1. Fast Company published an excerpt from Goliath on how Bill Gates gained his fortune. It's not pretty. Said one Gates supplier/customer anonymously: “A partnership with Microsoft is like a Nazi non-aggression pact. It just means you’re next.”
fastcompany.com/90425183/how-r…
fastcompany.com/90425183/how-r…
2. Contrary to myth, Gates didn't succeed because he was a genius programmer. In 1980, IBM was afraid of an antitrust suit, so it gave power to outside suppliers in its new 'personal computer,' suppliers like Intel and Microsoft. And protected both of them.
3. Gates got his start fighting against idealistic personal computer hobbyists, demanding they stop sharing software so he could commercialize it. There's a reason he is Mark Zuckerberg's mentor.
4. Starting in 1980, IBM transferred massive amounts of technical knowledge to Microsoft because the corporation was afraid of an antitrust suit. It protected and promoted Gates so he could supply the operating system to its new personal computer product.
5. The operating system (OS) is the basic controlling software for a computer, setting the rules by which other software operates. IBM allowed Gates to sell his OS to other producers of personal computers. By 1983, Microsoft controlled the industry standard on-ramp to the PC.
6. Gates then began to leverage his monopoly position. Over the course of the 1980s, Microsoft launched software applications that competed with the most popular business applications, like Lotus 123 spreadsheets, or WordPerfect word processing. simonandschuster.com/books/Goliath/…
7. Gates gave his own internal teams secret information about upcoming changes to its operating system, leveraging its monopoly in operating systems into another monopoly for business software. Programmers at Microsoft used to say, “DOS ain’t done till Lotus don’t run.”
8. In 1991, the Federal Trade Commission started investigating. Gates was contemptuous of the FTC, reportedly calling one commissioner a “Communist” and saying, “The worst that could come of this is that I could fall down on the steps of the FTC, hit my head, and kill myself.”
9. The FTC deadlocked. Then Bill Clinton came into office, and his DOJ did nothing for a few years as Microsoft destroyed and monopolized the commercial software industry.
10. Of course the centrist Democrats were huge boosters of Microsoft's pillaging. Economist Rob Shapiro said that Microsoft’s monopoly in operating systems was a sign not of dysfunction, but that the “market is working well.”
11. In 1994, Anne Bingaman, Clinton's first antitrust chief, settled with Microsoft. Bill Gates publicly said that the result of the settlement was that one official would read the agreement with the government. Other than that, nothing would change. Microsoft stock soared.
12. Microsoft dominated the market for key business tools, including databases, presentation software, and word processing, with massive monopoly profits to match. This is why Bill Gates has $100 billion. He illegally got a monopoly over the most amazing innovation in history.
13. Finally, Gates turned to the internet, which emerged in 1994. The company, as one executive said, was trying to get a “vig,” a mobster’s term for a share, of every transaction made online. Microsoft tried to buy Intuit but the DOJ finally blocked a merger.
14. Microsoft launched a travel company called Expedia, and began investing in media, including a company called Sidewalk, which was intended to dominate the lucrative classified advertising market.
15. It brought together over a hundred venture capitalists and implied strongly they should refrain from investing in areas Microsoft intended to dominate. The extent of Gates’s ambition and power finally scared old-line corporate America as well as state-level officials.
16. The corporation did ultimately face an antitrust suit for trying to "cut off the air supply" to Netscape. And it fought the government to a draw. The corporation was chastened. But that was the end of antitrust in America. fastcompany.com/90425183/how-r…
17. Bill Gates was never punished, despite the treble damage provision in the Sherman Act. And the DOJ stopped monopolization suits. So today, Gates has $100 billion and controls public education, and we face Google, FB, and Amazon who did eventually get the 'vig' Gates wanted.
18. If you want the full story, of how we defeated the robber barons in the first half of the 20th century, and why we let them come back, I wrote a book. It will surprise you. It surprised me as I researched it. simonandschuster.com/books/Goliath/…
