...obviously one of the keys for us in music and video is to make sure we have an integrated and strong portable device ... [shrugs] business. |
[During the bachelor years in the early '80s, the math-camp mentality was accompanied by a frat-boy recreational style. Gates, Ballmer and friends would eat out at Denny's, go to movies and gather for intellectual games like advanced forms of trivia and Boggle. As friends started getting married, there were bachelor parties involving local strippers and skinny-dipping in Gates' pool. But eventually, after Gates wed, he took up more mature pursuits such as golf.] Bill got into golf in the same addictive way he gets into anything else, ... It gets his competitive juice flowing. |
[The company's MSN Search engine] will join the game with the market leader in that business, and remind people that this is the center of computer innovation, ... We're going to be the center of innovation in that search business, also. |
[Two months later Oracle nemesis Steve Ballmer, president of Microsoft, was asked to respond to Ellison's comments.] I think he is right, ... We don't agree on much, but I think on that we would agree. |
[While Microsoft has gobbled up tons of market share in the volume-server market over the past few years, it has been dogged by the widely held notion that Windows can't support very large, enterprise-level implementations.] The oldest issue we've dealt with is scalability, ... Today we should be able to completely convince you that there is no job that is too big to run completely on the Microsoft platform. |
A breakup of Microsoft, I think, would be an awful thing for consumers and for the industry. The real issue in a possible breakup would be the harm it does to innovation, |
Accessible design is good design. |
After 22 years, it's time to let Bill hang up his bow-tie and pursue all his other passions, from his family foundation to his many civic duties to his love of baseball and fly-fishing, |
All of our major businesses can have a short-twitch capability every six to nine months to a long-twitch capability. We can't make customers wait three to four years for things they need every few months, |
And we learned an important lesson: Today's business software doesn't look enough like today's businesses, |
At least a little more rapid cycle time would be appropriate, |
At Microsoft, we're investing heavily in security because we want customers to be able to trust their computing experiences, so they can realize the full benefits of the interconnected world we live in. |
at the earliest and appropriate time. |
because we've heard what people had to say. |
Bill brings to the company the idea that conflict can be a good thing, |