Read Online Bill Gates by Jonathan Gatlin - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jonathan Gatlin
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surprising when competitors in any field of business bad-mouth one another’s products. The kind of negative attack ads that have become so common in politics aren’t allowed in industry, by law, but there are subtle ways for a crack advertising company to make invidious comparisons (for example, we see them all the time in the “cola wars”). But there’s nothing to prevent one chief executive from running down another company’s products in interviews with the press. And if a company gets angry enough, and its lawyers think a case can be made, complaints can be filed with the Federal Trade Commission. That’s what began to happen in the computer world in the early 1990s. There were a number of competitors making complaints about Microsoft’s business practices, but the two best known are Phillipe Kahn, the French-born founder of Borland International, and Raymond Noorda of Novell Data Systems.
Kahn was already thirty when he arrived in California in 1982. He was late getting into the computer field, buthe had been trained as a mathematician, and his technical wizardry soon made the tiny company he founded over an auto repair shop in Scott’s Valley near San Jose into the third biggest software company behind Microsoft and Novell. Within a year he had introduced an inexpensive computer programming language called Turbo Pascal. As the New York Times reported, “He sold his programming language mail order at a fraction of the price charged by larger rivals like IBM and Digital Research.” He followed that with Sidekick, which would become the most popular scheduling and information manager software for personal computers.
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M icrosoft Word, which is our word processor, is used to write eighty percent of all the documents that are created in the world today, because it’s available in Chinese, and German, and every language you can name, but in no sense does providing that tool give us any influence over what people choose to write.
—B ILL G ATES , downplaying the power of Microsoft, 1995
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Despite the respect Kahn had as a technical genius, he also had a reputation as a wild character. He even styled himself as a “barbarian,” drove cars at speeds that brought him endless tickets, spent a lot of time sailing yachts, and played the saxophone, recording two albums with well-known jazz professionals—paid for by his company. He and Gates loathed one another. Kahn said that Microsoft was run like “Nazi Germany,” and Gates told Time , “Phillipe Kahn is good at playing the saxophone and sailing, but he’s not good at making money.” According to James Wallace in Overdrive , one group at Microsoft had T-shirts made up that read “Delete Phillipe.” And that’s exactly what Gates set about doing, by buying one of Borland’s chief rivals for database products, Fox Software. The deal went through in early 1992 for one hundred seventy-three million dollars; Microsoft used its sales force to push its FoxPro from ten percent to fifteen percent of the market in a few months. In December of that year, Microsoft introduced its own database product, Access, and sold it at a steep discount to undercut Borland. Borland began posting losses, and Kahn had to keep reducing the number of thecompany’s employees as he made mistakes of his own and fell behind in delivering new products. The personal animosity Khan felt toward Gates was hardly eased when his former wife started dating the Microsoft founder.
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S oftware companies are sometimes criticized for designing software that works best on the newest, most powerful machines. But it almost has to be that way because advances in computer hardware let software companies make products that are easier to use relative to what they accomplish.
—B ILL G ATES , 1995
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The antipathy between Raymond Noorda and Gates was more straightforward, growing out of tough Microsoft business stances. Noorda was not a technical person, but he was a
Kahn was already thirty when he arrived in California in 1982. He was late getting into the computer field, buthe had been trained as a mathematician, and his technical wizardry soon made the tiny company he founded over an auto repair shop in Scott’s Valley near San Jose into the third biggest software company behind Microsoft and Novell. Within a year he had introduced an inexpensive computer programming language called Turbo Pascal. As the New York Times reported, “He sold his programming language mail order at a fraction of the price charged by larger rivals like IBM and Digital Research.” He followed that with Sidekick, which would become the most popular scheduling and information manager software for personal computers.
----
M icrosoft Word, which is our word processor, is used to write eighty percent of all the documents that are created in the world today, because it’s available in Chinese, and German, and every language you can name, but in no sense does providing that tool give us any influence over what people choose to write.
—B ILL G ATES , downplaying the power of Microsoft, 1995
----
Despite the respect Kahn had as a technical genius, he also had a reputation as a wild character. He even styled himself as a “barbarian,” drove cars at speeds that brought him endless tickets, spent a lot of time sailing yachts, and played the saxophone, recording two albums with well-known jazz professionals—paid for by his company. He and Gates loathed one another. Kahn said that Microsoft was run like “Nazi Germany,” and Gates told Time , “Phillipe Kahn is good at playing the saxophone and sailing, but he’s not good at making money.” According to James Wallace in Overdrive , one group at Microsoft had T-shirts made up that read “Delete Phillipe.” And that’s exactly what Gates set about doing, by buying one of Borland’s chief rivals for database products, Fox Software. The deal went through in early 1992 for one hundred seventy-three million dollars; Microsoft used its sales force to push its FoxPro from ten percent to fifteen percent of the market in a few months. In December of that year, Microsoft introduced its own database product, Access, and sold it at a steep discount to undercut Borland. Borland began posting losses, and Kahn had to keep reducing the number of thecompany’s employees as he made mistakes of his own and fell behind in delivering new products. The personal animosity Khan felt toward Gates was hardly eased when his former wife started dating the Microsoft founder.
----
S oftware companies are sometimes criticized for designing software that works best on the newest, most powerful machines. But it almost has to be that way because advances in computer hardware let software companies make products that are easier to use relative to what they accomplish.
—B ILL G ATES , 1995
----
The antipathy between Raymond Noorda and Gates was more straightforward, growing out of tough Microsoft business stances. Noorda was not a technical person, but he was a
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