- The Observer,
- Sunday April 30 2000
If the Nasdaq catches a cold every time Microsoft sneezes, then stand by for a bad case of pneumonia. As the US judicial process moves inexorably towards a decision to break up Bill Gates's empire, all kinds of people are getting cold feet. Like those disgruntled Russian and East Germans who yearn for the old certainties of Stalinism, they wonder whether the world can cope with the terrifying freedoms which lie ahead.
Consider the strange case of Louise Kehoe, the Financial Times 's Silicon Valley correspondent. Ms. Kehoe is a terrific journalist with wonderful contacts and robust common sense . At a time, for example, when most technology hacks are drooling about the prospects for WAP, she is one of the few who has taken the trouble to examine the technology critically - and to report objectively on its limitations. (She was not impressed.)
It is a testimony to the power of Microsoft-fixation that not even Kehoe is immune to it. In her column last Wednesday she fell to worrying about what would happen to the millions of pathetic Windows and Office junkies when nasty ol' judge Jackson splits Microsoft into two companies - Windows Inc. and Office Inc. 'Bad enough,' she writes, 'to be bounced between the customer support departments of hardware and software companies. Will we in future have to determine whether a problem lies in the operating system or a software application before getting help?'
There is a lot more in that vein. 'Perhaps Microsoft has abused its market power to enforce standards,' Kehoe burbles, 'but at least it did so efficiently.' All of which makes one wonder when was the last time she actually tried getting help from the current version of Microsoft. And does she know the famous joke about a helicopter which gets lost in fog and spots an office building through a gap in the mist? As it descends to seek assistance, workers in the building gather at the windows to watch. The pilot scrawls 'Help! Where Are We?' in large letters on a card and holds it against the cockpit window. 'In a helicopter,' the workers write back. 'Ah,' says the pilot, 'that's Microsoft. We must be in Redmond.'
Neal Stephenson, the science-fiction novelist, has written a wonderful essay entitled In the Beginning was the Command Line which contains an hilarious account of his attempts to get help for a problem with Windows NT. The final straw for Stephenson was that when Microsoft finally accepted his description of the bug he had encountered, the company asserted that it then owned the copyright on his report! I need hardly add that Mr. Stephenson is now a keen Linux user.
Another intriguing aspect of media coverage of Microsoft's woes is the sudden splurge of articles about Bill Gates's philanthropy. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is now the largest charitable foundation in the history of the world. Its assets stand at $21.8 billion, which means that under US law it has to give away more than $1billion a year - no mean feat. So far, it has given (among other things) $850 million to vaccination programmes in poor countries and $550 million to schools and libraries. Just to put that in context: the New York Times estimates that, at current values, Andrew Carnegie gave away only $3 billion and John D. Rockefeller a paltry $6 billion. Gates's donations to the Foundation come in the form of quarterly bundles of Microsoft shares, which the trustees exchange for hard cash. It's nice to see people who know what they're doing.
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