Quotations

If Microsoft had been the innovative company that it calls itself, it would have taken the opportunity to take a radical leap beyond the Mac, instead of producing a feeble, me-too implementation.
Douglas Adams, Author, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place.
Douglas Adams, Author, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I feel as if I am fighting Microsoft for the right to use my own computer efficiently.
Stewart Alsop, Fortune Magazine

Every single thing that Microsoft says and does is designed to protect their monopoly.
Alan Baratz, President, Sun JavaSoft Division

Windows 95 is so bad, I hardly know where to start.
Jesse Berst

Microsoft's ability and willingness to control proprietary standards that span the world's computing resources is in fact dangerous.
John Blackford, Editor, Computer Shopper

Microsoft does not innovate. It buys, imitates, or steals. It makes things difficult for software developers, and thus eventually for users.
Richard Brandshaft, San Jose Mercury-News

Microsoft, I think, is fundamentally an evil company.
James H. Clark

"There are cases where RegClean will have an invalid page fault, or attempt to access memory that cannot be "read". These messages are commonly called "GPFs" or “Access Violations”. Microsoft is currently researching these issues. The messages, while preventing RegClean from working, should not harm your computer or the software on it in any way. "
Readme file with Regclean, (Dec. 1997)

"Sager NP8200 or Wedge Technologies 466/DX2
WARNING: If you install Win95 on a Sager NP8200 or Wedge Tech. 466/DX2 laptop, you won't be able to use your computer anymore, even if you reinstall a previous version of Windows."
Und warum wird nicht im Install-Programm darauf hingewiesen ???
Übersetzung der Readme file with Win OSR2, (Dec. 1997) (Franz.)

Wahr ist, daß es ihm [Bill Gates] nichts ausmacht, ohne Würde zu gewinnen. Ein Sieg ist immer noch ein Sieg.
Robert X. Cringely, "Die Jungs vom Silicon Valley", ECON Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, 1993

'Wir wollen das Software-Geschäft monopolisieren', sagte Gates in den späten 70er Jahren immer wieder. In den 80er Jahren deutete er dies auch gerne an, aber da hatte Microsoft schon PR-Leute und Anwälte angeheuert, die ihrem jungen Vorsitzenden zuflüsterten, daß der Begriff im offiziellen Vokabular des Unternehmertums eher verpönt war.
Robert X. Cringely, "Die Jungs vom Silicon Valley", ECON Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, 1993

Microsoft wurde eine Art Kultstätte. Unerfahrene Leute wurden eingestellt und quasi-religiös indoktriniert [...] So schuf Microsoft eine systemimmanente Heldenverehrung, und Bill Gates' Wille infiltrierte alle Lebensbereiche seiner Angestellten, sogar derjenigen, die ihn noch nicht einmal kennengelernt hatten. Für Kim Il Sung funktionierte es in Nordkorea, also funktionierte es auch in den östlichen Vororten von Seattle.
Robert X. Cringely, "Die Jungs vom Silicon Valley", ECON Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, 1993

Die Softwarefabrik hat nur Platz für ein einziges Genie, und das ist Bill Gates. Aber da Bill Gates in Wirklichkeit nicht den Code der Software von Microsoft schreibt, heißt das, daß sich nur wenige geniale Geistesblitze ihren Weg auch in die Produkte bahnen. Diese sind abgeleitet - erfolgreich, aber abgeleitet
Robert X. Cringely

Die Leute bei Microsoft glauben auch mit Vorliebe, daß ihre Produkte auf dem neuesten Stand der Technik sind. Wenn man anderer Meinung wäre, würde man ja Chairman Bill angreifen, und sowas tut man nicht. Es ist einfacher, die Realität zu verzerren.
Robert X. Cringely, "Die Jungs vom Silicon Valley", ECON Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, 1993

There is a fantasy in Redmond that Microsoft products are innovative, but this is based entirely on a peculiar confusion of the words "innovative" and "successful". Microsoft products are successful -- they make a lot of money -- but that doesn't make them innovative, or even particularly good.
Robert X. Cringely

The problem (and the genius) regarding Microsoft's products is bloat. Microsoft's penchant for producing overweight code is not an accident. It's the business model for the company. ...
While [bloatware has] made Bill Gates the world's richest guy, it's made life miserable for people who have to use these computers and expect them to run without crashing or dying.
John Dvorak, PC Magazine

If you say something he doesn't like, he yells at you.
Bronwyn Fryer, Information Strategy, about Bill Gates

In a manner that would have left the robber barons of the late 19th century gaping in absolute awe, Microsoft is approaching something unprecedented: a monopoly that could well own the choke points of tomorrow's commerce and communications.
Dan Gillmore, San Jose Mercury News Computing Editor

This is very Borg-like. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
Samuel Goodhope, Texas Attorney General's office

Most curious is the desire to standardize on one OS and one CPU architecture. Depending on a single company for all future OS innovation and on another for all future CPU innovation would be tragic for an industry driven by technology.
Tom R. Halfhill, Sr. Editor, BYTE Magazine

Microsoft now has the ability to virtually annihilate any competitive product it wants by bringing it into the next version of Windows. There's evidence that they are aggressively seeking to extend that monopoly to the Internet, and policy-makers have to be concerned about it.
Orrin Hatch, U.S. Senator and Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee

[...] Microsoft has taken a perfectly good standard, broken it, and then told us that we have to buy expensive programs that support the broken interface rather than use the free ones that come with all operating systems in the world except Microsoft operating systems.
Allen Holub, Programmer and Columnist

Microsoft does not like negative or even objective press coverage and they have a tendency to be a bully about it. If something appears that they don't like, they have the ability to punish the publication.
Bob Ingle, President, Knight-Ridder New Media

My view of Microsoft is that they had two goals in the last 10 years: to copy the Macintosh and to copy Lotus' success in the applications business. And they accomplished those goals. Now, they're kind of lost. I've told Bill that I think it's in Microsoft's best interest if NeXT becomes successful because we'll give him something to copy for the rest of this decade.
Steve Jobs

I still think that tens of millions of PC owners needlessly use a computer that is far less good than it should be.
Steve Jobs

[Bill Gates] definitely scares me. He embodies the very cultural and economic forces that have transformed American mass media from the freest and most diverse in the world to among the most cautious, greedy, and useless.
Jon Katz, Hotwired

Oil and water. Fried eggs and chocolate sauce. Amanda Vanstone and human compassion. Microsoft and open standards. Can you spot what all these pairings have in common? Yes, none of them actually belong together.
Angus Kidman, APC News Editor

When Microsoft announces future technology plans, product feature sets or (heaven help us) release dates, I laugh out loud. Its reputation for sudden changes of plan, vapourware frenzies, total contradiction and frantic scrambling around the facts is unsurpassed in the modern computing world.
Angus Kidman, APC News Editor

Microsoft und der große Vorsitzende Gates als Herrscher über die Medien, ihre Inhalte und ihre Finanzen - eine Horrorvorstellung, die angesichts der internen Struktur von Microsoft das Informationsministerium in Orwells Staat von 1984 wie einen Hort der Demokratie erscheinen lassen.
Jürgen Kuri, Redakteur, c't Magazin

To hear Microsoft tell it, you'd think the Computer Age had changed the rules of commerce. Microsoft Chairman and CEO Bill Gates has argued that the government is trying to structure an industry it knows little about. This is nonsense. What Gates is attempting is as old as the efforts to monopolize the steel, rail, oil, and telephone industries in the robber baron era.
Robert Kuttner, Business Week

Every time you turn on your new car, you're turning on 20 microprocessors. Every time you use an ATM, you're using a computer. Every time I use a settop box or game machine, I'm using a computer. The only computer you don't know how to work is your Microsoft computer, right?
Scott McNealy, CEO, Sun Microsystems

I am convinced that if General Motors could eliminate [Microsoft] Office from their entire company, they could get the 1999 cars out next year at half price
Scott McNealy, CEO, Sun Microsystems

If one company dominates everything, it's dangerous. You kill innovation and you lose the capacity to create alternatives. Ultimately, that isn't good for the consumer or the country.
Samuel Miller, U.S. Justice Department

I don't think that the world needs another market dominated by Microsoft. I have enormous respect for the company, but I really get nervous about markets where one vendor has such power.
Geoffrey Moore, Marketing Guru

I think anybody who is savvy about this market knows that Microsoft is getting away with stuff it probably shouldn't get away with.
Geoffrey Moore, Marketing Guru

What we'll all end up doing if Netscape doesn't play better is we will have instantiated the Microsoft Network. We'll just call it the Internet.
Geoffrey Moore, Marketing Guru

Appeasement, said Winston Churchill, consists of being nice to a crocodile in the hope that he will eat you last. At the moment, the biggest crocodile in the world is Microsoft, and everybody is busy sucking up to it.
John Naughton, the London Observer

'[S]trategic partnerships' are means to a single end: to enable Microsoft to learn enough about particular businesses eventually to dominate them.
John Naughton, the London Observer

[Microsoft] is the fox that takes you across the river and then eats you.
Pete Peterson, Former Executive, WordPerfect

I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter.
Nicholas Petreley, Sr. Editor, InfoWorld

The best thing about Windows 95, of course, is the mountains of software designed specifically for it. There are programs to compress memory, recover a damaged registry, remove the heaps of unneeded files Windows accumulates, tune sluggish performance, and undo a few of the many problems that can occur when installing new software, to mention but a few. There is even software designed to intercept system faults to improve your chances of saving your work before you have to reboot.
Nicholas Petreley, Sr. Editor, InfoWorld

Microsoft has gotten so big that it can put out a Preview that will install itself without checking first to see if it has expired. The message here is that Microsoft's time is worth more than yours.... no start-up company could get away with being that arrogant.
Jerry Pournelle, Byte Magazine

Microsoft is trying to sell us crack, and the first taste is free. But what's it going to mean when we're addicted to this?
Leif Quakeman, The Netly News

Microsoft now is in 40 percent of American households. If they can somehow insert themselves in as a piece of infrastructure in the next generation of televisions, they could go to 100 percent penetration of American households and eventually the world.
Barry Randall, Analyst, Dain Bosworth

Stop Microsoft through government antitrust enforcement now or say goodbye to new products and the openness of the Internet. Gates will own everything, and collect a fee on every imaginable product and service in cyberspace from home finance to a virtual visit to the Louvre. And forget about getting these products and services someplace else. Competitors won't exist.
Gary Reback, Antitrust attorney

They [Microsoft] are trying to use an existing monopoly to retard introduction of new technology.
Gary Reback, Antitrust attorney

Suppose you made a desktop application like a spreadsheet and all of a sudden Microsoft were to call you one day and say "you know, we've just decided we're not gonna give you the information necessary to let you write a product that runs on top of our operating system. On top of our desktop."
I mean, what would you do? You go, you look at the room, you stare at the ceiling? What would you do, call me, file a lawsuit? You're a little company, come on.
Gary Reback, Antitrust attorney

When people understand what Microsoft is up to, they're outraged.
Tim O'Reilly, President, O'Reilly & Associates

Forcing PC manufacturers to take one Microsoft product as a condition of buying a monopoly product like Windows 95 is not only a violation of the court order, but it's plain wrong.
Janet Reno, Attorney General

Microsoft is unlawfully taking advantage of its Windows monopoly to protect and extend that monopoly.
Janet Reno, Attorney General

People who are truly donating to charity don't give money away with the agreement that recipients will spend it on their own company's products.
Paul Rickard, The Microsoft Boycott Campaign

You'll read that Bill Gates envisioned it all, which is a crock. he didn't invision any of it. Nobody did.
Ed Roberts, Gates' First Boss

[Paul] Allen was easy to work with, but Gates acted like a spoiled kid, which is what he was.
Ed Roberts, Gates' First Boss

At some point, some palooka is going to tell you that you should use MS products because they're an "industry standard." This is roughly equivalent to teenagers telling each other to smoke or do drugs because "everybody's doing it."
John "The Gneech" Robey

Microsoft's biggest and most dangerous contribution to the software industry may be the degree to which it has lowered user expectations.
Esther Schindler, OS/2 Magazine

[Microsoft is] a potential threat to our nation's economic well-being.
Stanley Sporkin, Judge

[Bill Gates] not only wants to win, but he wants to kill the competition. He wants to bury the wounded.
James Wallace, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Dilbert would use Unix because it is a rock solid OS with thousands of academic and business hours in its development and improvement. Dilbert's pointy haired boss would make Dilbert use Windows because Microsoft told him that he would save money and get a free t-shirt.
Nathan Winkler

Word97: An EMPTY file saved in Word97 format occupies 60928 Bytes. The same file saved in the backward compatible Word95 (or better known as Word 7.0) format is sligthly larger: 2 079 932 bytes. Any comment is superfluous...
c't Magazine, April, 1997

Kompilieren Sie die Hilfedatei unter OS/2. OS/2 besitzt keine 640-KB-Speicherbegrenzung wie MS-DOS und verwaltet den Speicher wesentlich effizienter als MS-DOS.
Elektronisch Publizieren mit dem Microsoft Help Compiler
Von: Reinhard Engel, Microsoft Press Deutschland 1994, Seite 278)

Leider war der andere Bill verhindert, jener, der Präsident ist und den Bill Gates gelegentlich im Urlaub auf der Ferieninsel Martha's Vineyard besucht und mit ihm über Golfspiel und Golfkrieg fachsimpelt. So lud der Microsoft-Chef [...] wenigstens den Vizepräsidenten der USA zum Abendessen mit mehr als hundert seiner besten Freunde aus der Industrie ein. Al Gore sagte begeistert zu [...]
Spiegel 36/97