14 ms·

Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

123 points by CrankyBear 6y ago

chance_state 6y ago
The entire thing is on YouTube. Part one starts here: https://youtu.be/m_2m1qdqieE https://youtu.be/m_2m1qdqieE Worth a watch imo.
- bawolff 6y ago
  Thanks for linking. That was interesting. I only watched the first little bit, but I could understand how this could play badly for PR, but i'm pretty sympathetic to gates here. Seems like they want to use layman simplified definitions of tech concepts, then catch him up on technical nitty gritty.
  - Gunax 6y ago
    Clearly Gates sees where this is going: first ask him to agree to the definition, then reveal that the definition doesn't include 'viewing HTML' (or 'editing text files', or 'creating images' etc.). Of course we all know that dictionary definitions are meant to introduce someone unfamiliar to the topic, and not to enumerate every possible function. Using that logic I could say that 'cars don't have air-conditioning' since the definition of an automobile is "A self-propelled passenger vehicle that usually has four wheels and an internal-combustion engine".
Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
While there might or might not be questionable or illegal things that Bill Gates did, by himself or as the MS corporation at that time, the over-fixation of the article on how he is talking to the attorney in the deposition seems misguided and amateurish. Boies: What non-Microsoft browsers were you concerned about in January of 1996? Gates: I don’t know what you mean “concerned.” Boies: What is it about the word “concerned” that you don’t understand? Gates: I’m not sure what you mean by it. Boies: Is— Gates: Is there a document where I use that term? Boies: Is the term “concerned” a term that you’re familiar with in the English language? Gates: Yes. Boies: Does it have a meaning that you’re familiar with? Gates: Yes. Isn't this how you are supposed to talk to lawyers? They make it their business to routinely try to force you into their own prepared lines of questioning and try to use your own words against you and make you appear to say things that you didn't really mean. This is their job. If you are on the other side of this, it is your job to prevent this use of language and make sure that they don't manage to implicate yourself in any way, by nonchalant use of words. Being vigilant about your use of specific words in specific contents, and about querying what exactly they are trying to say by each question seems like a good default approach to the problem of not giving your opponent attorney more ammunition than they should fairly have. I imagine Mr. Gates was used to mistreatment by lawyers and simply speaks their language at that point.
- pwned1 6y ago
  If you haven’t been deposed this will look weird. But depositions are about “gotcha” moments, so your job as the person being deposed is to play the game and only answer questions with minimal information and force the attorney asking questions to really work for it. It’s about being purely logical. If they ask you what two plus two is, respond vaguely and ask for clarification. “Are you asking about numbers? Or objects? What does plus mean in the context of this question.” Etc.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    The NYT has an amazing video where they got actors to play out the transcript of one of these sorts of depositions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZbqAMEwtOE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZbqAMEwtOE
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    To the public, it looks like another "It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is." The general public hates lawyers. But it hates weasels even more. And CEOs acting like weasels even more than that. That's why congressional hearings are sometimes delightful to watch. It feeds our hatred of CEO "others." There are plenty of CEOs who can talk to lawyers, even in a public forum, and do it well. Splitting hairs never looks good. It makes you look guilty.
    - meowface 6y ago
      Gates wasn't splitting hairs there, though. "Concerned about" could mean "concerned about as potential competitors we need to pay attention to", "concerned about as potential competitors who might gain more market share than us", "concerned about as potential competitors we might need to stifle", "concerned about as a potential danger to our browser monopoly", "concerned about as potential competitors who might develop features users want which we should also look into developing", etc. Any company offering a product could be said to have executives who are concerned about competing products. It could range from malicious, anti-competitive behavior to simply wanting to provide a good experience. That's why Gates wanted the lawyer to use less charged, ambiguous language. I personally believe he was engaging in unethical anti-competitive behavior, but you're going to have to nail him on it fair and square, rather than playing word tricks with him. >The general public hates lawyers. But it hates weasels even more. And CEOs acting like weasels even more than that. The lawyer was the one employing weasel words, there, by definition [1]. "Paying attention to" or "aware of" would be a much more fair and clear phrase. >Splitting hairs never looks good. It makes you look guilty. Yes, and the lawyer was probably aware of that and deliberately exploiting the ability to create such a perception. Either you fall into the trap and later are pointed to as sounding guilty, or you demand rigor and sound guilty in the moment. It's a double bind. [1] Oxford definition of "weasel words": "words or statements that are intentionally ambiguous or misleading."
jasoneckert 6y ago
The 2019 documentary "Inside Bill's Brain" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCv29JKmHNY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCv29JKmHNY) definitely focused a part on how Bill still hates talking about this deposition. He makes it very clear in that documentary how much he regrets that he wore his disdain for the antitrust suit on his sleeve, as it played directly into the prosecutor's hands.
- klyrs 6y ago
  Ah yes, the classic "I'm sorry I got caught." That's my 3yo's go-to when he's in trouble
- quelsolaar 6y ago
  I was so disappointed with that documentary. 3 hours, with\ bill, and no real questions about the antitrust stuff, or about Microsoft stance on Linux and open source, His relationship with Apple and Steve jobs, His relationship with Paul Allen and Steve Balmer, the birth of X-Box, the war against Lotus123, and Word Perfect, the original deal with IBM, and the failed tablets, WinFS, Microsoft Bob, and loads of other things that would be interesting to get his take on.
  - bananamerica 6y ago
    That was really not the focus of the doc. As the title implies, they wanted to take a peek in the interesting ideas going on in his mind right now.
    - quelsolaar 6y ago
      I was hoping we we would find more "Inside bill's brain", then just toilets.
      - xdavidliu 6y ago
        or standing on-stage with a literal jar of shit [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9nRsJinHhM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9nRsJinHhM
Sebb767 6y ago
> [...] Microsoft was now comfortable supporting the Davids of the tech industry. This is a 29 year old company with a four-digit number of employees worth 17.3 Billion USD. Fortnite alone seems to have been a quite solid share of the App Store's gaming revenue. This is not a "David". Sure, Apple, Google and Microsoft are worth one to two orders of magnitude more. But this is like seeing a small person fighting a bigger person from the perspective of an ant.
- 8note 6y ago
  Wasn't David a king? Goliath would have only been up to like double David's size anyways, so orders of magnitude sounds bigger than the David/Goliath difference.
  - swiley 6y ago
    I think at the point he defeated Goliath David was still just a shepherd. There may have been a prophecy he would become king but I don't think he had even been anointed.
- swiley 6y ago
  Their currently the best hope of the "Davids" since none of the actually small players stand a chance standing up to Apple.
stakkur 6y ago
Bill Gates was the prototype for the amoral shitshow that is Mark Zuckerberg. Cory Doctorow has a great thread on Twitter today about this very topic: https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1304811968398729218 https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1304811968398729218
- voxl 6y ago
  That twitter thread reeks of bias, I couldn't finish or take it seriously at all. If you want to convince me of something don't go around painting people as evil capitalist masterminds...
  - tingol 6y ago
    Do you have counter arguments to what was said in the thread or are you just projecting your own bias? It is pretty well known what kind of shitty things MS did to get where it is, if someone sprinkles insults on top of it on twitter does not make it less true.
    - bawolff 6y ago
      "Shattered" the law is pretty questionable. MS (Feel like i should write M$ for /. nostalgia) had some underhanded bussiness tactics, no doubt (some of which probably werent even illegal, just scummy), but im not sure shattered the law is a reasonable description. That's something i would reserve more for organized crime. Microsoft never extorted people, planted listening devices, hired hitman, etc. The rabbit hole of crime goes down very far, microsoft did not stoop anywhere near that far.
      - dencodev 6y ago
        The difference is that the mafia has never managed to extort and murder and then be told they did nothing wrong by law enforcement. The mafia also never attempted to make the law say they did nothing wrong (outside of small scale bribery or threats). "Shattered" is more appropriate here because Microsoft did (and does) try to get favorable legal treatment that extends outsides the bounds of what the law intended on a national level with far reaching implications of what others can also get away with.
dontbeabill 6y ago
Ironic Gates claims now (and then) the Government will stifle innovation, yet when innovation came in the form of Java, the first thing Gates did (as proven by evidence) was to seek a way to destroy it. (because he was a man-child annoyed because he didn’t invent it, and couldn’t find a way to compete honestly). So he did what big bully’s do, he crushed Sun and got all his big boy friends to help. What a inspiration.
- Gunax 6y ago
  I don't think that's ironic at all. 'The government will stifle innovation' is entirely independent from whether competitors will stifle innovation.
dontbeabill 6y ago
Gates claims now (and then) the Government will stifle innovation, yet when innovation came in the form of Java, the first thing Gates did (as proven by evidence) was to seek a way to destroy it. (because he was a man-child annoyed because he didn’t invent it, and couldn’t find a way to compete honestly). So he did what big bully’s do, he crushed Sun and got all his big boy friends to help. What a inspiration.
- watwut 6y ago
  I dont think it was just being man- child. It was being businessman in competition. Bullies do well in business.
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  Java was never a form of innovation.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bawolff 6y ago
    Java was very innovative at the time, with byte code and JIT, a more clear OO design relative to C++, embeddable safetly sandboxed web apps, memory safety in a "professional" language, cross platform binaries (in a non scripting language) etc. The mid 90's was a long time ago. What was exciting then is not exciting now.
    - dependenttypes 6y ago
      Everything that you mentioned was already available at the time in other languages. This is not innovation.
      - bawolff 6y ago
        But to what extent was it available in a polished package? For example, everything in rust was available in other languages, i would still say it was innovative because it brought all that together into a polished package that made the right tradeoffs for mainstream usage.
noizejoy 6y ago
And sometimes I wonder, if that PR problem from so long ago eventually gave birth to current conspiracy theories linked to Bill Gates. Or maybe I’ve read too much Douglas Adams...
- person_of_color 6y ago
  Zuckerberg and Gates think you can go from cutthroat business executive to kindly old sweater-wearing grandpa in twenty years. Average folk are smarter than the intelligentsia often give them credit for.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Do people not realize how long 20 years is?
icelancer 6y ago
This was written by someone who has no idea what a deposition is about, or is intentionally misrepresenting it. The USG's depositions were PR stunts, filmed on purpose to make Gates look bad. If you've ever been deposed (and I have), then you know that Gates' approach was close to optimal when dealing with lawyers. Bill's biggest mistake was having a terrible attitude and bad posture when answering questions. He made it too personal. Otherwise, the strict answers were mostly ideal and are often used as tutorials by attorneys to show those two things: 1) How not to have the posture/tone/etc in your voice when answering questions, but... 2) ...that this is an adversarial discussion and you should seek extreme clarity every single time.
- dundarious 6y ago
  I've watched almost 2 hours of the deposition videos now, and I think Gates went far beyond trying to seek extreme clarity. The diversion in part 4 about document stamps is a case in point. It is an adversarial process, so you must not rely on the usual expectation that colleagues will take the charitable interpretation of your words, but Gates being unable to even possibly understand what his own emails mean, is evasive to the point of raising suspicion.
  - _-___________-_ 6y ago
    "Raising suspicion" isn't really a concern in this context. And of course he understands what his own emails mean. Seeking extreme clarity when discussing them is not the same as not understanding them.
    - dundarious 6y ago
      We seem to disagree about the seeking extreme clarity issue -- I believe he was intentionally obfuscating, or at least have that suspicion. As for suspicion, from the article: --- At one point, Thomas Penfield Jackson, the judge hearing the case, chuckled, too. When Microsoft lawyers argued during a closed-door session that the deposition was turning into a side show and government lawyers should be barred from showing any more segments during the trial, the judge denied the motion, saying: "If anything, I think your problem is with your witness, not with the way in which his testimony is being presented." Jackson continued: "I think it's evident to every spectator that, for whatever reasons, in many respects Mr. Gates has not been particularly responsive to his deposition interrogation. Everybody at your table has reflected skepticism as the testimony is presented." --- I'm characterizing the "whatever reasons" as suspicions. I suspect the judges did come to a conclusion on those reasons when it came time to deliver their opinion, and those reasons were damaging.
Hickfang 6y ago
Watching the video is even more revealing. Future historians will be amazed as to how a border-line aspergers case got away with engineering a virtual monopoly on computing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_2m1qdqieE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_2m1qdqieE Groklaw has some interesting Microsoft Files: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2009122612211929 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2009122612211929
- american_aurora 6y ago
  I do not know if I would describe it as "border-line aspergers," but there were several obvious things that his prep team/PR should have addressed (e.g., hair, suit, posture, lack of explicit cues for listening to question vs. thinking about response). I always find it infinitely surprising that these billion-dollar companies with all their prestige are constantly making simple but serious mistakes in every field of activity they are present in.
  - echelon 6y ago
    Who should they hire or what should they cultivate to do better?
adventured 6y ago
> No longer the Goliath it once was—in large part because of the ascendance of companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple made possible by a settlement Microsoft signed Hahaha, haha, ha. I'll just stop you right there, Dan Goodin. Microsoft is several times the goliath they were at their Windows monopoly / anti-trust days peak. If you had to pick the company that will be the most profitable tech company five years from now, who would you pick? Apple? Facebook? Google? Amazon? It's Microsoft. They'll be the most profitable company on earth five years from now. Operating income the last four quarters: Microsoft: $53 billion Apple is at $67 billion and barely growing. Their operating income has increased by a mere 11-12% in the last four years. Microsoft's operating income increased by about 140% over that time. Google? They're going to soon have half the operating income of Microsoft. In terms of profit centers they've entirely failed to branch out from search advertising; that dog has largely seen its day, their growth potential in search advertising is rapidly heading toward zero (and Google is soon going to lose all of China for Android; it's a 100% guarantee they will move off of Android as soon as possible, nothing will stop that outcome now). Google as a corporation is a zombie, it walks around headless, directionless, with the least talented management team among major tech companies. Larry and Sergey are entirely responsible for that mess. Amazon has 1/3 the operating income of Microsoft and will never catch up; and AWS will eventually be spun off anyway. Facebook's growth rate is going to continue to trend downward. Facebook applied the brakes to their thin operating model several years ago, and has gone on a massive cost expansion since. Under the former thin model, Facebook had a distant shot at catching Microsoft in profit, now they don't. The anti-trust agreement Microsoft signed is part of the reason for that massive boom in prosperity. In pushing for anti-trust action, Silicon Valley did Microsoft a huge favor. It forced Microsoft to be aggressive about looking for other ways to make money that weren't locked to their Windows monopoly position. If that hadn't happened, the odds were drastically higher than Microsoft would have rotted away over time, stuck permanently on Windows and following its erosion of prominence. In the future, Microsoft will make as much money just off of Azure Linux-based services as they do Windows in total. Also, conveniently, Microsoft is the only tech giant not being pursued for anti-trust right now. They have a wide open field to expand into. Karma is a bitch, Silicon Valley; you helped create something in Redmond that is far more powerful than Microsoft circa 1998, and while it grows unencumbered, your tech giants are all going to be tied down by the government, with every move and acquisition closely scrutinized.
twoodfin 6y ago
Having followed these events closely at the time, the Gates/Boies deposition videos are fascinating in their entirety; I’m overdue for a rewatch. Despite having been a mild OS/2 and Java partisan, I agree with the general consensus in this thread that Gates gets a bad rap for surely following his expensive lawyers’ advice on how to respond during a deposition. Boies’ strategy was to assume that as a competitive CEO and logically-minded programmer, Gates would indeed follow that advice to an extreme that could be made to look evasive and sinister. It’s not an accident that they spend so much time arguing over definitions of industry terms or what some Microsoft VP means by “ours”. Boies at any time could have accepted Gates’ understanding and moved on, but instead keeps calmly needling on subtle distinctions to rile him up. EDIT: Yikes, now rewatching and I forgot that the first half hour of the deposition is Boies reading Gates carefully selected definitions out of the 1997 Microsoft Computer Dictionary and asking him if he accepts them as written. The idea that it was Gates who wanted to litigate terminology is nuts.
Gunax 6y ago
I don't agree with the article at all. I think it's equating two very different anti-trust cases. Apple maintains control of what its users can install on their own devices--Microsoft never did that. Just offering a free software should not be considered anti-trust. For one, browsers have been unfairly singled out. Why not ban MS Paint or notepad too? How about solitaire? Now if Microsoft had restricted users from installing another browser in Windows, then I would agree it's anti-competitive. And this is much more akin to what Apple is doing. The author wants to paint MS as hypocritical, but aside from being accused of anti-competitive practices, there are no similarities. And second, I despise how one's deposition attitude plays so much into the media's narrative. It doesn't matter if Gates was kind or rude, agreeable or flippant, sloppy or well-dressed. The only that that matters are legal facts.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tus88 6y ago
  > Apple maintains control of what its users can install on their own devices--Microsoft never did that. Well apart from the OS installed on the device you are buying from an OEM.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    Between secureboot disabling, mokutil, and Microsoft signing Ubuntu and Red Hat kernels directly, I think it's pretty clear there's no desire for lock-in and that it's actually a security feature.
    - tus88 6y ago
      I'm talking about the 90s.
- robotresearcher 6y ago
  > It doesn't matter if Gates was kind or rude The legal system is made of people, and people are exquisitely sensitive to social stuff. It's just not expedient to ignore that.
DavidSJ 6y ago
Q: Okay. Let me ask you to look at Trial Exhibit 560. This is a message from you to Mr. Ballmer and Mr. Chase with a copy to Mr. Maritz and some other people also given copies dated August 15, 1997 at 4:07 p.m. on the subject of IBM and Netscape; correct? A: Uh-huh Q: BY MR. BOIES: And you type in here Importance: High." A: No. Q: No? A: No, I didn't type that. Q: Who typed in "High"? A: A computer. Q: A computer. Why did the computer type in "High"? A: It's an attribute of the e-mail. Q: And who set the attribute of the e-mail? A: Usually the sender sends that attribute. Q: Who is the sender here, Mr. Gates? A: In this case it appears I'm the sender. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/microsoft/documents/gatespart8a.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/micr... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRelVFm7iJE&t=38m07s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRelVFm7iJE&t=38m07s
- ImprobableTruth 6y ago
  Eh, I think I can understand where he's coming from. There's a difference between choosing "high" from a drop down and manually typing out "Importance: High". The former is kinda throwaway, while the latter is more serious. He's definitely super awkward about it though.
  - DavidSJ 6y ago
    Sure, but he's clearly being evasive. He could simply have said: "I didn't type it; I marked it as high importance."
    - _-___________-_ 6y ago
      Yep, he could have been less evasive, and then they'd have a recording of him saying "I marked it as high importance." Being evasive like this is only a problem in depositions to the extent that it gives the media fuel to make the general public hate you. It's pretty much the optimal strategy in terms of the deposition itself.
      - DavidSJ 6y ago
1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
This is probably why Zuckerberg will never testify in a federal court. Like Gates, he has "never groveled for a job or sufffered many of the indignities most of us suffer on a regular basis."

123 points by CrankyBear 6y ago

The entire thing is on YouTube. Part one starts here: https://youtu.be/m_2m1qdqieE https://youtu.be/m_2m1qdqieE Worth a watch imo.

bawolff 6y ago
Thanks for linking. That was interesting. I only watched the first little bit, but I could understand how this could play badly for PR, but i'm pretty sympathetic to gates here. Seems like they want to use layman simplified definitions of tech concepts, then catch him up on technical nitty gritty.
- Gunax 6y ago
  Clearly Gates sees where this is going: first ask him to agree to the definition, then reveal that the definition doesn't include 'viewing HTML' (or 'editing text files', or 'creating images' etc.). Of course we all know that dictionary definitions are meant to introduce someone unfamiliar to the topic, and not to enumerate every possible function. Using that logic I could say that 'cars don't have air-conditioning' since the definition of an automobile is "A self-propelled passenger vehicle that usually has four wheels and an internal-combustion engine".

Erlich_Bachman 6y ago

While there might or might not be questionable or illegal things that Bill Gates did, by himself or as the MS corporation at that time, the over-fixation of the article on how he is talking to the attorney in the deposition seems misguided and amateurish. Boies: What non-Microsoft browsers were you concerned about in January of 1996? Gates: I don’t know what you mean “concerned.” Boies: What is it about the word “concerned” that you don’t understand? Gates: I’m not sure what you mean by it. Boies: Is— Gates: Is there a document where I use that term? Boies: Is the term “concerned” a term that you’re familiar with in the English language? Gates: Yes. Boies: Does it have a meaning that you’re familiar with? Gates: Yes. Isn't this how you are supposed to talk to lawyers? They make it their business to routinely try to force you into their own prepared lines of questioning and try to use your own words against you and make you appear to say things that you didn't really mean. This is their job. If you are on the other side of this, it is your job to prevent this use of language and make sure that they don't manage to implicate yourself in any way, by nonchalant use of words. Being vigilant about your use of specific words in specific contents, and about querying what exactly they are trying to say by each question seems like a good default approach to the problem of not giving your opponent attorney more ammunition than they should fairly have. I imagine Mr. Gates was used to mistreatment by lawyers and simply speaks their language at that point.

pwned1 6y ago
If you haven’t been deposed this will look weird. But depositions are about “gotcha” moments, so your job as the person being deposed is to play the game and only answer questions with minimal information and force the attorney asking questions to really work for it. It’s about being purely logical. If they ask you what two plus two is, respond vaguely and ask for clarification. “Are you asking about numbers? Or objects? What does plus mean in the context of this question.” Etc.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  The NYT has an amazing video where they got actors to play out the transcript of one of these sorts of depositions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZbqAMEwtOE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZbqAMEwtOE
- reaperducer 6y ago
  To the public, it looks like another "It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is." The general public hates lawyers. But it hates weasels even more. And CEOs acting like weasels even more than that. That's why congressional hearings are sometimes delightful to watch. It feeds our hatred of CEO "others." There are plenty of CEOs who can talk to lawyers, even in a public forum, and do it well. Splitting hairs never looks good. It makes you look guilty.
  - meowface 6y ago
    Gates wasn't splitting hairs there, though. "Concerned about" could mean "concerned about as potential competitors we need to pay attention to", "concerned about as potential competitors who might gain more market share than us", "concerned about as potential competitors we might need to stifle", "concerned about as a potential danger to our browser monopoly", "concerned about as potential competitors who might develop features users want which we should also look into developing", etc. Any company offering a product could be said to have executives who are concerned about competing products. It could range from malicious, anti-competitive behavior to simply wanting to provide a good experience. That's why Gates wanted the lawyer to use less charged, ambiguous language. I personally believe he was engaging in unethical anti-competitive behavior, but you're going to have to nail him on it fair and square, rather than playing word tricks with him. >The general public hates lawyers. But it hates weasels even more. And CEOs acting like weasels even more than that. The lawyer was the one employing weasel words, there, by definition [1]. "Paying attention to" or "aware of" would be a much more fair and clear phrase. >Splitting hairs never looks good. It makes you look guilty. Yes, and the lawyer was probably aware of that and deliberately exploiting the ability to create such a perception. Either you fall into the trap and later are pointed to as sounding guilty, or you demand rigor and sound guilty in the moment. It's a double bind. [1] Oxford definition of "weasel words": "words or statements that are intentionally ambiguous or misleading."

jasoneckert 6y ago

The 2019 documentary "Inside Bill's Brain" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCv29JKmHNY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCv29JKmHNY) definitely focused a part on how Bill still hates talking about this deposition. He makes it very clear in that documentary how much he regrets that he wore his disdain for the antitrust suit on his sleeve, as it played directly into the prosecutor's hands.

klyrs 6y ago
Ah yes, the classic "I'm sorry I got caught." That's my 3yo's go-to when he's in trouble
quelsolaar 6y ago
I was so disappointed with that documentary. 3 hours, with\ bill, and no real questions about the antitrust stuff, or about Microsoft stance on Linux and open source, His relationship with Apple and Steve jobs, His relationship with Paul Allen and Steve Balmer, the birth of X-Box, the war against Lotus123, and Word Perfect, the original deal with IBM, and the failed tablets, WinFS, Microsoft Bob, and loads of other things that would be interesting to get his take on.
- bananamerica 6y ago
  That was really not the focus of the doc. As the title implies, they wanted to take a peek in the interesting ideas going on in his mind right now.
  - quelsolaar 6y ago
    I was hoping we we would find more "Inside bill's brain", then just toilets.
    - xdavidliu 6y ago
      or standing on-stage with a literal jar of shit [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9nRsJinHhM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9nRsJinHhM

Sebb767 6y ago

> [...] Microsoft was now comfortable supporting the Davids of the tech industry. This is a 29 year old company with a four-digit number of employees worth 17.3 Billion USD. Fortnite alone seems to have been a quite solid share of the App Store's gaming revenue. This is not a "David". Sure, Apple, Google and Microsoft are worth one to two orders of magnitude more. But this is like seeing a small person fighting a bigger person from the perspective of an ant.

8note 6y ago
Wasn't David a king? Goliath would have only been up to like double David's size anyways, so orders of magnitude sounds bigger than the David/Goliath difference.
- swiley 6y ago
  I think at the point he defeated Goliath David was still just a shepherd. There may have been a prophecy he would become king but I don't think he had even been anointed.
swiley 6y ago
Their currently the best hope of the "Davids" since none of the actually small players stand a chance standing up to Apple.

stakkur 6y ago

Bill Gates was the prototype for the amoral shitshow that is Mark Zuckerberg. Cory Doctorow has a great thread on Twitter today about this very topic: https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1304811968398729218 https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1304811968398729218

voxl 6y ago
That twitter thread reeks of bias, I couldn't finish or take it seriously at all. If you want to convince me of something don't go around painting people as evil capitalist masterminds...
- tingol 6y ago
  Do you have counter arguments to what was said in the thread or are you just projecting your own bias? It is pretty well known what kind of shitty things MS did to get where it is, if someone sprinkles insults on top of it on twitter does not make it less true.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    "Shattered" the law is pretty questionable. MS (Feel like i should write M$ for /. nostalgia) had some underhanded bussiness tactics, no doubt (some of which probably werent even illegal, just scummy), but im not sure shattered the law is a reasonable description. That's something i would reserve more for organized crime. Microsoft never extorted people, planted listening devices, hired hitman, etc. The rabbit hole of crime goes down very far, microsoft did not stoop anywhere near that far.
    - dencodev 6y ago
      The difference is that the mafia has never managed to extort and murder and then be told they did nothing wrong by law enforcement. The mafia also never attempted to make the law say they did nothing wrong (outside of small scale bribery or threats). "Shattered" is more appropriate here because Microsoft did (and does) try to get favorable legal treatment that extends outsides the bounds of what the law intended on a national level with far reaching implications of what others can also get away with.

dontbeabill 6y ago

Ironic Gates claims now (and then) the Government will stifle innovation, yet when innovation came in the form of Java, the first thing Gates did (as proven by evidence) was to seek a way to destroy it. (because he was a man-child annoyed because he didn’t invent it, and couldn’t find a way to compete honestly). So he did what big bully’s do, he crushed Sun and got all his big boy friends to help. What a inspiration.

Gunax 6y ago
I don't think that's ironic at all. 'The government will stifle innovation' is entirely independent from whether competitors will stifle innovation.

dontbeabill 6y ago

Gates claims now (and then) the Government will stifle innovation, yet when innovation came in the form of Java, the first thing Gates did (as proven by evidence) was to seek a way to destroy it. (because he was a man-child annoyed because he didn’t invent it, and couldn’t find a way to compete honestly). So he did what big bully’s do, he crushed Sun and got all his big boy friends to help. What a inspiration.

watwut 6y ago
I dont think it was just being man- child. It was being businessman in competition. Bullies do well in business.
dependenttypes 6y ago
Java was never a form of innovation.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bawolff 6y ago
  Java was very innovative at the time, with byte code and JIT, a more clear OO design relative to C++, embeddable safetly sandboxed web apps, memory safety in a "professional" language, cross platform binaries (in a non scripting language) etc. The mid 90's was a long time ago. What was exciting then is not exciting now.
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    Everything that you mentioned was already available at the time in other languages. This is not innovation.
    - bawolff 6y ago
      But to what extent was it available in a polished package? For example, everything in rust was available in other languages, i would still say it was innovative because it brought all that together into a polished package that made the right tradeoffs for mainstream usage.

noizejoy 6y ago

And sometimes I wonder, if that PR problem from so long ago eventually gave birth to current conspiracy theories linked to Bill Gates. Or maybe I’ve read too much Douglas Adams...

person_of_color 6y ago
Zuckerberg and Gates think you can go from cutthroat business executive to kindly old sweater-wearing grandpa in twenty years. Average folk are smarter than the intelligentsia often give them credit for.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Do people not realize how long 20 years is?

icelancer 6y ago

This was written by someone who has no idea what a deposition is about, or is intentionally misrepresenting it. The USG's depositions were PR stunts, filmed on purpose to make Gates look bad. If you've ever been deposed (and I have), then you know that Gates' approach was close to optimal when dealing with lawyers. Bill's biggest mistake was having a terrible attitude and bad posture when answering questions. He made it too personal. Otherwise, the strict answers were mostly ideal and are often used as tutorials by attorneys to show those two things: 1) How not to have the posture/tone/etc in your voice when answering questions, but... 2) ...that this is an adversarial discussion and you should seek extreme clarity every single time.

dundarious 6y ago
I've watched almost 2 hours of the deposition videos now, and I think Gates went far beyond trying to seek extreme clarity. The diversion in part 4 about document stamps is a case in point. It is an adversarial process, so you must not rely on the usual expectation that colleagues will take the charitable interpretation of your words, but Gates being unable to even possibly understand what his own emails mean, is evasive to the point of raising suspicion.
- _-___________-_ 6y ago
  "Raising suspicion" isn't really a concern in this context. And of course he understands what his own emails mean. Seeking extreme clarity when discussing them is not the same as not understanding them.
  - dundarious 6y ago
    We seem to disagree about the seeking extreme clarity issue -- I believe he was intentionally obfuscating, or at least have that suspicion. As for suspicion, from the article: --- At one point, Thomas Penfield Jackson, the judge hearing the case, chuckled, too. When Microsoft lawyers argued during a closed-door session that the deposition was turning into a side show and government lawyers should be barred from showing any more segments during the trial, the judge denied the motion, saying: "If anything, I think your problem is with your witness, not with the way in which his testimony is being presented." Jackson continued: "I think it's evident to every spectator that, for whatever reasons, in many respects Mr. Gates has not been particularly responsive to his deposition interrogation. Everybody at your table has reflected skepticism as the testimony is presented." --- I'm characterizing the "whatever reasons" as suspicions. I suspect the judges did come to a conclusion on those reasons when it came time to deliver their opinion, and those reasons were damaging.

Hickfang 6y ago

Watching the video is even more revealing. Future historians will be amazed as to how a border-line aspergers case got away with engineering a virtual monopoly on computing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_2m1qdqieE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_2m1qdqieE Groklaw has some interesting Microsoft Files: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2009122612211929 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2009122612211929

american_aurora 6y ago
I do not know if I would describe it as "border-line aspergers," but there were several obvious things that his prep team/PR should have addressed (e.g., hair, suit, posture, lack of explicit cues for listening to question vs. thinking about response). I always find it infinitely surprising that these billion-dollar companies with all their prestige are constantly making simple but serious mistakes in every field of activity they are present in.
- echelon 6y ago
  Who should they hire or what should they cultivate to do better?

adventured 6y ago

> No longer the Goliath it once was—in large part because of the ascendance of companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple made possible by a settlement Microsoft signed Hahaha, haha, ha. I'll just stop you right there, Dan Goodin. Microsoft is several times the goliath they were at their Windows monopoly / anti-trust days peak. If you had to pick the company that will be the most profitable tech company five years from now, who would you pick? Apple? Facebook? Google? Amazon? It's Microsoft. They'll be the most profitable company on earth five years from now. Operating income the last four quarters: Microsoft: $53 billion Apple is at $67 billion and barely growing. Their operating income has increased by a mere 11-12% in the last four years. Microsoft's operating income increased by about 140% over that time. Google? They're going to soon have half the operating income of Microsoft. In terms of profit centers they've entirely failed to branch out from search advertising; that dog has largely seen its day, their growth potential in search advertising is rapidly heading toward zero (and Google is soon going to lose all of China for Android; it's a 100% guarantee they will move off of Android as soon as possible, nothing will stop that outcome now). Google as a corporation is a zombie, it walks around headless, directionless, with the least talented management team among major tech companies. Larry and Sergey are entirely responsible for that mess. Amazon has 1/3 the operating income of Microsoft and will never catch up; and AWS will eventually be spun off anyway. Facebook's growth rate is going to continue to trend downward. Facebook applied the brakes to their thin operating model several years ago, and has gone on a massive cost expansion since. Under the former thin model, Facebook had a distant shot at catching Microsoft in profit, now they don't. The anti-trust agreement Microsoft signed is part of the reason for that massive boom in prosperity. In pushing for anti-trust action, Silicon Valley did Microsoft a huge favor. It forced Microsoft to be aggressive about looking for other ways to make money that weren't locked to their Windows monopoly position. If that hadn't happened, the odds were drastically higher than Microsoft would have rotted away over time, stuck permanently on Windows and following its erosion of prominence. In the future, Microsoft will make as much money just off of Azure Linux-based services as they do Windows in total. Also, conveniently, Microsoft is the only tech giant not being pursued for anti-trust right now. They have a wide open field to expand into. Karma is a bitch, Silicon Valley; you helped create something in Redmond that is far more powerful than Microsoft circa 1998, and while it grows unencumbered, your tech giants are all going to be tied down by the government, with every move and acquisition closely scrutinized.

twoodfin 6y ago

Having followed these events closely at the time, the Gates/Boies deposition videos are fascinating in their entirety; I’m overdue for a rewatch. Despite having been a mild OS/2 and Java partisan, I agree with the general consensus in this thread that Gates gets a bad rap for surely following his expensive lawyers’ advice on how to respond during a deposition. Boies’ strategy was to assume that as a competitive CEO and logically-minded programmer, Gates would indeed follow that advice to an extreme that could be made to look evasive and sinister. It’s not an accident that they spend so much time arguing over definitions of industry terms or what some Microsoft VP means by “ours”. Boies at any time could have accepted Gates’ understanding and moved on, but instead keeps calmly needling on subtle distinctions to rile him up. EDIT: Yikes, now rewatching and I forgot that the first half hour of the deposition is Boies reading Gates carefully selected definitions out of the 1997 Microsoft Computer Dictionary and asking him if he accepts them as written. The idea that it was Gates who wanted to litigate terminology is nuts.

Gunax 6y ago

I don't agree with the article at all. I think it's equating two very different anti-trust cases. Apple maintains control of what its users can install on their own devices--Microsoft never did that. Just offering a free software should not be considered anti-trust. For one, browsers have been unfairly singled out. Why not ban MS Paint or notepad too? How about solitaire? Now if Microsoft had restricted users from installing another browser in Windows, then I would agree it's anti-competitive. And this is much more akin to what Apple is doing. The author wants to paint MS as hypocritical, but aside from being accused of anti-competitive practices, there are no similarities. And second, I despise how one's deposition attitude plays so much into the media's narrative. It doesn't matter if Gates was kind or rude, agreeable or flippant, sloppy or well-dressed. The only that that matters are legal facts.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tus88 6y ago
> Apple maintains control of what its users can install on their own devices--Microsoft never did that. Well apart from the OS installed on the device you are buying from an OEM.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  Between secureboot disabling, mokutil, and Microsoft signing Ubuntu and Red Hat kernels directly, I think it's pretty clear there's no desire for lock-in and that it's actually a security feature.
  - tus88 6y ago
    I'm talking about the 90s.
robotresearcher 6y ago
> It doesn't matter if Gates was kind or rude The legal system is made of people, and people are exquisitely sensitive to social stuff. It's just not expedient to ignore that.

DavidSJ 6y ago

Q: Okay. Let me ask you to look at Trial Exhibit 560. This is a message from you to Mr. Ballmer and Mr. Chase with a copy to Mr. Maritz and some other people also given copies dated August 15, 1997 at 4:07 p.m. on the subject of IBM and Netscape; correct? A: Uh-huh Q: BY MR. BOIES: And you type in here Importance: High." A: No. Q: No? A: No, I didn't type that. Q: Who typed in "High"? A: A computer. Q: A computer. Why did the computer type in "High"? A: It's an attribute of the e-mail. Q: And who set the attribute of the e-mail? A: Usually the sender sends that attribute. Q: Who is the sender here, Mr. Gates? A: In this case it appears I'm the sender. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/microsoft/documents/gatespart8a.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/micr... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRelVFm7iJE&t=38m07s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRelVFm7iJE&t=38m07s

ImprobableTruth 6y ago
Eh, I think I can understand where he's coming from. There's a difference between choosing "high" from a drop down and manually typing out "Importance: High". The former is kinda throwaway, while the latter is more serious. He's definitely super awkward about it though.
- DavidSJ 6y ago
  Sure, but he's clearly being evasive. He could simply have said: "I didn't type it; I marked it as high importance."
  - _-___________-_ 6y ago
    Yep, he could have been less evasive, and then they'd have a recording of him saying "I marked it as high importance." Being evasive like this is only a problem in depositions to the extent that it gives the media fuel to make the general public hate you. It's pretty much the optimal strategy in terms of the deposition itself.
    - DavidSJ 6y ago

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago

This is probably why Zuckerberg will never testify in a federal court. Like Gates, he has "never groveled for a job or sufffered many of the indignities most of us suffer on a regular basis."