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Bill Gates' Interview in Liberation, a French Newspaper

Time: 15:22 EST/20:22 GMT | News Source: ActiveWin.com | Posted By: Julien Jay

Bill Gates was in Paris on February 8th. At this occasion, he has granted an exclusive interview with no concessions to our colleagues of Liberation, a well known french newspaper. The interview is obviously in French but we have translated the most interesting questions and answers.

This year, the result of the �think week� was security. By the end of 1995 it was the Internet. We have the impression that Microsoft arrives each time after the fight. Isn�t the �think week� a remedial class?
I think you depict the situation inexactly. What is in play, today, is the trust in computing and the use of new techniques. The note I�ve distributed states we have a security team since five or six years, and that we have less problems per line of codes that anyone else. Now the whole industry will have to be there to realize this ambition, with us. Concerning the Internet, there was indeed an academic Internet before anyone gets implied commercially. But we are now in advance in the browser domain and HTML improvement. We are committed, with the five billions of dollars allocated to the research and development, to surprise people on what we can do to push back the limits of the industry.
Maybe you know this famine�s episode in Ireland in XIX century: people were resting on potatoes for their diet. All their fields were hit by the same disease. Don�t we have a comparable risk with such a dominant product like Windows?
This is false to say that with hundreds of different operating systems you get more security. Each of these systems would me much more vulnerable, than a single system people constantly attack. Do you have multiple phone or electric equipments because one of them might break down? No. The only way to get a strong security is to spend billions of dollars per year. A new version of Windows costs twice as the launch of the first man on moon. And the level of security you get is proportional to the efforts you grant.
With products that are dominating the market, does Microsoft have a particular responsibility in comparison to an other company?
If Microsoft is so popular, it�s because of its innovating capacity. It�s always possible for an other company to settle in if we don�t continue to achieve those progresses. All our incomes are based on our technological breakthroughs. In particular, somebody who purchased Windows can freely keep its version and use it for the rest of its life.
You said previously you�ll once again enhance the integration between Windows & Office. Don�t you think you�ll get more troubles with the justice if you further integrates Windows to other applications?
No, the integration of an always increasing number of features in products is at the origin of economical progress. The enhancements in the components and software market cause the price of PCs to fall down faster than everything else in the whole economy. If other sectors of the economy were integrating new features like with the PCs, all our craziest dreams would become reality.
But if an operating system contains an always growing number of features, how innovation can exist outside of Microsoft?
The answer is in the question. A company that conceives a product, Microsoft or everybody else, can sell it only if the customer sees a significant value out of the operating system. If it�s already provided in the OS, the consumer has no need to purchase it. If something is missing, someone will arrive and do the work. This creates an enormous incitement, that�s why things are evolving so fast.
We should originally met in the Napol�on room. Despite we are in the R�gence room, we have a special question comparing Microsoft to Napoleon: Microsoft is seen by lot of people as an empire whose�s main objective is to dominate the software industry. What do you think of this analogy? Isn�t Microsoft�s empire too dominant, today?
This analogy is stupid. We are a company, we are employing smart people to write software, we are listening to what our consumers have to say, we are raising long term difficult challenges that nobody else is treating, like digital hand writing, speech recognition, computer�s reliability. Those things demand a real reflection and breakthroughs. Today, in the United-States, who is really conducting research? If you put aside the pharmaceutical industry and the aerospace industry only IBM and Microsoft are strongly oriented R&D. We have an approach on the long term, many of our products have success, many fail, but this has nothing to do with the political power, with territorial possession, wars, etc. Heh! We�re creating software and people can use them if they like them, or they can not use them if they aren�t sastify. It�s giving a bad favour to people who work at Microsoft and content themselves with writing good software, by comparing them to an army or everything else that is military related.