Microsoft QuotesMicrosoft Quotes
Because there are lots of quotes here, my favorite ones are in this color. You can also get quotes on a specific category:
| Microsoft's Rise to Power | Theft of Intellectual Property | Poor Product Quality | Microsoft's Destructive Monopoly |
-BILL GATES, 1983, Hinting at at his strategy
"If one company dominates everything, it's dangerous. You kill innovation and you lose the capacity to create alternatives. Ultimately, that isn't good for the consumer or the country."
-SAMUEL MILLER, U.S. Justice Department
"There are people who don't like capitalism, and there are people who don't like PCs, but there's no one who likes the PC who doesn't like Microsoft."
-BILL GATES, arrogantly (I like capitalism, I like the PC, I don't like Microsoft)
"Microsoft's biggest and most dangerous contribution to the software industry may be the degree to which it has lowered user expectations."
-ESTHER SCHINDLER, OS/2 Magazine
"When people understand what Microsoft is up to, they're outraged."
-TIM O'REILLY, President, O'Reilly & Associates
"Microsoft has that certain confidence that comes from enjoying a monopoly and being very good at its business, which leads it to believe that it can do anything. Microsoft and its employees now think it is indeed the Master of the Universe."
-STEWART ALSOP, Fortune Magazine
"I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter."
-NICHOLAS PETRELEY, Sr. Editor, InfoWorld
"I take much of what [Bill Gates] says with a grain of salt because Bill would like to be ... the center of gravity for the whole world. He's totally dedicated to his work and will do virtually anything to kill the rest of us ... Bill Gates can be your partner and be your enemy at the same time."
-ROBERT ALLEN, Chairman, AT&T
"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
"... Microsoft has managed to make me feel like a computer neophyte groping for answers that should be readily apparent. Indeed, I feel as though I may have committed myself ... to what Novell CEO Eric Schmidt once called the Microsoft Roach Motel--software that's easy to get into and hard to get out of ... I feel as if I am fighting Microsoft for the right to use my own computer efficiently."
-STEWART ALSOP, Fortune Magazine
"Gates and company talk about total cost of ownership and never once take responsibility for the fact that Microsoft has created an operating system that encourages sloppy practices and continuously degraded performance. This becomes obvious only when you spend time on a new system that seems twice as fast as a 200-MHz Pentium but can't possibly be that fast."
-JOHN DVORAK, PC Magazine
"My personal [Windows 95] workstation is so buggy that ... [it] crashes at least once or twice a day, usually in broad daylight for no apparent reason ... The answer, I'm sure, is to get a new hard drive, format it, install the latest version of Windows on it, and reinstall everything important from the old drive."
-BRIAN LIVINGSTON, InfoWorld Magazine
"If [the Microsoft Network] were a car, it would be recalled in a minute, so here we have an installation program that destroys Windows, takes days to install, removes vital files when uninstalled and isn't reliable when installed. MSN has cost its customers business, time, and at least one round-trip airline ticket."
-JIM LOUDERBACK, Editorial Director, PC Week Magazine [Click here for the full text.]
"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 (shortly before licensing Java)
"They're [Microsoft] being rather disingenuous about a number of things. They've always had a very casual attitude towards security and viruses. All of their systems are just designed to host viruses. I mean, it's like a petri dish with the best culture you could buy. And all the issues about portability, of course, don't matter in the Microsoft world because there's only one platform. I mean the license-there's the [letter of intent between Microsoft and Sun] that they signed. It was just about running applets inside the Internet Explorer. Basically just sort of extending their Web browser."
-GOSLING, Inventor of Java, Sun Microsystems
"The strategic goal here is getting Windows CE standards into every device we can. We don't have to make money over the next few years. We didn't make money on MS-DOS in its first release. If you can get into this market at $10, take it."
-BILL GATES
"They [Microsoft] are trying to use an existing monopoly to retard introduction of new technology."
-GARY REBACK, Antitrust Lawyer
"[Microsoft is] a potential threat to our nation's economic well-being."
-STANLEY SPORKIN, Judge
"I don't think that the world needs another market dominated by Microsoft. I have enormous respect for the company, but I really get nervous about markets where one vendor has such power."
-GEOFFREY MOORE, Marketing Guru
"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
"Sometimes I think it's unfortunate that we compete the way we do."
-Anonymous Microsoft Middle Manager
"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
"Microsoft is a company that is desperately resisting change. Its strategy is two-tiered. One is to desperately hang onto what it's got: making the operating system important even though we're moving into a world where the OS becomes steadily less important. At the same time, it is desperately looking for the next high-growth field that it'll make money on. So when the OS finally does start to decline, it will find a new field. It's targeted two areas: one is media and the other is services. Everything it's doing is going into that. It is a classic case of a change-hating company; it is desperately trying to retard change."
-PAUL SAFFO, Institute for the Future
"Microsoft has gotten so big that it can put out a Preview that will install itself without checking first to see if it has expired. The message here is that Microsoft's time is worth more than yours ... no start-up company could get away with being that arrogant."
-JERRY POURNELLE, Byte Magazine
"The problem (and the genius) regarding Microsoft's products is bloat. Microsoft's penchant for producing overweight code is not an accident. It's the business model for the company ... While [bloatware has] made Bill Gates the world's richest guy, it's made life miserable for people who have to use these computers and expect them to run without crashing or dying."
-JOHN DVORAK, PC Magazine
"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.]
"Let's clear up some confusion right now. Here are some of the features the [Microsoft] Zero Administration NetPC will include: automatic pre-boot configuration; nightly maintenance; automatic upgrades, scans, and policy enforcement; remote problem resolution; security restrictions; diagnostics for monitoring and predicting failures; a remote wake utility, Web-based management, messaging-based management, and developer kits. Here are the administration features built into the Network Computer: a network connector. You tell me which one is the 'zero-administration,' ultimate network-computing device."
-NICHOLAS PETRELEY, Sr. Editor, InfoWorld
"The best thing about Windows 95, of course, is the mountains of software designed specifically for it. There are programs to compress memory, recover a damaged registry, remove the heaps of unneeded files Windows accumulates, tune sluggish performance, and undo a few of the many problems that can occur when installing new software, to mention but a few. There is even software designed to intercept system faults to improve your chances of saving your work before you have to reboot."
-NICHOLAS PETRELEY, Sr. Editor, InfoWorld
"We have no intention of shipping another bloated OS and shoving it down the throats of our users."
-PAUL MARITZ, Vice President, Microsoft
"It's Microsoft versus mankind with Microsoft having only a slight lead."
-LARRY ELLISON, CEO, Oracle
"A bug in Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) 3.0 can give malicious hackers an opportunity to bring the Web server crashing down."
-InfoWorld
"I go out and buy a copy of WinCable 2003 ... naturally, WinCable 2003 won't install on my General Instruments WinTV-compatible. Unfortunately, Microsoft's technical support can't help me because they haven't yet been trained on WinCable 2003. So I have to figure out for myself that I need a flash update to the BIOS on the cable card in my WinTV. I use my neighbor's WinTV to download the file. After the BIOS upgrade, I get WinCable 2003 installed ..."
-NICHOLAS PETRELEY, Sr. Editor, InfoWorld
"I was startled by the number of people who periodically reinstall Windows and their applications after backing up their documents and then formatting their C: drives. I've heard of individuals doing this, but I didn't realize how many corporations routinely perform this procedure for all users. One IS manager does it every 95 days. (So that's what the 95 stands for ... )"
-BRIAN LIVINGSTON, InfoWorld [Click here for the full text.]
"If you don't know where you want to go, we'll make sure you get taken."
-Japanese Microsoft ad slogan translated back into English
"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.]
"'[S]trategic partnerships' are means to a single end: to enable Microsoft to learn enough about particular businesses eventually to dominate them. James Gleick, the respected New York Times journalist, has argued that Microsoft will soon become the biggest public policy issue facing the U.S. government, and he is right."
-JOHN NAUGHTON, Columnist, London Observer
"Appeasement, said Winston Churchill, consists of being nice to a crocodile in the hope that he will eat you last. At the moment, the biggest crocodile in the world is Microsoft, and everybody is busy sucking up to it."
-JOHN NAUGHTON, Columnist, London Observer
" I am convinced that if General Motors could eliminate [Microsoft] Office from their entire company, they could get the 1999 cars out next year at half price"
-SCOTT McNEALY, CEO, Sun Microsystems
"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
"Nothing is worse than a piece of hardware designed by a software company with a monopoly."
-STEWART ALSOP, Fortune Magazine
"We had 12.9 gigabytes of PowerPoint slides on our network. And I thought, 'What a huge waste of corporate productivity.' So we banned it. And we've had three unbelievable record-breaking fiscal quarters since we banned PowerPoint. Now, I would argue that every company in the world, if it would just ban PowerPoint, would see their earnings skyrocket. Employees would stand around going, 'What do I do? Guess I've got to go to work.'"
-SCOTT McNEALY, CEO, Sun Microsystems
"What we'll all end up doing if Netscape doesn't play better is we will have instantiated the Microsoft Network. We'll just call it the Internet."
-GEOFFREY MOORE, Marketing Guru
"Microsoft now is in 40 percent of American households. If they can somehow insert themselves in as a piece of infrastructure in the next generation of televisions, they could go to 100 percent penetration of American households and eventually the world."
-BARRY RANDALL, Aanalyst, Dain Bosworth
"[Microsoft] is the fox that takes you across the river and then eats you."
-PETE PETERSON, Former Executive, WordPerfect
"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' Former Boss
"... Microsoft has taken a perfectly good standard, broken it, and then told us that we have to buy expensive programs that support the broken interface rather than use the free ones that come with all operating systems in the world except Microsoft operating systems."
-ALLEN HOLUB, Programmer and Columnist
"[Paul] Allen was easy to work with, but Gates acted like a spoiled kid, which is what he was."
-ED ROBERTS, Inventor of the PC and Gates' Former Boss
"Microsoft wants to control the operating system of the living room like it controls the operating system of the computer."
-GARY ARLEN, President, Arlen Communications
"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
"Paul Newman -- not to be confused with the famous actor -- gets very steamed up whenever you mention Microsoft. A veteran technical director with UK-based systems integrator Pacific Systems International, Newman has spent 20 years earning his bread and butter putting together computer systems for giant corporate clients. 'Our whole company, and our clients' companies, are stuffed with Microsoft products, and we don't like it,' he growls. 'We all got into Windows NT, and that was a big disaster. This NT thing has got no clothes.'"
-Information Strategy Magazine
"In the time it takes me to boot up my Windows 95 PC in the morning, Big Bill's portfolio gains a cool million or so in value. The crime of it all seems obvious to no one but me."
-SKINNY DuBAUD, C|Net
"First of all, as good as Win NT appears to be, I'm not sure I want a phone company switching to it to run it's network. And heck, Microsoft has never gotten DOS -- a bloated file loader posing as an OS -- to work bug free. Now this? Let's not forget that Microsoft's own mega-Web site was seriously infected by a Win NT bug this summer. If I find out that Microsoft is selling fly-by-wire software to Airbus Industries or Boeing, then I'm going back to rail travel."
-JOHN DVORAK, PC Magazine
"Ohio Gov. George Voinovich, incoming chairman of the [National Governors'] association, said he would try to convene a conference within the next six months to a year to focus in more detail on how state governments can use computer technology more efficiently. 'Microsoft would like to sponsor something like that,' Gates said."
-Associated Press
"'Are you going to bury Netscape?' asked a computer-trade reporter based in Russia. Another reporter asked why anyone, after receiving a built-in browser with their operating system, would bother to buy Netscape's $59 browser.
"'We do think it's a point of differentiation ... that for customers you provide a single solution,' said [Microsoft] product manager Yusuf Mehdi. 'It's a reason people will choose Internet Explorer over Netscape Navigator.'"
-SEATTLE TIMES, 26 June 1997
"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
"Cash-strapped libraries that accept the millions Gates is waving at them may find themselves acting out the Microsoft billionaire's dim vision of our electronic future. ... [B]efore they take anything from the chief executive, they'd better examine the gift very carefully for strings. After all, what sort of public libraries can we expect from a man who calls people 'users' and to whom War and Peace and Gilligan's Island are both 'content?'"
-MARGIE WYLIE, C|Net
"Stop Microsoft through government antitrust enforcement now or say goodbye to new products and the openness of the Internet. Gates will own everything, and collect a fee on every imaginable product and service in cyberspace from home finance to a virtual visit to the Louvre. And forget about getting these products and services someplace else. Competitors won't exist."
-GARY REBACK, Antitrust Attorney
"[Bill Gates] not only wants to win, but he wants to kill the competition. He wants to bury the wounded."
-JAMES WALLACE, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
"I hope we shall ... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
-THOMAS JEFFERSON
"[Bill Gates] definitely scares me. He embodies the very cultural and economic forces that have transformed American mass media from the freest and most diverse in the world to among the most cautious, greedy, and useless."
-JON KATZ, Hotwired
"Every time you turn on your new car, you're turning on 20 microprocessors. Every time you use an ATM, you're using a computer. Every time I use a settop box or game machine, I'm using a computer. The only computer you don't know how to work is your Microsoft computer, right?"
-SCOTT McNEALY, CEO, Sun Microsystems
"We get a million calls a month saying, 'hey, this product is confusing.'"
-BILL GATES
"Although we disagree with Mr. Gates about the best way to read magazines, we do agree that sometimes the old way is still the best. For example, we generally prefer typewriters to Microsoft Word, and we find that our sturdy abacus crashes less often than Excel."
-MICHAEL KINSLEY, Editor, Slate (Microsoft-owned online publication), after Bill Gates admitted that he preffered print magazines over online magazines
"Forcing PC manufacturers to take one Microsoft product as a condition of buying a monopoly product like Windows 95 is not only a violation of the court order, but it's plain wrong."
-JANET RENO, Attorney General
"Microsoft is scared to death of us -- they're just too damn stupid to notice."
-MICHAEL COWPLAND, CEO, Corel
"[I]f the Java alliance were to topple Microsoft's dominance, Microsoft would lose the aura of invincibility and would be forced to compete very hard on the basis of pricing, quality, and service. The bottom line is Microsoft needs to, wants to, and will fight Java tooth and nail."
-SCOTT WINKLER, Gartner Group
"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
-WINSTON CHURCHILL
"We need your fax number in order to respect your wishes not to receive unsolicited faxes."
-Microsoft Web Page
"Why can't Microsoft solve [technical problems]? Complacency. Microsoft has no competition to speak of. No incentive to hurry. No urgency to its mission. If it misses its target by, oh say ... two years, what are we going to do about it? Put OS/2 on our machines out of protest? Throw our $3,000 computers away and buy Macs instead? Throw our software away and switch to Unix workstations?
Of course not. We're stuck. We're screwed."
-JESSE BERST, ZDNet AnchorDesk
"Microsoft is going to argue that since most users are now familiar with the way a Web browser works, the browser will be an easier interface for novices to use in finding stuff on their own computers. And that might be true. But if it is true, it's an admission of awful truth for Microsoft: It's saying, 'After all these years and versions of Windows we still haven't figured out how to make personal computing easy enough for an intelligent person to learn easily.'"
- SCOTT ROSENBERG, Salon Magazine
"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
"Only Microsoft would have the temerity to pick your pocket and ask you to thank it for the favor.
-JAI SINGH, C|net
"The idea that people know what they want is wrong. They need to be pulled through the Web."
-LAURA JENNINGS, VP, Microsoft Network [Click here for the full text.]
"The most important thing for the Web is to stay ahead of Microsoft, ... anything that slows down the Web reaching ubiquity allows Microsoft to catch up. If Microsoft catches up, it's far worse than the fact the Web can't do word processing. Those things can be fixed later. There's a window now that will close. If you don't cross the finish line in the next two years, Microsoft will own the Web. And that will be the end of it."
-STEVE JOBS, WIRED 4.02
"Microsoft should look in the mirror before they try to explain to people how open processes ought to run ..."
-SCOTT McNEALY, CEO, Sun Microsystems
"If you can't make it good, make it look good."
-BILL GATES, 1995
"Every single thing that Microsoft says and does is designed to protect their monopoly."
-ALAN BARATZ, President, JavaSoft
"Like medieval peasants, computer manufacturers and millions of users are locked in a seemingly eternal lease with their evil landlord, who comes around every two years to collect billions of dollars of taxes in return for mediocre services."
-MARK HARRIS, Electronics Times
"If you look at the history of Microsoft in the operating system business, you might conclude that the company doesn't like its own products. It always seems to be saying it has some new operating system that will solve the problems of whatever it is selling at the time. Now that Microsoft is selling Windows 95, it has two other operating systems it thinks are better: Windows NT and Windows CE. NT is better because it won't fail as often. CE is better because you don't have to invest as much in hardware for it to be useful."
-STEWART ALSOP, Fortune Magazine
"Our engineers were treated like shit by the Microsoft people. They were forced to suffer daily indignities in the face of these obnoxiously arrogant programmers. One of my friend referred to them as the Hitler Youth."
BOB METCALFE, 3Com
"The reason we come up with new versions is not to fix bugs. It's absolutely not. It's the stupidest reason to buy a new version I ever heard."
-BILL GATES
"We've noticed the same things. Around here, though, you learn to ignore that kind of thing and keep your eyes on your own monitor. Sometimes it feels more like we're working at the CIA, instead of a software company."
-Two Microsoft employees on anti-competitive behavior [Click here and then here for the full text.]
"If you can't beat them ... steal their best ideas and outspend them."
-JESSE BERST, Editorial Director, ZDNet AnchorDesk, on Microsoft's business strategy.
"There is a fantasy in Redmond that Microsoft products are innovative, but this is based entirely on a peculiar confusion of the words 'innovative' and 'successful.' Microsoft products are successful -- they make a lot of money -- but that doesn't make them innovative, or even particularly good."
-ROBERT X. CRINGELY
"If Microsoft is innovative in any area, it is in creating new forms of intimidation."
-RALPH NADER, Consumer Activist
"Microsoft does not innovate. It buys, imitates, or steals. It makes things difficult for software developers, and thus eventually for users."
-RICHARD BRANDSHAFT, San Jose Mercury-News
"Microsoft now has the ability to virtually annihilate any competitive product it wants by bringing it into the next version of Windows. There's evidence that they are aggressively seeking to extend that monopoly to the Internet, and policy-makers have to be concerned about it."
-ORRIN HATCH, U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee
"Microsoft does not like negative or even objective press coverage and they have a tendency to be a bully about it. If something appears that they don't like, they have the ability to punish the publication.
-BOB INGLE, President, Knight-Ridder New Media
"A few weeks ago, a member of the audience at a [Bill] Gates speech in San Francisco asked simply this of the world's richest businessman: 'Can you make a list of things you won't be doing? ... I just want a little piece of something to pass on to my kids 20 years from now.'"
-San Jose Mercury News, 26 Oct 97
"This is not about browsers. Our competitors are trying to create an alternative platform to Windows."
-BRAD SILVERGBERG, Senior Vice President, Microsoft
"Microsoft has this belief that if they don't control everything, they will control nothing. They have a total zero-sum view. With their 90 percent control of the operating system, which generates spectacular profit margins, they can use the money from this monopolistic position to leverage their control into one area after another."
-RALPH NADER, Consumer Activist
"Focus: 'But there are bugs in any version which people would really like to have fixed.'
Gates: 'No! There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed. ... Maybe you're not using it properly.'"
-Focus Magazine, 10/23/95
"Nobody lives under the watchful eye of Microsoft's Ministry of Truth more than we journalists. Write a story that doesn't spin in the right direction and next thing you know there's a battalion of information officers on your doorstep just dying to gently educate you on the 'facts.' What usually ensues is a technically perfect soft-shoe around the truth that is so hypnotic, you'd turn your own mother in for pinching a copy of Word by the time they're done."
-Anonymous
"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
"Interviewer: Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer?
Gates: No, the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system."
-PROGRAMMERS AT WORK, Microsoft Press
"How did you make the most technically unsuccessful product to be the biggest marketing success?"
-A student to Bill Gates
"No one -- not Microsoft, another company or the government -- should be allowed to deprive Americans of real choices in how they spend their money."
-BOB DOLE, Retired U.S. Senator
"They're [Microsoft] hell-bent on dominating the entire information infrastructure of the world, and it scares the living daylights out of me."
-GARY REBACK, Attorney, Netscape Communications
"[Bill] Gates is trying to make sure that he has a proprietary position in controlling the tools that allow you and me to access information. And that's profitable by definition. How would you like to own the printing press?"
-CHRISTOPHER DIXON, Media Analyst, PaineWebber
"To heck with Janet Reno."
-STEVE BALLMER, Microsoft
"We are challenging old and established businesses like newspapers, travel agencies, automobile dealers, entertainment guides, travel guides, Yellow Page directories, magazines, and over time many other areas ... We must devise ways of working with them or winning away their customers and revenue streams ... We must be aggressive."
-Microsoft Internal Memorandum
"To hear Microsoft tell it, you'd think the Computer Age had changed the rules of commerce. Microsoft Chairman and CEO Bill Gates has argued that the government is trying to structure an industry it knows little about. This is nonsense. What Gates is attempting is as old as the efforts to monopolize the steel, rail, oil, and telephone industries in the robber baron era."
-ROBERT KUTTNER, Business Week
"The question is, are we looking forward to the Information Age, or will it be the Microsoft Age? It's kind of like Microsoft vs. mankind -- and mankind is the underdog."
-LARRY ELLISON, CEO, Oracle
"This is very Borg-like. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated."
-SAMUEL GOODHOPE, Texas Attorney General's office
"The difference between John D. Rockefeller and Bill Gates is Gates recognizes no boundries to his monopolistic drive."
-RALPH NADER, Consumer Advocate
"PC Makers won't even talk to us. They're scared to death of Microsoft."
-SCOTT McNEALY, CEO, Sun Microsystems
"This kind of product-forcing is an abuse of monopoly power -- and we will seek to put an end to it."
-JOEL KLEIN, Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, on Microsoft's coercive bundling of Internet Explorerer with Windows 95
"Whatever the general public may think, it's easy for me to sum up opinions of knowledgeable industry types: Microsoft is a bully. Microsoft is trying to hoodwink nontechnical people. Microsoft is showing disrespect to [Judge Jackson] and to the federal government. At the very least, Microsoft is splitting hairs, when in the past it has always focused on core issues."
-STEWART ALSOP, Fortune Magazine
"The ever-growing size of software applications is what makes Moore's Law possible: 'If we hadn't brought your computer to its knees, why would you go out and buy a new one?'"
-NATHAN MYHRVOLD, Group VP, Microsoft
"The best way to make people switch browsers is to make sure they have to, in order to get the best content."
-BRAD CHASE, VP, Microsoft
"I've never installed a major upgrade of any Microsoft product without running into major headaches."
-BRIAN LIVINGSTON, InfoWorld Magazine
"One of the biggest disappointments of 1996 was Windows 95. Though it was hyped s a 32-bit powerhouse, many companies simply ignored it and stayed with Windows 3.1. And who could blame them? Plug and Play is often plug and pray. Despite Microsoft's protestations to the contrary, Windows 95 does require more RAM. Those nifty 3D graphics drivers have yet to materialize, and to make matters worse, Windows 95 often runs slower than a comparable Windows 3.1 system. And 32 bit or not, it still crashes. A lot."
-CNet, Clunker Of The Year Awards 1996
"My personal gripe is Windows 95's pitiful support of TCP/IP. For all the noise that Microsoft has been making about the global connectedness of everything, it's not working very well. Almost any error condition on the connection results in having to restart the machine. Windows 95 puts on a brave face of keeping everything running, but in fact has been mortally wounded. Errors compound, long delays creep into applications, and things generally start falling apart. The correct response to any TCP problem, especially a lost connection, is to shut down all applications and reboot. A combination of bugs and clunky features makes work that should be easy painful and slow."
-BILL MACHRONE, PCWorld, September 23 1996
"My view of Microsoft is that they had two goals in the last 10 years: to copy the Macintosh and to copy Lotus' success in the applications business. And they accomplished those goals. Now, they're kind of lost. I've told Bill that I think it's in Microsoft's best interest if NeXT becomes successful because we'll give him something to copy for the rest of this decade."
-STEVE JOBS
"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
"You think it's a conspiracy by the networks to put bad shows on TV. But the shows are bad because that's what people want. It's not like Windows users don't have any power. I think they are happy with Windows, and that's an incredibly depressing thought."
-STEVE JOBS
"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
"If you don't know what you need Windows NT for, you don't need it."
-BILL GATES
"I still think that tens of millions of PC owners needlessly use a computer that is far less good than it should be."
-STEVE JOBS
"It's possible, you can never know, that the universe exists only for me."
-BILL GATES
"I totally agree that Microsoft products are not the best products."
-PRASANNA R. PRABHU, Microsoft [Click here for the full text.]
"Microsoft netted around $4 billion from OS sales last year -- you'd think they could spend a few bucks fixing it all. But it's more likely that O.J. will nab the real killer on the back nine at Pebble Beach than that Microsoft will voluntarily banish the heartache it puts users through."
-PAUL SOMERSON, PC Computing
"Both the PC industry and consumers alike would be better off with some modest limits on Microsoft's zeal."
-JOHN BLACKFORD, Editor, Computer Shopper [Click here for the full text.]
"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
"The time humanity loses waiting for Windows to boot must be in the thousands of person-years per year."
-MARK L. VAN NAME and BILL CATCHINGS, PC Week
"Microsoft Corp. claims that Windows 95 is a monolithic operating system that doesn't require DOS, but it doesn't take a software wizard to tell that it's really booting a perfectly usable, character-oriented version of DOS before it starts the GUI."
-BRETT GLASS, InfoWorld, October 23 1995
"Microsoft's goal is domination of the global information business, which is to say all business. Phone companies, cable television companies, post offices, stock exchanges, banks, treasury departments -- all of these are viewed by Microsoft as future competitors."
-ROBERT X. CRINGELY, PBS
"... We finally finished installing the new servers. For performance reasons, we decided to drop Microsoft Windows NT and return to Unix again. We did this while we were still on the temporary server and even that machine which was a Pentium-90 with only 32mb RAM out-performed the NT Server that was a Pentium-200MMX with 96mb RAM. Needless to say, if we were not sure about the move before then, we were afterwards."
-GAME SITES NETWORK WEB SITE NEWS, November 22 1997
"Asked how small software companies could compete on products that Microsoft wants to fold into Windows, [Microsoft chief operating officer Bob] Herbold told Bloomberg News they could either fight a losing battle, sell out to Microsoft or a larger company or 'not go into business to begin with.'"
-Newsweek
"The best system is the one with the fewest operating systems."
-BILL GATES
"The only thing I'd rather own than Windows is English or Chinese or Spanish, because then I could charge a $249 right to speak English. And I could charge you an upgrade fee when I add new letters like N and T."
-SCOTT McNEALY, CEO, Sun Microsystems
"Once he's explained his position, Bill sincerely can't understand why you don't want to do what he wants you to do. On the other hand, when you make the point that the best deals are 'I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine,' he's ready with a list of reasons and excuses why that isn't possible in this case. I rapidly came to realize that Bill found it difficult to meet another person half way."
-GILBERT AMELIO, On the Firing Line
"When you taunt the referee, he usually watches you even more closely. That's what happened to Microsoft, whose 'up yours!' attitude toward the Department of Justice has inspired investigators to dig even deeper. Now they're looking at Microsoft's efforts to take over Java. These relentless investigations sap Microsoft, and distract the DOJ from worse dangers such as Intel. And Microsoft's childish, insulting behavior is largely to blame."
-JESSE BERST, ZDNet AnchorDesk
"I wish Microsoft would spend more time fixing some of the glaring problems with Windows and less time throwing its weight around. For example, try shift-clicking to select a bunch (but not all) of the icons in a folder. It doesn't work properly in either Windows NT or Windows 95 (it works perfectly on a Mac), and my guess is, it never will."
-NICHOLAS BARAN, Editor-in-chief, Windows NT Systems magazine
"I wonder if in part why so many people are angry at Microsoft is not just because their products frustrate them so much, but also because this frustration is ignored. The computer makes people feel like they are dummies, when in fact it is the computer that is stupid."
-ROSALIND PICARD, Development Professor of Computers and Communication, NEC and Associate Professor of Media Technology, MIT
"Microsoft giving Sun advice on open standards is like W.C. Fields giving moral advice to the Morman Tabernacle Choir."
-SCOTT McNEALY, CEO, Sun
"You're either a friend or a foe, and you're an enemy now."
-STEVE BALLMER, Executive VP, Microsoft, to Pacific Bell CEO David Dorman after he signed a contract with Netscape
"We build confusing systems. That's true in the software and true in the hardware. The number of questions that we get on our support lines imply that we together haven't done a very good job. The questions I get from my mother imply we haven't done a very good job.
"Systems don't function out of the box. We actually did a few surveys where we went and bought systems, and we were surprised at how many, you plug them in and they actually didn't work. That's going to give us all a very bad reputation.
"If you upgrade the software or hardware, it's way too difficult."
-JIM ALLCHIN, Senior VP, Microsoft
"Last month, [Bill] Gates insisted to the U.S. Senate that his company is perennially vulnerable to new competitors snapping at its heels; this month he's holding the national well-being for ransom by insisting that any government interference with a single product release will unleash doom upon us all. Out of one side of its mouth, Microsoft tells us it's no monopoly; out of the other, it insists that it's the sole engine driving our economy. Well, Bill, which is it? You can't have it both ways."
-SCOTT ROSENBERG, Salon Magazine
"To make a claim that the failure to introduce new software, a new operating system on time, is going to affect the economy ... that's just unbelievable."
-DANIEL BACHMAN, Sr. Economist, WEFA Inc.
"If you look at Microsoft's successes over the years they have been rarely done by innovation. They bought DOS, they copied effectively a lot of what was in the Macintosh into Windows. In fact, Windows has gotten to look a lot more like that in 95 and 98. Windows NT is basically being built by the guy that built the VAX/VMS operating system. It is an Intel-based implementation of VMS. So where is the innovation? The innovation is the talking paper clip in Microsoft Office. Is that real innovation?"
-MITCHELL KERTZMAN, Chairman and CEO, Sybase
"Here's the worst part of what is happening: Because of the still unstable aspect of [Windows], the only people who can use computers and be sure they won't crash are those who buy factory-installed systems running something like Microsoft Works and never upgrade or add third-party software. For all practical purposes, this open system of ours has become proprietary. Proprietary to Microsoft."
-JOHN DVORAK, PC Magazine
"We are going to cut off [Netscape's] air supply. Everything they're selling, we're going to give away for free."
-BILL GATES, June 1996
"I do not feel we are going to win on our current path. We are not leveraging Windows from a marketing perspective ... We do not use our strength -- which is that we have an installed base of Windows and we have a strong OEM shipment channel for Windows."
-JAMES ALCHIN, Senior VP, Microsoft
"It seems clear that it will be very hard to increase browser market share on the merits of IE 4 alone. It will be more important to leverage the OS asset to make people use IE instead of Navigator."
-CHRISTIAN WILDFEUER, Microsoft
"... Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates called Windows 98 'a major software innovation' and declared that 'any government action that would derail or delay Windows 98 would hurt the American economy.'
"Whoa! That grandiose description, like the most rabid charges of the critics, doesn't jibe with what I've observed in testing a prerelease version of Windows 98 every day for about a month now. So far, it's fine, but it hasn't changed my computing experience dramatically, for better or worse. As for the economic impact of Windows 98, all I can say is that Microsoft itself has delayed its release for months, and bread lines haven't appeared ..."
-WALTER MOSSBERG, Wall Street Journal
"Nothing we are doing here will or should prevent Microsoft from innovating or competing on merits. What cannot be tolerated -- and what anti-trust laws forbid -- is the barrage of illegal, anti-competitive practices that Microsoft uses to destroy its rivals and to avoid competition."
-JOEL KLEIN, U.S. Department of Justice
"Netscape pollution must be eradicated."
-JEFF RAIKES, VP, Microsoft
"I don't know what anti-competitive means."
-STEVE BALLMER, VP, Microsoft
"The real problem for consumers is the bug-ridden nature of Windows 95 -- most shamelessly the update version, which has not had a single bug fix since the day it was released. Now that's a real problem for the nation's economic productivity."
-STEPHEN MANES, InformationWeek
"The real threat to entrepreneurial innovation is Microsoft's anticompetitive arrogance. Great discoveries in computing often come from small start-up companies. Yet with Microsoft's dominance, vast areas of the product market -- including but hardly limited to basic applications like word processors and spreadsheets -- are barren zones where venture capitalists and entrepreneurs fear to tread because Microsoft has staked a claim or is seen as likely to do so. It is a sad but telling fact that in the high-tech field, virtually no business plan will be financed today without a convincing answer to the question of what is to be done about competition from Microsoft."
-MITCHELL KAPOR, Founder, Lotus
"Microsoft allowed us to [change our startup screen], but we don't think we should have to ask permission every time we want to make some minor software modification. Windows is an operating system, not a religion."
-TED WAITT, Chairman, Gateway
"Not very long ago, free market enthusiasts were predicting that technology would stimulate so much innovation and competition that antitrust would be passe. But it turns out that technology also allows innovative forms of monopoly. How like the free market."
-ROBERT KUTTNER, MS Monopoly [Click here for the full text.]
"What Microsoft is doing is targeting specific markets it wants to be in, copying the products of the leading companies as close as it legally can and giving them away through one means or another, usually by bundling it as part of one existing product. It's called the 'fast follower' strategy. Microsoft is not about innovation. It never has been, and everyone knows that. Microsoft is fond of saying its products provide innovations to the consumer, but that claim certainly doesn't apply to Windows 98. ... Over the years, Apple, Amiga, IBM and others have been giving away minor operating system upgrades. But Microsoft is using its dominance of the operating system market to gouge consumers."
-RICHARD SHAFFER, Technologic Partners
"Technically, Windows is an 'operating system,' which means that it supplies your computer with the basic commands that it needs to suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, stop operating."
-DAVE BARRY, Mercury Center [Click here for the full text.]
"Anyone who's surprised at delays in Microsoft's shipping schedule hasn't been awake for the past few years."
-DWIGHT DAVID, Summit Strategies
"... about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
-BILL GATES [Click here for the full text.]
"Copy the product that others innovate, put them into Windows so they can't be unplugged, and then give it away for free."
-LARRY ELLISON, CEO, Oracle, on Microsoft's business strategy
"Bank of America Chief Executive David Coulter recently suggested that if he had one silver bullet, he would use it for Microsoft."
-LESLIE HELM, LA Times
"Despite three years of development, [Windows 98] is not a major upgrade, it's a collection of bug-fixes and other bits most companies would offer for free as part of regular maintenance ... Microsoft is fond of saying its products provide innovations to the consumer, but that claim certainly doesn't apply to Windows 98. It may be slightly faster than Windows 95, but things like better plug and play support aren't innovative -- they're Microsoft's belated attempt to keep up with the rest of the market.
"Over the years, Apple, Amiga, IBM and others have been giving away minor operating system upgrades. But Microsoft is using its dominance of the operating system market to gouge consumers."
-RICHARD DEAN, National Public Radio
"Some analysts say Microsoft's gross margins on Windows 98 are as high as 92%. Why do they charge so much? Because they can. ... The truth is, Microsoft doesn't really care about Windows 98 -- it's focused on building its next generation operating system, called Windows NT. And guess what? It contains few true innovations, and it's more than twice the price of Windows 98.
...
"Windows 98 should have been released for free on January 1, 1996 and titled Windows 95.1. If this were Hollywood, then Windows 98 would be the equivalent of "Heaven's Gate," "Waterworld" and "Godzilla" rolled into one. A huge, overhyped, bloated embarrassment."
-JESSE BERT, AnchorDesk, ZDNet [Click here for the full text.]
"... anytime you install something new on the Windows platform, you risk spending the next five or six hours trying to figure out what happened."
-ROBERT ROBLIN, Senior VP of Marketing, Adobe
"1. Ensuring that we leverage Windows. I don't understand how IE is going to win. The current path is simply to copy everything that Netscape does packaging and product wise ... My conclusion is that we must leverage Windows more. Treating IE as just an add-on to Windows which is cross-platform [is] losing our biggest advantage -- Windows marketshare. We should dedicate a cross group team to come up with ways to leverage Windows technically more
...
"I am convinced we have to use Windows -- this is one thing they don't have. ... We have to be competitive with features, but we need something more -- Windows integration. ... Memphis [Windows 98] must be a simple upgrade, but most importantly it must be a killer on OEM shipments so that Netscape never gets a chance on these systems."
-JIM ALLCHIN, Senior VP, Microsoft, in an internal memo, "Concerns For Our Future"
"It is a rare case that I would ever have to reboot a Mac server because it ceased functioning or froze up; the PCs, on the other hand, keep me gainfully employed."
-PETER VISEL, Information Systems Manager, Santa Cruz Biotechnology
"That's right, friends and neighbors, Windows 98 brings us the ultimate Mac -- the True Mac [editor's note: not really]. ... And what does Gates call copying the Apple Menu with the Start button; the Mac folders with Windows folders; the mouse/keyboard wiring...? He calls it innovation."
-JAMES COATES, Chicago Tribune
"My problem is, I'm forced to upgrade all the time -- not for functionality I want, but for features someone [at Microsoft] wanted for me. I need to stay current, though, to get good [technical] support. We're rats on a treadmill. [Microsoft is] working in the best interest of Microsoft, and I don't think they listen to users."
-ROGER WALTERS, CIO, Booz Allen & Hamilton, Inc.
"There's very little protection against Microsoft doing exactly what we do and destroying us."
-BAROTTI, Inex
"Microsoft will suck you dry, in time and knowledge."
-JONATHAN CARSON, CEO, FamilyEducation Network
"If they want to kill you, they'll kill you. All we can do is meet with them and try to see what they're going to do to us and when they feel like doing it."
-MAX METRAL, Co-Founder, Firefly Network
"... I cannot call Microsoft an innovative company. Can you name a single category of product it created? DOS was originally QDOS, Xerox invented the idea of Windows, which Apple perfected, and you can go right on down the line. Microsoft buys or copies (poorly) technology from smaller companies. The smaller company is always killed after the deal. Microsoft's only innovation is in contracts that lock people into its products or let Microsoft use its technology. Bill Gates is from a family of high-powered corporate lawyers, not engineers."
-JOE CELKO, Columnist, DBMS, September 1998
"There has been some concern in the industry about Microsoft continuing with its very aggressive business practices, and under Steve Ballmer, not known to be a shrinking violet, the people hoping for moderation in Microsoft's practices are probably not expecting that now."
-DWIGHT DAVIS, Summit Strategies
"With every day, we are coming to live and to work in an increasingly networked, technology-driven world. There is little question that Microsoft, which now controls the PC software market, is seeking to extend its desktop monopoly in effect to control these other technologies and, to a large extent, the network itself."
-ORRIN HATCH, US Senator
"The ruthless people we know as robber barons were actually giving away much more money at a much earlier point in their careers than the high-tech and biotech and Wall Street billionaires who are so revered today and are seldom described as ruthless. ... It's a paradox."
-RON CHERNOW, "Titan, The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr."
"The most interesting, if strange, comments ... came from people who encountered trouble installing Windows 98, spent their valuable time troubleshooting the situation and finally declared how delighted they were with the product.
"That baffles me. Then again, I'm surprised that people find it reasonable to spend hours installing a scanner or other peripheral gear that creates weird conflicts with other equipment or just plain doesn't work. I'm amazed when consumers put up with horrible bugs. And I'm perplexed when people flock to buy and use products that Albert Einstein would find difficult to use."
-DAN GILMOR, San Jose Mercury-News
"The Browser Wars of the 1990's are over. It's impossible to imagine any judicial action that will remove Microsoft's browser from the desktops of virtually all the world's PC users. It's worth pondering a mystery that the Court of Appeals has not yet felt obliged to worry about. Why has Microsoft spent so much money and muscle on a mission of giving away software?
"The answer is that Microsoft is a forward-looking company with a sharp eye for the power points, the lever arms, the control valves in the emerging digital economy."
-JAMES GLEICK
"The essence of a competitive market is its impersonal character. No one participant can determine the terms on which other participants shall have access to goods or jobs. All take prices as given by the market and no individual can by himself have more than a negligible influence on price though all participants together determine price by the combined effect of their separate actions."
-MILTON FRIEDMAN, Capitalism and Freedom
"Then there is the word innovation. A key word, it's showing up too often in too many places in association with Microsoft and Windows 98. Obviously, the Microsoft spin doctors are trying to associate the word innovation with Windows 98 in the minds of the public. This is cute, since there is very little innovation in Windows 98. Everything in the OS is either a geegaw, a bug fix, or some new support, such as that for USB."
-JOHN DVORAK, PC Magazine
"Microsoft says Windows 98 fixes almost 3,000 bugs, but that begs the question of why those bugs were there in the first place."
-MICHAEL MILLER, PC Magazine
"Stop being paranoid. Gates is always whining about how any minute he can be out of business because things change so fast in the software business. The only companies put out of business in the software industry have been put out either by their own incompetence or by Microsoft. Give it a rest. I'm personally sick of listening to this one. In the early 1980s before Microsoft was public, Gates would go on and on about how he could always fall back on being a programmer if Microsoft went broke. Let's see, he's up to $50 billion in net worth. When does this thinking end? At this point it's pathological and unhealthy."
-JOHN DVORAK, PC Magazone
"If you're going to kill someone there isn't much reason to get all that worked up about it and angry. You just pull the trigger. Angry discussions beforehand are a waste of time. We need to smile with Novell when we pull the trigger."
-JIM ALLCHIN, Senior VP, Microsoft, in an internal memo
"Windows is an utter kludge, the ultimate tar baby, sucking you in, making things harder and harder, until you are hopelessly snagged and stuck, exhausted from fighting with it, resigned to despair. It is an inscrutable, god-awful mess, a disaster waiting to happen, a bonehead botch-job jammed with you-can't-get-there-from-here idiocy. They could train soldiers to kill by forcing them to struggle with this.
"It's bizarre that so many of us routinely put up with the crashes, the snarls, the unintuitive workarounds, the billions of hours wasted fumbling with broken systems, nursing along this crippled basket-case of an OS. Where is the outrage over so many lost hours of torment and unproductivity?"
-PAUL SOMERSON, PC Computing
"Microsoft has knowingly and willfully concealed information regarding security flaws in computer hardware from the [National Security Agency] out of fear that revealing such flaws would reduce the number of copies of its products that would be purchased by the government... I have raised this issue internally with Microsoft, and in return have been the subject of both bribes and threats."
-ED CURRY, Computer Security Specialist, in a letter to Defense Secretary William Coen
"Windows 98 should have been released for free on Jan. 1, 1996 and titled Windows 95.1. If this were Hollywood, then Windows 98 would be the equivalent of 'Heaven's Gate', 'Waterworld' and 'Godzilla' rolled into one. A huge, overhyped, bloated, embarrassment."
-JESSE BERST, ZDNet
"If you plow through 'Business @ the Speed of Thought' you will quickly realize three things: Nearly everything Gates writes is obvious. Nearly everything Gates writes is right. Yet somehow he has missed the real story."
-SCOTT ROSENBERG, Salon Magazine [Click here for the full text.]
"Microsoft has gone from tying its products to tying the hands of its vendors"
-JOEL KLEIN, Assitant Antitrust Attorney General
"In biology, if the members of a herd are too genetically similar, a single disease can wipe them out. Ditto with computer systems: as Microsoft becomes increasingly dominant, the users of its programs are open to weaknesses that they may not know exist -- until it is too late ... if nothing else, the problems of macro-viruses have shown the weakness inherent in Microsoft's dominance of both business software and home PCs."
-CHARLES ARTHUR, The Independent (UK)
"Whether you think their witnesses are credible or non-credible ... they've admitted monopoly power, they've admitted the absence of competitive constraints, they've admitted raising prices to hurt consumers, they've admitted depriving consumers of choice and they've admitted that the reason that they did that was because they were afraid that consumers would in their view make the wrong choice, which is the non-Microsoft choice."
-DAVID BOIES, US Department of Justice
"In the final analysis, Bill Gates' legacy will be money, not ideas. Contrary to Net paranoia, Gates isn't evil, just typical: another mogul run amok, ultimately reined in by his own arrogance -- and the ferociously independent and resilient culture he came so close to conquering."
-JON KATZ, San Jose Mercury News
"Microsoft has sold just about every IT manager out there on Windows NT. Like a drug dealer who has a large and profitable clientele, Microsoft is hooked on making big money and hooked on their own poison called the Windows OS."
-JOHN MARTELLARO, Macopinion.com
"Microsoft has made it clear that it wants to control every lucrative or strategic software category on Windows. And Microsoft has demonstrated time and again that it is willing to (in order of preference) copy, buy, or license any competing technology it needs in order to gain that control. It would seem unwise, therefore, to support Microsoft or Windows, especially if you have a product that competes with a Microsoft product, or is likely to compete with a future Microsoft product."
-NICHOLAS PETRELEY, Sr. Editor, InfoWorld
"I have a nice perspective on what it means to be in charge of the most important project in the history of mankind."
-BRIAN VALENTINE, Windows 2000 Project Manager
"High-tech industries are the key to America's future competitiveness, and we simply cannot afford to look the other way when serious questions are raised about allegedly inappropriate business practices."
-TOM DASCHLE, U.S. Senator