Gates Fires Salvo Microsoft Chairman Says Government Action Cripples Company’s Products
Bill Gates complained that the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against the Microsoft Corp. crippled the company’s products.
Gates said he had been wrong to focus on product development while competitors were in Washington, D.C., “trying to turn our success into something negative.”
“I was a little naive,” Gates said. “We need to add to our expertise explaining what’s going on in our industry.
“We didn’t know we were supposed to cripple our products. That’s a fascinating lawsuit to have.”
Gates was the keynote speaker Tuesday at NationsBanc Montgomery Securities’ technology week conference in San Francisco. It was the 15th annual Montgomery-sponsored meeting of technology companies and investors.
Gates’ remarks were in reference to a recent court order that Microsoft offer its Windows 95 operating system separately from its Internet browser.
The ruling stems from a Justice Department antitrust complaint, accusing the Redmond, Wash.-based software company of unfairly using the monopoly power of its Windows operating system to make inroads in the market for Internet browsers.
Gates said it was an industry trend that software makers, including rivals Netscape Communications Corp. and Oracle Corp., integrate more and more functions into software.
In his speech at the conference, the Microsoft chairman said the main challenge facing software makers was simplicity.
“It’s too complicated working with a PC,” said Gates. In a few years, Gates said, consumers will look back on today’s computers and say, “What did we use them for? They couldn’t see. They couldn’t listen. They couldn’t even learn what we were interested in.”
As for the future, Gates said Microsoft would increase its research and development spending from the current level of 17 percent of revenues to 20 percent, making it one of the highest research rates in the industry.
Gates said Microsoft currently had 4 percent of the world software market, “so we can grow a little bit without being too big a part of this picture,” he said.
He predicted significant advances in a variety of Internet technologies, including speech recognition and video conferencing.
On Monday, Microsoft said it would collaborate with Intel Inc., Compaq Computer Corp. and several major regional telephone companies to promote a new technology for faster connection to the Internet through conventional phone lines.