Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates Speaks Out
neoform writes "The Seattle PI is running an interesting interview with Bill Gates." In the article Gates comments on Vista, Google, and a few other pertinent topics. In an amusing bit of related news, an anonymous reader let us know that CNET is also running an interview with Gates. In the CNET interview Gates gives a very interesting response to one of the interview questions. "CNET: So that would be the philosophical difference between Microsoft and what Google is up to at this point? Gates: Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that."
From TFA: ... In fact, they have this slogan that they are going to organize the world's information. Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information. It's a slightly different approach, based on the platformization of all of our capabilities and not thinking of ourselves as the organizer.
So that would be the philosophical difference between Microsoft and what Google is up to at this point?
Gates: Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that.
(Google has) this slogan that they are going to organize the world's information. Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information.
The slashdot blurb wants to you to think that gates is disagreeing with the do no evil slogan. Silly decepticons running slashdot.
Nothing like taking a reply to one question completely out of context... So Google is not offering development capabilities yet. Of course, I expect they will. But they're not in that game at all today. In fact, they have this slogan that they are going to organize the world's information. Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information. It's a slightly different approach, based on the platformization of all of our capabilities and not thinking of ourselves as the organizer. So that would be the philosophical difference between Microsoft and what Google is up to at this point? Gates: Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that. He was not referring to the "Do no Evil"
"The remainder of the exercise is left to the readers."
Sorry that you went to all that trouble. Looks like Slashdot and its famous misleading summaries has punked several hapless readers yet again. The summary was written to imply that he was referring to the "do no evil" slogan and you and a few others fell for it.
If you have a moment, read the article and you'll see that Bill references the actual slogan earlier in the interview.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
I think Chairman Bill was referring to Google's "mission", not their slogan.
http://www.google.com/corporate/
"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
What in heaven's name is he talking about?
[SNIP]
Of course software was set up for networked communication. Most UNIX (including *BSD and Linux) systems since the late 1970s have been network-aware in some form or another. And they have experienced nowhere near the problems that Microsoft's software has.
I assume this is a mistake, surely you meant to say "and experienced a huge number of security problems because UNIX was never designed with security as a prime consideration, and neither was the internet".
For example, off the top of my head, there was the Morris Worm, remote root exploits in hundreds of versions of sendmail, similar problems with DNS. Default email relaying in SunOS and Solaris for many years. The list is endless.
Now, it's true, a lot of progress has been made and lots of unix systems can be fairly secure now in skilled hands - a far more modest claim than yours.
If you do a Google Search for "Google's Slogan", all you get is "Don't be Evil".
More importantly a search for "google slogan" on MSN search turns up mostly results with "Don't be evil" - in fact that's pretty much all the results on the first page say. Of course this is third parties usually talking about "Google's unofficial slogan", but the point is, in terms of popular perception "Don't be evil" is Google's slogan, regardless of what their official slogan actually is.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
I'm a microsoft employee that is thankful for the pragmatically positive effect that competitors have had on us.
When i started at MS, we were getting our lunch eaten in security/reliability issues compared to linux.. (which frnakly sucks at security and reliabilty compared to some other UNIX variants) We had customers tell us "you get your sh@#$ straight or we're jumping ship". They had heard, experienced, or both, that they could get better uptime and fewer successful attacks from other platforms.
That's what we needed - the execs heard that we had a competitive threat, so there was executive support to let the really brilliant guys push through huge expensive work on reliability, correctness, security, maintainability, etc. In the past, enough customers were willing to pay for something like Win95 that we only had to make something as good as Win95 (which i never used, btw, as i had given up PC's for Solaris/SPARC by that time..)
Today, nothing can leave Microsoft without the "security gurus" giving their stamp of approval. (i.e. the guys like Michael Howard). There's a formalized process, a list of stuff to check for, all threat models are reveiwed, we have a bunch of internal tools that look for known-uglies in code bases..
None of this existed 5 years ago and today it's mandatory for all shipping products.
Obviously there's more work to do on security and reliability, but today we have the corporate willpower to dump a lot of investment at these problems, and the results are encouraging - Server 2003 has very few issued critical udpates compared to past MS products, and even compared to some distributinos of linux.
The other thing we're finding is that for lots of things, F/OSS people can clone our stuff (UI, feature set) in less time than we can design, write, test, and ship it. Outlook's 11th version is what's out in the market place right now, but something like Evolution (which let's be honest, is about as blatant an outlook clone as you can make without the underlying technologies _also_ being Microsoft stuff) is only a few years old and is functional for a good number of scenarios.
Freeware clones/reimplementations benefit from the UI, the feature set, the "flow", the architecture, and most importantly, the MISTAKES that we've made, so that F/OSS teams can deliver a reasonably functional app that works reasonably well in a very short amount of time.
We definitely know about Eclipse and what it does. People on the inside ask "why would i use VS instead of Eclipse?" and its up to us to make sure there's a good answer.
So yes, i think most microsoft employees understand and even appreciate that competition makes us work better, and that alot of that competition today is Apple, F/OSS, and Google.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
"Don't be evil" is one of 10 statements of their philosophy. I can't find anywhere that Google itself states that it is their slogan. But I guess you can have a lot of slogans.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
It's just a misleading summary. This one is still champion:
Other gems, from the same interview:
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
In the past, Microsoft has been able to use its money, clout and luck to gain and grow its market share. Now suddenly it is face with a company which has, for all intents and purposes (for better and/or for worse) become as synonomous with online searching as Coke is to soda pop and Kleenex is to tissues. It doesn't have the direct resources to take Google on. Its own attempts to replicate Google simply haven't drawn in the crowds, and its luck really has failed it. Ballmer can throw chairs around all he wants, but Microsoft has been out-Microsofted by another company, and it must scare the hell out of Redmond because they know only too well that its not being first on the bandwagon that counts, its being the guy that is seen as the bandwagon that does, because, really, Google is no more an innovator that Microsoft is. It just got lucky, latched on to an existing idea and managed through some good marketing techniques to drive it to the front of the pack.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"In fact, they have this slogan that they are going to organize the world's information. "
No it wasn't the "do no evil" slogan. I'm guessing most of the post in this thread will be made on this comment the submitter had made, who should pull his head out of his ass and stop tryin to flamebait.
TruePunk | Games
Actually, the oldest Unix machine I own is an Altos 586. It's a machine with an 8086 processor and five serial ports to support five users on their terminals. It runs Xenix, from Microsoft, which was the first port of a Unix to the Intel x86 processor.
There were retail boxed versions to run on the IBM PC also, but my Altos box was the real stuff.
resigned