Gates

"in 1985 Apple’s new chairman, John Sculley, gave in to Gates’s demand to discontinue development of the MacBasic language for Macintosh and sign over rights to the MacBasic name to Microsoft. According to Sculley, Gates indicated that if Apple did not give up the project, he would suspend Apple’s license to use the competing Microsoft language on its popular Apple II computer. “[Gates] insisted that Apple withdraw what was an exceptional prod¬ uct,” claimed an Apple software engineer. “He held the gun to our head.”70 In a similar vein, internal documents of Intel indicated that at an August 1995 meeting, Gates made “vague threats” to support com¬ petitors of the semiconductor producer if it did not cease development of software that he viewed as a danger to Microsoft’s interests. Intel did in fact, delay the project. Chairman Andrew Grove characterized that decision by saying that his company “caved in” to Microsoft’s de¬ mands.71"

"Over the years, Gates has occasionally embellished his own legend. He long claimed that his first 13 software customers had gone bankrupt, a tale that underscored the fierce competitiveness of the computer in¬ dustry. “I made that up,” he subsequently conceded.17 Gates also said that between 1970 and 1974, he and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen developed a computer program that was eventually used in about half the elevators in the United States. This “never happened,” he later ac¬ knowledged.18 Additionally, Gates maintained that it was during the 1970-1974 period that he and Allen began using the phrase that they later repeated endlessly as Microsoft’s creed: “A computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software.” In reality, no such company name existed at the time. The famous phrase, which ap¬ parently was not heard around Microsoft until the mid-1980s, evolved from a January 1975 Popular Electronics article heralding “the era of the computer in every home.”1"

"Intimate summer barbecues that Gates began to host quickly evolved into an annual event called Microgames. Guests split up into teams and competed in puzzle solving, singing, races, water events, and scavenger hunts. One year, participants had to communicate an assigned message to their teammates via smoke signals. Another time, Gates and his parents trucked in six tons of sand for a sandcastle-building contest.7"

"When we returned to Denver from the CableLabs trip to the West Coast, while Bill was in talks to invest $1 billion with Brian, I called an old friend at GI, Ed Breen, who had worked on digital technology at the GI VideoCipher division. Ed got his start at GI selling converter boxes and rose fast to be SVP of worldwide sales; less than ten years later, he would be running the company as CEO. “Gates can make these boxes for three hundred dollars,” I blurted out to Ed almost as soon as he answered the phone. Of course, he raised the specter that Gates would simply subsidize the cost until the industry was in his stranglehold. I knew that GI needed a hit as badly as we did. Even though GI discovered the breakthrough for digital compression, business was hurting because cable operators, TCI among them, had put off costly upgrades in the rounds of rate cuts following the 1992 Cable Act, which had crimped cash flow. GI had about 60 percent market share in TV set-top boxes but wanted the new digital business. Ed said that the best price on the box at the time was $400, more than double the cost of a typical analog box. “Okay, let’s get serious about it,” I said. “How many do you have to be buying for and by when, to get your price down to a three-hundred-dollar price?” Ed knew the specs and pricing of the box better than anyone, and I trusted him. “You know, if you ordered ten million of these things, we could get the ball rolling, because that would be a three-billion-dollar purchase order.”"

"Strategically, I knew that Bill was blocking an easy play between AOL, the fastest-growing online service, and TCI, the largest cable operator in the country. But I also believed what he was saying about the market, so I asked him, “What are you suggesting? What’s the alternative?” “Well, why don’t you just buy twenty percent of Microsoft Network? This is going wide fast, and it’s certain to be a massive success.” “What are you going to charge me for this?” I asked. “Well, why don’t you pay me the same amount you were going to pay Paul for his block. This could be worth an enormous amount… who knows?” This was a rather rich ask. Gates was seeking, for just 20 percent of his new and untested service, the same price we were about to pay for 25 percent of the leader in the online access business. It might sound a little arrogant, yet it also sounded like the truth."

"He shot back, “I’ll set up a competitor in every city and put you out of business unless you stand down and give us the right to display your content.” He was playing for the biggest stakes and I knew we couldn’t stop the tsunami of internet adoption. It was going to roll right over us, and while Rosen’s was a principled stand I told Gates we’d withdraw the lawsuit. It was my excitement about the internet and desire to get it going that governed my expedient decision to waive our copyrights—the same issue that today has publishers suing AI on the same basis, with probably the same result."