Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft

Author:Paul Allen
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Autobiography
ISBN: 9781101468111
Publisher: Penguin Group USA
Published: 2011-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

NOT EVERYONE SAW Microsoft in a bad light. I was dining alone one night at Il Mulino, the Italian place in New York’s West Village, when I noticed a middle-aged man in a double-breasted jacket at a corner table in the back. He had slicked-back hair and a statuesque lady at his side, and he was sitting with his back to the wall, where he could eye the entrance. Toward closing time he sauntered over and said, “Are you Mr. Allen?” He had a thick New Jersey accent, something out of The Sopranos. After I confirmed my identity, he said, “Your company’s involved in that antitrust trial.”

“Yes,” I said. I wasn’t quite sure where this was going.

“Your Mr. Ball-mer said some very critical things about the attorney general.”

“Yes,” I said. In the events leading up to the antitrust suit, Steve had gotten front-page press by declaring, “To heck with Janet Reno!” Now I was getting a little nervous.

And the man said, “I would like to be able to say the same things, but I’m not in a position to say them. Tell your Mr. Ball-mer when you see him that there’s someone who appreciates what he’s saying.”

Relieved, I said, “I’ll tell him!”

On April 3, 2000, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled that Microsoft had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. Two months later, the other shoe dropped: Jackson ordered the company broken into two, one for operating systems and the second for other software.

I thought the judge had overreached. The remedy seemed draconian, way out of proportion to the violations found by the court. “The judge is out of bounds—he just hates us,” Bill said. “This will never stand up on appeal.” He was probably right, but what if he wasn’t? How much synergy would Microsoft lose if Windows were split off from Microsoft’s applications? Would our software be marginalized? Which company would Bill go with, and what would happen to the other?

A few months later, shortly after I ended my second stint on the Microsoft board, a federal appeals court reversed the breakup order. The final settlement imposed relatively mild penalties. But the case’s impact on Microsoft was profound because it siphoned so much time and energy, especially from Bill. In a company where tech decisions were still ultracentralized, the repercussions of a distracted CEO had to be damaging. We can only speculate as to how much it affected Microsoft’s course in those critical years, and over the difficult decade that followed.

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