the new GUI and support for Win32 applications, have been, in effect, grafted onto those ancient DOS/Win3.x roots."

-Marketing Computers, February 1995

"I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time."

-BILL GATES (shortly before abandoning OS/2)

"Anybody who thinks a little 9,000-line program [Java] that's distributed free and can be cloned by anyone is going to affect anything we do at Microsoft has his head screwed on wrong."

-BILL GATES, to George Gilder responding to Java (shortly before licensing Java)

"My key messages about the future -- that everybody will be connected, and that computers will see, listen and learn -- have all been said before by other people."

-BILL GATES, The Road Ahead

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."

-BILL GATES, 1981

"Well, to create a new standard, it takes something that's not just a little bit different. It takes something that's really new and really captures people's imagination. And the Macintosh, of all the machines I've ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard."

-BILL GATES

"The next generation of interesting software will be made on a Macintosh, not an IBM PC."

-BILL GATES, 1984

"Microsoft bought MS-DOS from a Seattle company, and it was called QDOS then (Quick and Dirty Operating System). Some say it is not quick anymore, but the rest stays the same."

-WILSON ROBERTO AFONSO