Gates, who is also Microsoft's chief software architect, has ceded much of the day-to-day management of the company to Chief Executive Steve Ballmer. But it's clear that he still sets Microsoft's agenda.
At a Microsoft-sponsored conference for software developers this week, Gates drummed up support for the company's Web services technologies, .Net and HailStorm. The two initiatives have drawn fire from privacy advocates who contend the plans will make Microsoft the keeper of vast amounts of consumers' personal data. In an exclusive interview, Gates explained why he thinks HailStorm is worth paying for, why Microsoft has attacked open-source development, and where the company is spending its $5 billion-per-year research and development budget.
What's your reaction to critics who say Microsoft is essentially repeating the bundling stance that it took with the Internet Explorer browser and Windows by including instant messaging, Media Player, and other technologies within Windows XP?
A quick answer to that: Our customers do want us to make Windows richer and more reliable. So Microsoft's commitment is to add features that customers want. If we can't add any features, then what is Windows? I mean, there were guys who sold TCP/IP stacks for US$100. Should we not have put TCP/IP stacks into Windows? (TCP/IP, or Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol, were developed by the US military to allow computers to talk to each other over long-distance networks.)
The fact is, Windows for consumers has got to evolve. Anybody else can run their stuff on top of Windows. You don't need permission from Microsoft; you don't pay Microsoft money. Windows is the most documented operating system that has ever been. You can go to any bookstore and find books from us and others about every aspect of the thing. So if somebody has a great thing they want to run on top of Windows, that's super.
One of the things in Windows we have supported is real-time support. You can say, "Oh, my buddy can help with this, and they can take control and change things." Well, how can you do that? You have to have real-time plumbing in the operating system. It should be built into every copy of Windows. But that doesn't preclude anyone else from doing whatever real-time or IM (instant messaging) stuff they want to do on Windows.
So when someone says to you, "Oh, they added a new feature to Windows," you have to say to yourself, "Are they literally saying Microsoft can't add any new features to Windows?" And how can that be a good thing? What are we supposed to do with our US$5 billion-a-year R&D budget?
Has AOL ever added any new features to their products? They have dominant market share of all their stuff. They actually added features? Unbelievable! Who are these people adding features? What's going on here? Well, what's going on is that the PC industry is the most competitive industry that has ever been in terms of software availability and advances. I think that there is some merit to adding features.
How does IM compare to the Web browser in terms of watershed technologies?
Every application runs on a PC. You could imagine wanting to connect up. So when you are running customer service or Microsoft Word or a game, you want to connect to other people. So think of instant messaging, the application, as showing off these real-time APIs (application programming interfaces--functions that programs can use to make an operating system perform various tasks).
So as far as the importance of messaging--is it as important as the browser?
Well, don't say the browser. Real time is more like HTML. Right now, your PC is an asynchronous communications device through email. And except for teenagers, it's not a real-time communications device. Until you get video and audio and rich applications to show people photos and browsing together to see things, the PC is not a communications device. But the future of the PC is to be a communications device. We have had this feature in Windows called NetMeeting, but it was obscure enough...and various things were hard about it. We are taking NetMeeting and making it mainstream with Windows XP.
