<CurtAdams@aol.com> Wrote"
> Not an option; most of MS is owned by public investors. Gates' stake is
> vast, but he's very much a minority shareholder.
Yes, Bill Gates owns 20.8%, Paul Allen owns 5.8%, Steve Ballmer owns 4.8%,
and 37,882 other shareholders own the remainder, but direct confrontation with our
wonderful benevolent government would never work even if Gates owned 100%.
What Microsoft really needs is not better programmers but better lawyers, and
a good public relations firm. For years Microsoft bragged that it was the only
large company that didn't have a lobbyist in Washington, government contracts
were never a big part of their business so they foolishly thought if they just
concentrated on business and did research to improve their products so people
actually wanted to buy them then they'd be OK. They also displayed arrogance
when they failed to debase themselves and show proper respect to Janet Reno
when she tried to help by informing them of what the proper method of writing
software was. Well Microsoft finally wised up so they do have a lobbyist in
Washington now, but it's too little too late, they're paying the price for not
learning how to play ball with our saintly altruistic government.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:12:05 MDT