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Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

arstechnica.com

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Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#11

Post by j1vms »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #3

While there might or might not be questionable or illegal things that Bill Gates did, by himself or as the MS corporation at that time, the over-fixation of the article on how he is talking to the attorney in the deposition seems misguided and amateurish. Boies: What non-Microsoft browsers were you concerned about in January of 1996? Gates: I don’t know what you mean “concerned.” Boies: What is it about the word “con…

> "The lack of experience played right into the government’s hand. Instead of portraying a leader in control of his domain and confident in his case and his company’s legal and ethical righteousness, the courtroom videos showed a side of Gates that had never been on public display before. He was petulant, petty, flustered, and dour. He was ineffectual. He was, in a word, beaten."

The article may come off a little bit too harsh on Gates, but it is essentially right in that the US Gov strategy may have been to score a PR win on Gates and Microsoft. In that way, Gates came across as more on the defence than he perhaps needed to be in the situation. The deposition ended up being a low point from the public's perspective, though any damage has mostly been undone in the 2+ decades since.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#12

Post by meowface »

reaperducer wrote: post #8
pwned1 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven’t been deposed this will look weird. But depositions are about “gotcha” moments, so your job as the person being deposed is to play the game and only answer questions with minimal information and force the attorney asking questions to really work for it. It’s about being purely logical. If they ask you what two plus two is, respond vaguely and ask for clarification. “Are you asking about numbers? Or obje…

To the public, it looks like another "It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is." The general public hates lawyers. But it hates weasels even more. And CEOs acting like weasels even more than that. That's why congressional hearings are sometimes delightful to watch. It feeds our hatred of CEO "others." There are plenty of CEOs who can talk to lawyers, even in a public forum, and do it well. Splitting hairs n…

Gates wasn't splitting hairs there, though. "Concerned about" could mean "concerned about as potential competitors we need to pay attention to", "concerned about as potential competitors who might gain more market share than us", "concerned about as potential competitors we might need to stifle", "concerned about as a potential danger to our browser monopoly", "concerned about as potential competitors who might develop features users want which we should also look into developing", etc.

Any company offering a product could be said to have executives who are concerned about competing products. It could range from malicious, anti-competitive behavior to simply wanting to provide a good experience.

That's why Gates wanted the lawyer to use less charged, ambiguous language. I personally believe he was engaging in unethical anti-competitive behavior, but you're going to have to nail him on it fair and square, rather than playing word tricks with him.

>The general public hates lawyers. But it hates weasels even more. And CEOs acting like weasels even more than that.

The lawyer was the one employing weasel words, there, by definition [1]. "Paying attention to" or "aware of" would be a much more fair and clear phrase.

>Splitting hairs never looks good. It makes you look guilty.

Yes, and the lawyer was probably aware of that and deliberately exploiting the ability to create such a perception. Either you fall into the trap and later are pointed to as sounding guilty, or you demand rigor and sound guilty in the moment. It's a double bind.

[1] Oxford definition of "weasel words": "words or statements that are intentionally ambiguous or misleading."

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#13

Post by cntrpt9293 »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #3

While there might or might not be questionable or illegal things that Bill Gates did, by himself or as the MS corporation at that time, the over-fixation of the article on how he is talking to the attorney in the deposition seems misguided and amateurish. Boies: What non-Microsoft browsers were you concerned about in January of 1996? Gates: I don’t know what you mean “concerned.” Boies: What is it about the word “con…

You appear to “get” the law game. Unfortunately, you don’t get the Internet game:

Ars is a Conde Naste property intended to get clicks to boost ad revenue potential.

It’s a ‘zine for Internet culture addicts, not a useful legal, engineering, or science forum.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#14

Post by jasoneckert »

The 2019 documentary "Inside Bill's Brain" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCv29JKmHNY) definitely focused a part on how Bill still hates talking about this deposition.

He makes it very clear in that documentary how much he regrets that he wore his disdain for the antitrust suit on his sleeve, as it played directly into the prosecutor's hands.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#15

Post by bawolff »

chance_state wrote: post #2

The entire thing is on YouTube. Part one starts here: https://youtu.be/m_2m1qdqieE Worth a watch imo.

Thanks for linking. That was interesting.

I only watched the first little bit, but I could understand how this could play badly for PR, but i'm pretty sympathetic to gates here. Seems like they want to use layman simplified definitions of tech concepts, then catch him up on technical nitty gritty.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#16

Post by reaperducer »

meowface wrote: post #12
reaperducer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the public, it looks like another "It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is." The general public hates lawyers. But it hates weasels even more. And CEOs acting like weasels even more than that. That's why congressional hearings are sometimes delightful to watch. It feeds our hatred of CEO "others." There are plenty of CEOs who can talk to lawyers, even in a public forum, and do it well. Splitting hairs n…

Gates wasn't splitting hairs there, though. "Concerned about" could mean "concerned about as potential competitors we need to pay attention to", "concerned about as potential competitors who might gain more market share than us", "concerned about as potential competitors we might need to stifle", "concerned about as a potential danger to our browser monopoly", "concerned about as potential competitors who might devel…

You can act like a weasel and not employ weasel words. They're two different concepts. Nobody stated that Mr. Gates was using weasel words.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#17

Post by Sebb767 »

> [...] Microsoft was now comfortable supporting the Davids of the tech industry.

This is a 29 year old company with a four-digit number of employees worth 17.3 Billion USD. Fortnite alone seems to have been a quite solid share of the App Store's gaming revenue. This is not a "David".

Sure, Apple, Google and Microsoft are worth one to two orders of magnitude more. But this is like seeing a small person fighting a bigger person from the perspective of an ant.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#18

Post by narwally »

reaperducer wrote: post #8
pwned1 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven’t been deposed this will look weird. But depositions are about “gotcha” moments, so your job as the person being deposed is to play the game and only answer questions with minimal information and force the attorney asking questions to really work for it. It’s about being purely logical. If they ask you what two plus two is, respond vaguely and ask for clarification. “Are you asking about numbers? Or obje…

To the public, it looks like another "It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is." The general public hates lawyers. But it hates weasels even more. And CEOs acting like weasels even more than that. That's why congressional hearings are sometimes delightful to watch. It feeds our hatred of CEO "others." There are plenty of CEOs who can talk to lawyers, even in a public forum, and do it well. Splitting hairs n…

Even in the Clinton case there was a good reason he was asking for clarification. In his grand jury testimony he had stated "There's nothing going on between us." If 'there is' is interpreted as 'there is currently', then the statement is truthful; if it is interpreted as 'there is and has always been', then the statement is false.

Similarly, his statement "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" wasn't technically a lie in the context of the case. The investigation lawyers had textualized the definition of 'sexual relations' to be limited to PIV sexual intercorse, which he hadn't engaged in. So in a legal context his statement of not having 'sexaal relations' and his admission to having an 'improper physical relationship', were in no way contradictory.

However, when you take the statements out of that context and put them in the context of public opinion, it appears to be a bold faced lie. The more you play the game, the worse it looks outside of that context.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#19

Post by klyrs »

jasoneckert wrote: post #14

The 2019 documentary "Inside Bill's Brain" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCv29JKmHNY ) definitely focused a part on how Bill still hates talking about this deposition. He makes it very clear in that documentary how much he regrets that he wore his disdain for the antitrust suit on his sleeve, as it played directly into the prosecutor's hands.

Ah yes, the classic "I'm sorry I got caught." That's my 3yo's go-to when he's in trouble
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