Those who don't know how Microsoft once operated need to read this book:
Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Silicon-Adventure-Jerry-Kaplan...
Hell, anyone doing a startup needs to read it anyway.
Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?
21–30 of 47 posts
Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?
#22"I know most of you can't stand the guy" Really? I thought people took objection to Microsoft but generally thought of him as an intelligent, charismatic and, more recently, very generous man.
No, I hate Microsoft because they destroyed Borland, Lotus, WordPerfect, etc. They gobbled up everything (Visio, PowerPoint, etc). They killed off Netscape the company, stuck us with IE6 for a decade by "making it part of the operating system." They embraced, extended, and tried to extinguish everything they could. (e.g. Java->C#, OpenGL->DirectX).
Bill, however, I greatly admire. He took no prisoners. :-) I've got his book on my shelf somewhere. It's 20 years old now. I should go back and read it.
Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?
#23those are the worst suggestions to be given to a startup guy today.
Gate's business strategy isn't something we should learn from.
I can't believe people like those exist that want to learn and reprocure what Gates did to apple and the rest of the world.
In a way I'm glad ballmer is the ceo now, you reap what you sow microshit
Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?
#24those are the worst suggestions to be given to a startup guy today. Gate's business strategy isn't something we should learn from. I can't believe people like those exist that want to learn and reprocure what Gates did to apple and the rest of the world. In a way I'm glad ballmer is the ceo now, you reap what you sow microshit
I was only pointing that one special situation, not his whole career. He behaved like a sales genius on that occasion and it doesn't have anything to do with his futher strategy. I wouldn't advise to copy the whole Microsoft strategy.
Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?
#25Even fearing downvoting I must say these articles, most of them I've been reading in the past month from that site are just plainly wrong assumptions. This article for example try to argues that you can be like BG and try to sell something without actually having it. I say BG had the OS in that time, he just didn't bought it but he knew the SO was right away to be bought (and cheap).
It wasn't finished though nor available and didn't know how much work required to be ready to sell it.
They just knew that they couldn't let that opportunity pass away.
Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did Microsoft harm society?
By commoditizing PCs by licensing to Compaq and setting off a pricing war among OEMs leading to lower prices and massive uptake of PCs. By releasing a free browser when Netscape used to charge people for access to the World Wide Web (however when Google does the same thing with Android using their search profits and killing RIM/Nokia by dumping a free product, it's a good thing). And by releasing a better browser tha…
> By commoditizing PCs by licensing to Compaq
No. Compaq, like many other PC makers of the time, made PCs that were compatible with IBM's because they reverse engineered the BIOS. BTW, the first company to do it was Columbia Data Products. Microsoft only licensed an OS, much like Digital Research licensed CP/M, to every computer manufacturer that wanted to distribute it. Their advantage was that PC-DOS was bundled with every PC and that was enough to create critical mass.
On the other hand, the dominance of the PC ecosystem also prevented other architectures from gaining a significant foothold and restricted the kind of computers people could get. If you enjoyed an inferior hardware standard encumbered by processors with convoluted instruction sets, having to set jumpers on expansion boards to resolve hardware conflicts and things like destroying monitor power supplies by setting wrong timings on the CRTC (6854 on MDA), you can thank them for that. I had an Apple II clone (yes, 1977 technology) and never had to set jumpers on an expansion board until I moved to a PC clone in the late 80's.
> leading to lower prices and massive uptake of PCs
I'd credit Commodore for that
> I've usually found it unproductive to argue facts with people with such an affliction.
I don't know why we bother.
Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?
#27If being dark lord of the evil empire is what you want, you would follow in his steps. Beware of the jedi order that is 'us' though.
Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?
#28"I know most of you can't stand the guy" Really? I thought people took objection to Microsoft but generally thought of him as an intelligent, charismatic and, more recently, very generous man.
No, I hate Microsoft because they destroyed Borland, Lotus, WordPerfect, etc. They gobbled up everything (Visio, PowerPoint, etc). They killed off Netscape the company, stuck us with IE6 for a decade by "making it part of the operating system." They embraced, extended, and tried to extinguish everything they could. (e.g. Java->C#, OpenGL->DirectX). Bill, however, I greatly admire. He took no prisoners. :-) I've got h…
Apple has arguably destroyed/killed off RIM. Microsoft's "destruction" is today's startups' "disruption". (At least in HN circles I think we applaud AirBNB or Uber doing damage to the hospitality or transportation industries). Twitter and Google are gobbling up and often times killing products of value.
I think Microsoft did a lot of things we value: disrupt and grow. Looking back, I think we see it through a different lens, but modern startups (or those who have eclipsed that label to be "big") can be Microsoft (or at least little Microsofts). Probably the only thing separating Microsoft from many companies is the presence of a moral compass at the company level.
Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did Microsoft harm society?
By commoditizing PCs by licensing to Compaq and setting off a pricing war among OEMs leading to lower prices and massive uptake of PCs. By releasing a free browser when Netscape used to charge people for access to the World Wide Web (however when Google does the same thing with Android using their search profits and killing RIM/Nokia by dumping a free product, it's a good thing). And by releasing a better browser tha…
Amen...
Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?
#30[deleted]