For those of us who spent the last decade using IBM-compatible PCs running Microsoft software on Intel chips, a slogan from the Apple world fits nicely as we ponder the current flap between Big Bill and Big Government.
Been there; done that!
Assistant Atty. Gen. Joel Klein, Janet Reno’s chief trustbuster, should read a book by one of this columnist’s most dangerous competitors, Stephen Manes, and a co-author, Paul Andrews: “Gates: How Microsoft’s Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself the Richest Man in America” (Doubleday).
Klein should set aside his law books, turn to page 149 of “Gates” and underline every word as Manes and Andrews tell how Binary Bill built today’s bounteous hegemony known as Microsoft Corp. by defying establishmentarian admonitions that he was being a petulant child.
That, you may recall, is just how Gary Reback, the anti-Microsoft gadfly and Netscape Communications Corp. lawyer, is describing Microsoft’s current conduct with trustbusters as they claim it is impossible to strip the Microsoft Internet Explorer software from the Windows 95 operating system as probers want.
Wisdom dictates that Microsoft make a simple compromise and do just that, say Klein and other anti-Microsofties.
Gates, however, hewed his hegemony, Manes’ and Andrews’ fine reporting shows, by flying in the face of the conventional wisdom of the day and defying an institution almost as powerful as the United States Department of Justice–International Business Machines Corp.
Let us hark back, then, to those halcyon days of yesteryear–1980 to be exact–when IBM was, itself, the target of a huge federal anti-trust probe.
Trustbusters of the day railed that IBM was too big for its Big Blue britches because its mainframe computers controlled upwards of 90 percent of the market, leaving mere table scraps for such competitors as Digital Equipment Corp. and Amdahl Corp.
Meanwhile, more brilliant IBM executives like Mike Maples (who ultimately joined Microsoft, where he was called the “designated adult”) realized that even as the company was fighting off charges it illegally monopolized mainframes, Blue was being blindsided by makers of desktop PCs, most notably Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple Computer Inc., the brainchild of a pair of tree-hugging, chip-loving hippies named Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
Blue clearly needed to add Apple’s microchip mojo to its product line, but those at IBM’s top fretted that throwing the power of the world’s biggest computer company into the PC market would further inflame anti-trust forces.
So IBM reached out to a gangly gearhead named Bill Gates who had started a marginal PC software company in Albuquerque called Micro Soft.
IBM let Gates produce both the BASIC programming language needed to make a PC run its software and the operating system that handled such mundane tasks as displaying output on monitor screens, taking input from a keyboard and saving data on floppy disks.
The result was the IBM PC, one of the big success stories in American marketing history.
So IBM went to young Gates and offered him unknown (to you, me and Manes, that is) riches if he would just sell IBM an exclusive license to what had become MS-BASIC and MSDOS.
Gates would have been a self-made multimillionaire for life at the age of 21 if he would have just signed on the dotted line.
Instead, the 21-year-old Gates demanded the deal that made him a multibillionaire by the time he was 31.
Microsoft sold IBM an exclusive license to pay Microsoft a relatively piddling $50 per machine to install the core operating software, but Gates kept the rights to license the same stuff to IBM’s competitors for whatever he could get.
It seemed at the time like the act of a petulant child, Maples once told this writer in an interview.
But soon there were a host of IBM-compatible clonemakers on the scene: Compaq Computer Inc., Leading Edge, Commodore and others vying to license MS-BASIC/MSDOS.
I should point out here that in past interviews, Gates has told me repeatedly and sharply that he personally doesn’t believe that IBM gave him the deal because it was chary of trustbusters.
But he reacted even more negatively when asked whether there is any danger that Microsoft will show the same nervous weakness that IBM did nearly three decades ago under anti-trust probing.
Meanwhile, Klein and other potential adversaries such as Illinois Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan, who is part of a group of state AGs considering a separate anti-Microsoft initiative, should remember the Apple motto as they consider whether they can use the law to force Microsoft to bend before competitors like Netscape as the Justice Department once tried to make IBM bend to Amdahl and DEC.
Been there; done that!
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Binary beat readers can participate in the column at chicago.tribune.com/go/askjim or e-mail jcoates@ameritech.net. Snail-mail him in Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago 60611.
