Microsoft and the Freedom to Subjugate : Quotes & Asides

Microsoft

"FYIFV": Pin made and worn by many Microsoft employees after the company went public. It means, "F*ck You I'm Fully Vested"
"In one piece of [e]mail people were suggesting that Office should work equally well with all browsers and that we shouldn't force Office users to use our browser. This is wrong and I wanted to correct this.": Bill Gates, e-mail from January 1997
"To avoid middleware taking over an operating system you have to make sure the integrated services are different from the middleware - otherwise the middleware approach has no disadvantages and it wins. I think the path we were going down of building on [Java's Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT)] was a sure disaster - it was creating a situation where pure 100% Java applications would look just as good as pure Windows applications which we have to avoid.": Bill Gates, e-mail from January 1997
"We should make sure our goals for Internet presence are low enough that we can achieve them but also say that Netscape has lost control. As we achieve our goals people should start to question Netscapes leadership.": Bill Gates, e-mail from July 1996
"It is a complete change for me to hear you think IE 3.0 is separate from the shell. That was the plan we had that people told me to forget about.": Bill Gates, e-mail from December 1995
"Our business model works even if Internet software is free...We are still selling operating systems. What does Netscape's business model look like if that happens? Not very good.": Bill Gates, article from Financial Times (London), June 1996
"While we have increased our prices over the last 10 years other [personal computer] component prices have come down and continue to come down.": Joachim Kempin, Microsoft Senior Executive, e-mail from December 1997 regarding OEM pricing strategies
"Our default today is to assume functionality needs to go cross-platform instead of assuming it doesn't (and then later reluctantly moving it when necessary). I consider this cross-platform issue a disease within Microsoft....This is the wrong approach. We should be asking for specific innovations to restricted to Windows.": James Allchin, Microsoft Senior Executive, e-mail from February 1997
"If Sun and [Microsoft] disagree on [language extensions to Java] and diverge in these areas, as long as Netscape doesn't buddy up with Sun, super outcome for us (more fragmentation).": Ben Slivka, Microsoft engineer, October 1996
"My nightmare scenario is that the Web grows into a rich application platform in an operating system-neutral way...": Ben Slivka, Microsoft engineer, "The Web is the Next Platform" e-mail from May 1995
"If we don't quickly become the supplier of choice for Internet technology, the Internet will grow and change under someone else's influence, and we risk losing the standard setting role (with the attendant profit margins) we have come to enjoy with MS-DOS and Windows (and Office).": Ben Slivka, Microsoft engineer, "The Web is the Next Platform" e-mail from May 1995
"The [browser] client just helps us sell Windows; we need to make it ubiquitous so that we can control the evolution of the Web.": Ben Slivka, Microsoft engineer, "The Web is the Next Platform" e-mail from May 1995
"We are supposed to give the user the option of continuing after the warning; however, we should surely crash at some point shortly later...": David Cole, head of Windows development, e-mail from 1991 regarding the detection of DR-DOS when running Windows 3.1
"Without browser share, everything is very hard. So, job #1 is browser share...We have no desire to sell anything on UNIX. However, owing to customer demand, we are going to have to provide an IE solution on UNIX.": Paul Maritz, Microsoft Senior Executive, June 1996
"This is a no revenue product, but you should worry about your browser share, as much as [Bill Gates] because: (1) we will loose the Internet platform battle if we do not have a significant user installed base. The industry would simply ignore our standards. Few would write Windows apps without the Windows user based. (2) at your level, if you let customers deploy Netscape Navigator, you loose the leadership on the desktop. This is similar to letting your customer adopt Lotus Notes.": Brad Chase, Microsoft Vice President, e-mail to worldwide marketing and sales executives, April 1996

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