Quotes on Microsoft's Theft of Intellectual PropertyQuotes on Microsoft's Theft of Intellectual Property
-BILL GATES, 1983, Hinting at at his strategy
"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."
-DOUGLAS ADAMS, Author, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [Click here for the full text.]
"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
"... 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
"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
"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
"This is very Borg-like. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated."
-SAMUEL GOODHOPE, Texas Attorney General's office
"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 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
"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
"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
"... 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
"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
"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.]
"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