BIT-101 Blog

The final two questions came from Jonathan Snook and Molly Holzschlag.

Molly asked some stuff about IE8. I believe she is currently consulting with Microsoft and seems to have a lot more in-depth knowledge of teams and processes there, so it was a bit beyond me, but apparently we’ll be seeing more about IE8 before MIX.

Jonathan had the misfortune to get Bill a bit riled up, and got shot down pretty hard. We all felt a bit bad for him, but were all grateful for the show. For the most part, Bill was pretty laid back, though interested in what he was talking about. During this segment though, he was pretty fired up. Basically, he brought up the viewpoint, which I completely agree is a common viewpoint, that Microsoft tends to copy other successful technologies. Bill obviously did not agree. Anyway, I’ll let you enjoy the transcript. I wish it could have been video’d.

Jonathan Snook: My question is more regarding (off mike). I’ve often felt that Microsoft has certainly been reactionary (off mike).

BILL GATES: Especially when we started the company. (Laughter.) I knew that three years later, Apple would come along. It was (just a reaction ?). (Laughter.)

Jonathan Snook: So, like, I mean, think of like Word (inaudible) or WordPerfect before (off mike).

BILL GATES: Oh, really? (Laughter.) When do you think Microsoft did its first word processor, just out of curiosity?

Jonathan Snook: Apparently it was before my time. (Laughter.)

BILL GATES: Way before WordPerfect, way before Bruce Bastian started school at BYU. Anyway –

Jonathan Snook: What year was that?

BILL GATES: The myth of all these things. We did 8080 word processors, 8080, eight-bit machine word processors. Every stupid thing we did first. (Laughter.)

PARTICIPANT: Let it be known.

BILL GATES: I mean, I’ll date myself. Has anybody ever used a Model 100, Radio Shack Model 100? Okay, that was the first portable computer. It’s a Z80 based system. It had this nice little word processor in it. You didn’t have to give save commands. It had an eight-line LCD, 8 by 40 character LCD type thing.

Why does the IBM character set have all the characters it has in it? Because I put the Wang word processing characters in, because I thought, oh, maybe we’ll do a Wang type word processor.

Who did Microsoft’s word processor? Who? A guy named Charles Simone. Who is Charles Simone? Go back to the annals of Xerox PARC, and look at who wrote the first bitmap graphics word processor, a guy named Charles Simone, Dr. Charles Simone. Look at his PhD thesis on the thing.

Anyway, he started in 1980, after we’d done our first word processor. He came in because he believed in doing bitmap word processors. But anyway –

Jonathan Snook: Well, then let me rephrase my question.

BILL GATES: I mean, come on. (Laughter.) Do you guys remember Electric Pencil, do you remember WordStar? WordPerfect was late. We were early. The midrange is guys like Electric Pencil and WordStar. Now, we didn’t win in word processing until people bet against graphics user interface, and we bet on graphics user interface, and people kind of messed up. There were even some good word processors, but they got messed up. What was that one on the Mac that was really good? FullWrite? FullWrite was actually a very good word processor, but they never took it anywhere. Anyway. But we were imitating them. (Laughter.)

Jonathan Snook: There’s a myth that Microsoft doesn’t innovate. How do you feel that Microsoft can change that attitude?

BILL GATES: We can’t change it. If you think we just imitate, then that’s — you just can’t change it.

Did we do personal computing? Who did that damn personal computing thing? When I bought that 8008 for $360 down at Hamilton (Avenue ?), what was that?

Anyway, tablet computers, is there somebody else out there doing tablet computers? IPTV, is there somebody else out there doing — by definition what we do is the baseline. Everything Microsoft does is the baseline, and what we don’t do, that’s what’s innovative I guess. (Laughter.) And by that definition the other guys do all the innovative things.

I remember Google invented Web search. No one did it before they did. It’s very interesting how they did that. (Laughter.)

In the computer industry the person who does something first and the person who does it successfully, they are rarely the same, but the memory is — I mean, people think Apple Computer was an early personal computer company. Well, let’s see, I had licensed 17 people to do personal computer basics before I did the Applesoft BASIC, before I went out with Steve Wozniak and did the version that worked with a cassette tape, because they didn’t have the disk yet. But Apple invented personal computing.

So, let history be rewritten at all times. But there’s no way to get it straight, I guess. Go look at what Microsoft Research is doing, and then decide who are imitating and let me know.

Jonathan Snook: Well, I’m sure that (off mike) Microsoft Research (off mike).

BILL GATES: I’m sorry?

Jonathan Snook: The stuff coming out of Microsoft Research (off mike).

BILL GATES: All our products are based — all our products are based on stuff that came out of Microsoft Research. We are playing catch-up in Web search. What things are we behind in? Some design and usability things we could be better in, search we could be better in. So, we have categories where we need to match and exceed what a brilliant company has done. Adobe has done a great job with Flash, it’s a very nice piece of work. Is it good that there’s some competitor trying to make it better? Who knows? But, yes, they were the first mover in many elements of that. I can talk to you about people who failed who did it before them, but it doesn’t really matter; they got out there and they drove the very big numbers.

So, we always have a few categories like that, but most of our revenue — who’s revolutionizing management software? Who’s revolutionizing security software? I mean, seriously, who do you think? The business computing market, which is way bigger than the consumer computing market, no one pays attention to it. Even in the Wall Street Journal, and you think, oh, this is the paper they’re going to tell me about business computing; no, it’s all about consumer computing. It’s okay, but thank God for business computing, because it allows us to price our consumer computing stuff super cheap, and still pay the salaries of these wonderful researchers who like to be paid.

Anyway, I’m — (laughter.) It’s not the first time I’ve heard that. I’m not — (laughter) — it’s a very common view that if you figure out how I can get rid of it, I will do so.

MOLLY HOLZSCHLAG: So, I have a little bit of an infrastructure question, as related to MIX and the open conversation and transparency. A few years ago, MIX was a big information and conversation about the opening of ideas, it was about when in the specific we talked about the browser, IE 7, a lot of interest in that, a lot of (inaudible) talking about it. So, for the last year or so, I’ve been working, I’ve been a consultant here with the IE and (inaudible) team to try and help get standards implementation to be strong, and we see some really great advances.

But very recently there seems to be a shift in infrastructure, and I don’t really know exactly what happened, but what I understand, my understanding is that IE sits on the Web platform rather than in the — excuse me, on the platform, on the Windows platform rather than the Web, and something seems to have changed where there is no messaging now for the last six months to a year going out on the IE team. We seem to have had — they seem to have lost the transparency that they had been able to get some momentum going on in the IE 7 phase, in the year and a half (off mike) at MIX.

So, I’m very concerned about this, because being the person here that’s supposed to be the liaison between designers and developers for the Web and the browser conversation, this conversation seems to have been pretty much shut down, and I’m very concerned as to why that is, and how we can correct it.

BILL GATES: I’ll have to ask Dean what the hell is going on. I mean, we’re not — there’s not like some deep secret about what we’re doing with IE.

MOLLY HOLZSCHLAG: But they’re not letting — like you know how people (inaudible) going around talking (inaudible), but I do realize that there is a new engine, there is some information, and this information is not — we are being asked not to talk about it. So, I’m concerned about that.

BILL GATES: I’ll ask Dean what’s going on.

BILL GATES: I mean, is IE 8 represented at MIX? I assume it is.

JENNIFER RITZINGER: Yes.

MOLLY HOLZSCHLAG: To what extent?

JENNIFER RITZINGER: To be determined

MOLLY HOLZSCHLAG: So, at MIX.

PARTICIPANT: There will be disclosure by MIX.

PARTICIPANT: By MIX.

PARTICIPANT: Yes.

BILL GATES: There’s a paradox about disclosure, which is when you’re far away from doing something you’re super open; when you’re very close to doing something you’re open; when you’re making your cut list of what you can do and not do, then particularly because — well –

PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible) expectations and that causes trouble.

BILL GATES: Yeah, and so I don’t know where Dean is in terms of if he’s willing to commit what’s in IE 8 and what’s not in IE 8. In terms of standards support, he’ll see that it’s a glass half full. It adds a bunch of new stuff we didn’t have before, it doesn’t add everything that everybody wants us to do.

MOLLY HOLZSCHLAG: I mean, really IE 7 (off mike).

BILL GATES: No, and believe me, Dean gets this stuff.

MOLLY HOLZSCHLAG: Oh, Dean totally gets it, and that’s why I’m concerned, because they have always been so forward facing. So, my –

BILL GATES: I’ll look into it.

MOLLY HOLZSCHLAG: Yeah, do. (Off mike).

BILL GATES: I mean, I will look into it.

PARTICIPANT: (Off mike).

BILL GATES: We do sometimes have MIX — a lot of how the MIX agenda gets set is the tools guys, and we need to make sure the Win — yeah, we have two organizations. I mean, they’re totally complementary, but we should make sure the Windows messages come through in MIX. I know last year the Windows group felt like their messages could have — we could have done an even better job on the Windows related messages, that that didn’t happen. So, we’ll double check that.

MOLLY HOLZSCHLAG: Thank you.