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Farewell Bill Gates

Posted on 12 May 2008 at 12:38

Things changed in 1990, when Microsoft finally had a viable alternative: Windows 3. This was soon recognised as the de facto standard graphical add-on for DOS, leading to a hockey stick uptake in PC sales. Since OS/2 sales were still, to quote Gates, "dismal," IBM was no longer Microsoft's major customer and its love was now directed towards firms such as Compaq and Dell, and consumers. IBM and Microsoft went through an acrimonious divorce in 1990, and IBM spent the next half dozen years trying to kill the upstart. "We're going to burn Bill's butt," IBM told me.

Total domination

Although plenty of people have been rude about Windows, Microsoft has never been accused of acquiring its Windows monopoly unfairly (what the company did when it got there is, of course, another matter). It won in the marketplace against the likes of OS/2, DR's GEM, IBM's TopView, Quarterdeck's DESQview, Berkeley Softworks' GeoWorks (GEOS), BeOS, Unix and a number of non-PC systems such as Acorn's Archimedes.

People needed a standard and Microsoft provided one that was cheap, widely available on clone PCs, easy to adopt and had at least a few bits of decent software. And Solitaire.

The success of Windows 3 and, allied to that, Microsoft Office helped turn Gates into a minor public figure. The blockbuster launch of Windows 95 turned him into a superstar. He gave keynote speeches to open the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas every year from 1996, and later started keynoting the Consumer Electronics Show. Sometimes more than 15,000 people would turn up to watch an awkward guy with a scratchy voice and a bad haircut talk about a computer on every desk and in every home. In Vegas! Can anyone imagine people queuing for hours to see Ballmer dance?

Partly, of course, people wanted to be close to the World's Richest Man. This was something Gates achieved mainly by accident, and it made him uncomfortable. "I wish I wasn't," he told The Guardian in 2006. "There is nothing good that comes out of that." Gates achieved his unwanted distinction because he never wanted venture capital, and he didn't want to go public, putting it off until 1986. At that point, Gates, Allen and Ballmer - unlike most entrepreneurs - still owned most of the company. When Microsoft's share price rocketed following the success of Windows, they all became absurdly rich.

But life wasn't all roses. The IBM divorce - which divided the code and appeared to divide the PC market between Windows and OS/2 - attracted the attention of the US Department of Justice. Microsoft was investigated and arrived at a settlement in 1995 that specifically allowed it to add features to the operating system, although not to tie other products to it. The agreement was a disaster for all concerned. Having built Internet Explorer into Windows, Microsoft faced another antitrust suit in 1997. Microsoft took a legal hammering, and numerous security issues meant users were made to pay, too.

The case tarnished Gates' image, particularly when he was shown on video being evasive under questioning. Previously, Gates had been seen as running an exciting company that was bringing computing to a wider public. In businesses, it was helping to liberate users from the clutches of the Evil Empire, the giant mainframe-orientated IBM Corporation. Now Microsoft was the Evil Empire.

This must have come as a shock because Gates still liked to see Microsoft as the scrappy underdog, running scared to cope with the challenges of rivals and the might of IBM. And notoriety can't have pleased the quiet family man whose idea of fun is playing bridge with his richlist buddy, Warren Buffett.