Cross posted from my kplug list

Michael's Minute:  Gates at my Alma Mater

This week Bill Gates came to my alma mater to speak. I have to admit that I
was less than thrilled to have UCSD roll out the red carpet for him, but
it's understandable since he is the richest man in the world and runs the
richest company in the world. I started to think about the young people who
would be in attendance though, and that they were in diapers when Microsoft
started. They've grown up in a Microsoft-only world, that's the only thing
they know and few have any perspective about how Microsoft came to dominate
the PC business. In the absence of information otherwise, they'll assume
that it was through healthy, free enterprise -- which I don't believe is
true.

Anyone who tracks the PC business, recognizes that Microsoft has clearly
been on a propaganda campaign for the last few years to clean up their
image. They have been spending big money in an effort to do so on TV, in
print and public appearances. They would like the world to think of
Microsoft as an innovative company and of Mr. Gates as a visionary and a
philanthropist. Mr. Gates is clearly very smart and Microsoft is a vicious
competitor, but I'm not so sure the facts indicate they are innovative or
visionary. So I've put together a two-page background on Mr. Gates and
Microsoft to add some historical perspective to the debate, which I passed
out to those in attendance. I hope you find it helpful to form your own
conclusions.

Fact Sheet On Bill Gates and the Microsoft Corporation

Q: Can you provide some background on Bill Gates? A: Bill Gates was born in
1955 and founded the Microsoft Corporation in 1975 with Paul Allen. Mr.
Gates was CEO and Chairman of Microsoft until 2000, when he gave up the CEO
title to Steve Ballmer. During that time, Microsoft became the largest and
richest software company in the world, with $46 billion in the bank and
adding nearly one billion per month to that total. It has made Bill Gates
the richest man in the world with an estimated wealth of $54.44 billion
dollars or $187 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

Q: Can you provide a brief history of Microsoft? A: In the early 1980s, IBM
asked Microsoft to produce an operating system for their upcoming
"personal computer." That product became MS DOS and made billions
for Microsoft. Microsoft followed that up with Microsoft Windows and the
components of Microsoft Office (Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and
Microsoft PowerPoint).

Q: Doesn't that make Microsoft the most innovative PC software company? A:
Virtually every successful Microsoft product was either purchased from
another company, or a direct copy of an existing company's successful
product. Microsoft's first major success, MS DOS, was purchased from
another company and renamed from QDOS. Microsoft Windows was a copy of
Apple's innovative Macintosh operating system. Microsoft Word (1983) was a
copy of Wordperfect (1982). Microsoft Excel (1985) was a copy of Lotus
1-2-3 (1983). Using revenue from their monopolies, Microsoft purchased
PowerPoint (from Forethought), Frontpage (Vermeer), and Visio (Shapewear).

Q: The history of PC software is made up of companies borrowing ideas from
others, so what is wrong with that? A: To some degree, almost all
technology companies build on existing ideas. Microsoft, however, has often
engaged in wholesale copying without adding much. With many of the original
companies gone or withering, Microsoft is embarking on a calculated plan to
rewrite history and position themselves as the original innovator. For
example, Microsoft now claims that they are the sole inventor of
"windows" and no other company can use that term -- in spite of
the fact that Microsoft Windows was such a close copy of the Apple
Macintosh that it triggered a lawsuit upon its release (See
http://law.richmond.edu/jolt/v1i1/myers.html).

Q: Even if they're not innovative, Microsoft's products are used so widely
that they must be making great products, which makes Microsoft a great
company, right? A: Normally, when a company enjoys success it's a sign of a
good company serving their customers. While Microsoft employees have surely
worked hard, their success has been tainted by decades of illegal actions
by Microsoft's management to secure, maintain and extend their monopoly
position.

After the success of MS DOS, a competing product emerged called DR DOS,
causing MS to lower their prices. Bill Gates wrote in an e-mail, "I
believe people underestimate the impact DR-DOS has had on us in terms of
pricing" (May 18, 1989). So Gates gave orders to executives at
Microsoft to purposely sabotage DR DOS. "Make sure it [DR DOS] has
problems running our software in the future." And where it didn't have
problems, programmers were instructed to create bogus error messages saying
that it did. The tactic worked and DR DOS was forced out of business,
leaving the Microsoft monopoly. Years later, MS paid more than $100 million
to settle this case -- long after DR DOS was no longer a threat (See
www.drdos.com/fullstory/factstat.html).

With the MS DOS monopoly as a foundation, Microsoft continued a series of
illegal actions designed to extend their monopoly to additional products,
including Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. For example, they stifled
competition by threatening and extorting computer manufacturers to enter
into licenses agreeing to only carry Microsoft products. By the time the
Justice Department caught up to them and filed two antitrust cases for a
wide range of unfair and anti-competitive actions (1993, 1996), Microsoft
had cemented a massive monopoly which gave them hoards of cash to fight any
company -- or even the government. Microsoft settled the first case,
agreeing to change its illegal marketing practices and was found guilty in
the second case (See
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/microsoft/documents.htm).

Q: Isn't this just a case of the losing companies complaining because they
couldn't compete?  A: Over the last 20 years, it is difficult to find
another company which exhibits such a lengthy pattern of illegal behavior
designed to thwart competition. E-mail from a MS executive said it best,
"It seems clear that it will be very hard to increase browser share on
the merits of IE [Internet Explorer] 4 alone...It will be more important to
leverage the OS asset to make people use IE instead of Navigator"
(2/24/97). There have even been cases where Microsoft has stolen technology
which has put companies out of business, such as San Diego's Stac
Electronics. A jury found MS guilty and ordered them to pay $110 million
(See
www.vaxxine.com/lawyers/articles/stac.html).

Q: Where does Microsoft make their money? A: Microsoft makes money largely
from two product lines: operating system (Microsoft Windows XP) and office
suite (Microsoft Office). Virtually every other venture that Microsoft has
embarked upon has not generated a profit -- including WinCE, Xbox, MSN,
WebTV, Sidewalk, MSNBC, etc. (See http://biz.yahoo.com/e/l/m/msft.html).

Q: If most product lines lose money, how can they generate such large
profits?  A: Through illegal tactics, Microsoft has been able to secure and
keep a monopoly which allows them to charge very high rates for their
software. Enabled by the monopoly, Microsoft's profit margins are 5 times
greater than the average from top 500 US companies. If Microsoft faced
meaningful competition, their profits would be more in line with the rest
of corporate America and software would cost 1/5 what it does today (See
http://research.businessweek.com/scoreboard.asp).

Q: Aren't all of these actions ancient history? Since Microsoft has been
under government scrutiny, haven't we seen improved corporate behavior? A:
Microsoft's massive war chest and unchanged management team means more
corporate wrongdoing. This makes it extraordinarily difficult for
competition to emerge. Just last week, an e-mail was revealed in which
Microsoft executives disclosed a $180 million fund designed to thwart Linux
by giving away Microsoft software and services -- the same successful
strategy they used to put Netscape out of business (See
www.iht.com/articles/96369.html). In another example, over the past year,
Microsoft has spent millions in legal fees in an attempt to shutdown a San
Diego Linux company, Lindows.com (See www.lindows.com/opposition).

Q: But doesn't Microsoft do a lot of good?  A: The charitable giving that
Microsoft advertises is usually a business tactic, where they give away
software in an attempt to gain traction in a market, such as they do with
schools. The software costs them just pennies to reproduce, but they
advertise the full retail value for tax and PR reasons. Microsoft rarely
gives actual cash (See: www.nytimes.com/2003/05/26/technology/26SOFT.html).

Q: Hasn't Mr. Gates given away billions of dollars?  A: Nearly 20 years
after starting Microsoft and only after antitrust issues emerged, Mr. Gates
created a foundation and moved billions of dollars of stock, tax free, into
this new organization, which he controls as the sole trustee. Mr. Gates' PR
folks have convinced major publications to carry as many as 5 stories in 3
days about the multi-billion dollar foundation in an attempt to bolster Mr.
Gates' image (See http://theregister.co.uk/content/4/28039.html). By
repeatedly trumpeting the formation of the foundation, then announcing
individual initiatives and finally announcing individual grants, readers
are left with the impression that billions of dollars are routinely
dispersed, but that is simply not true. In 2001, the Gates Foundation
collected more money in interest from their holdings than they dispersed in
grants (See: www.fdncenter.org).

More troublesome, Mr. Gates has used monies from the foundation he
controls, in concert with Microsoft's corporate goals. In an attempt to
sway Cox Communications to use Microsoft software, Microsoft agreed to
financially back them in November, 2001. Two months later Mr. Gates
purchased
$500 million dollars of Cox stock using $200 million of
funds from his non-profit foundation (See
www.eureka-boston.org/readings/gates_foundation.htm). In another example,
MS gave hundreds of millions to thwart Linux growth in the Indian
government, while also making funds available from the Gates foundation to
Indian government initiatives (See
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-965378.html).

Q: What can we expect Mr. Gates to talk about?  A: Mr. Gates will likely
spend some time speaking about the importance of innovation and open
standards. However those are just platitudes, since their actions achieve
exactly the opposite. Their monopoly is built upon proprietary formats that
they have no intention of publishing (e.g. Microsoft Office file format
specifications), because that would allow competition. Furthermore, they
have attempted to squash any standard which they believe threatens their
stranglehold -- such as MP3, HTML and Java. An internal MS document
entitled "Strategic Objective" had this to say about Java:
"[Lets] Kill cross-platform Java by growing the polluted Java
market."

In spite of the conciliatory comments Mr. Gates conveyed, Microsoft will
continue to use their monopoly powers to destroy other companies - which
limits competition and innovation and keeps software prices high. "Do
we have a clear plan on what we want Apple to do to undermine Sun?"
(Bill Gates e-mail 8/8/97) A series of recent leaked internal memos reveal
an ongoing attempt by Microsoft to discredit and derail the latest
perceived threat - Linux. (See www.opensource.org/halloween/)

Microsoft is engaging in a calculated and comprehensive effort to rewrite
history. In doing so, they position themselves as an innovative company and
Mr. Gates as a visionary and philanthropist. Please research those claims
for yourself on the Net, use the sources listed in this document to
determine for yourself, the veracity of their claims.

-- Michael

--- BBBS/LiI v4.00 MP