Bill Gates says his greatest mistake ever was Microsoft losing to Google Android

Bill Gates says his greatest mistake ever was Microsoft losing to Android
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/24/18715202/microsoft-bill-gates-android-biggest-mistake-interview

"In the software world, particularly for platforms, these are
winner-take-all markets. So the greatest mistake ever is whatever
mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is.
That is, Android is the standard non-Apple phone platform. That was a
natural thing for Microsoft to win. It really is winner take all. If you¢re
there with half as many apps or 90 percent as many apps, you¢re on your way
to complete doom. There's room for exactly one non-Apple operating system
and what¢s that worth? $400 billion that would be transferred from company
G to company M."

Arlen G. Holder wrote:
Bill Gates says his greatest mistake ever was Microsoft losing to Android

The big mistake MS made was in working behind a walled garden against an
open source consortium, in the case of early android touchscreen
development, that would be the Open Handset Alliance "a consortium of
84[2] firms to develop open standards for mobile devices. Member firms
include HTC, Sony, Dell, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments,
Google, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, T-Mobile, Sprint
Corporation, Nvidia, and Wind River Systems.[3]" wp

It is only more recently that MS has begun to recognize the power of
open source.

--
Mike Easter

"Mike Easter" wrote

| Bill Gates says his greatest mistake ever was Microsoft losing to
Android
|
| The big mistake MS made was in working behind a walled garden against an
| open source consortium

I'd say Bill Gates's big mistake was lack of vision.
He let his greed, vanity and ambition rule him, which
throttled what computing could be for many years.
Likewise with Steve Jobs.

Imagine if MS had been started by Craig Newmark.
We wouldn't need OSS. We'd have common decency.

Arlen G. Holder wrote:
Bill Gates says his greatest mistake ever was Microsoft losing to Android

That's why it's called a technological discontinuity.

It's the thing every dominant high tech company fears.
Something comes out of left field, and eats their
lunch. Right now, it's Android and ChromeBooks in
the consumer space.

Paul

Mike Easter wrote:
Arlen G. Holder wrote:
Bill Gates says his greatest mistake ever was Microsoft losing to Android

The big mistake MS made was in working behind a walled garden against an
open source consortium, in the case of early android touchscreen
development, that would be the Open Handset Alliance "a consortium of
84[2] firms to develop open standards for mobile devices. Member firms
include HTC, Sony, Dell, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments,
Google, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, T-Mobile, Sprint
Corporation, Nvidia, and Wind River Systems.[3]" wp

It is only more recently that MS has begun to recognize the power of
open source.

There are so many things that MS did wrong and BG chooses *that* one!? Not
even close. I'd say his biggest mistake was Steve Ballmer closely followed
by IE.

On 6/24/2019 4:41 PM, Arlen G. Holder wrote:
Bill Gates says his greatest mistake ever was Microsoft losing to Android
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/24/18715202/microsoft-bill-gates-android-biggest-mistake-interview

"In the software world, particularly for platforms, these are
winner-take-all markets. So the greatest mistake ever is whatever
mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is.
That is, Android is the standard non-Apple phone platform. That was a
natural thing for Microsoft to win. It really is winner take all. If you¢re
there with half as many apps or 90 percent as many apps, you¢re on your way
to complete doom. There's room for exactly one non-Apple operating system
and what¢s that worth? $400 billion that would be transferred from company
G to company M."

In 2014 I attended a Microsoft developer event in Sunnyvale where they
were trying to get app developers to write apps for Windows Phone.

What a fiasco.

First, their development platform only ran on Windows 8, which few
attendees were running. So they were allowing people to download a 30
day version of Windows 8 and run it on a virtual machine. But the Wi-Fi
bandwidth was so poor that it took more than an hour to download both
Windows 8 and Virtualbox. Even then there were issues in getting it to
work, patches that the people running the event were not all familiar
with. I finally got the development platform working after about six
hours, but some attendees never got that far.

If you could write an app, and get it onto the Windows Phone store
withing 72 hours then they would send you an obsolete model of a Windows
Phone (since no one actually had a Windows Phone to test their app on).

And they served terrible food! At least I got a nice laptop backpack for
wasting eight hours.

Maybe it was already too late at that point for Windows Phone. But they
clearly were never really serious about trying to make it a success.
They should have been reaching out to the authors of every viable iPhone
and Android app and offering them an advance if they would port their
app to Windows Phone, and providing them with some devices to test the
app on. How many developers would be willing to run out and buy a
Windows Phone device, and spend time porting their app, when there was
virtually no market for the app?

In article , sms
wrote:

Maybe it was already too late at that point for Windows Phone. But they
clearly were never really serious about trying to make it a success.
They should have been reaching out to the authors of every viable iPhone
and Android app and offering them an advance if they would port their
app to Windows Phone, and providing them with some devices to test the
app on. How many developers would be willing to run out and buy a
Windows Phone device, and spend time porting their app, when there was
virtually no market for the app?

they did do that.

"Paul" wrote

| Something comes out of left field, and eats their
| lunch. Right now, it's Android and ChromeBooks in
| the consumer space.
|
Interestingly, Bill Gates and his alleged brilliance foresaw
quite a bit but jumped in *too early*. He predicted ad-supported
computing with Active Desktop in 1998. He predicted web
services, even coming out with an entire, massive
programming system for it (.Net) in 2001. He predicted
something like ubiquitous phone use with his SPOT watch.
In each case he was too early and the technology wasn't
ready. But there was also a big factor of blinding greed.

With Active Desktop he was trying to make extra money by
selling ads on the desktop and having Windows be the
middleman. The sheer greed and aggression of the endeavor
blinded him to one big problem: No one was interested in
"subscribing" to ads on their computer. Not to mention
that few people were technically competent to do it. Most
people I knew hadn't even noticed the Channel Bar billboard
with ads on Win98. They were just used to see environmental
advertising and didn't pay attention. They weren't about to
go into the help to figure out how they might get a Citibank
or Forbes "channel" ad embedded on their desktop.

With .Net, there was another product without a market.
Internet speeds were too slow for services in 2001. Most people
didn't need services and still don't. Even now, with scripted
webpages and highspeed connections, there's no market for
Microsoft's Metro trinkets.
Yet, in its own way, .Net was a brilliant idea: Provide
a sandboxed API to allow full Windows functionality on
webpages, in order to sell people their own computing power
under the guise of a remote service. It was ActiveX on
steroids. Unsafe, just like ActiveX, but at least they tried
to make it safe.

Companies like Adobe are just now getting around to
instituting that dastardly plan. But it's still not because
people need it. It's only because Adobe are a monopoly
who can get away with it. "You want Photoshop? You rent.
Go ahead and walk away. See if we care."

But Bill Gates may
deserve credit as the first evil genius to hatch the plan.
And Microsoft have gone through something like 3 full APIs
trying to pull it off. (I lost track. .Net, Modern, Metro, Universal,
WinRT.... There was .Net API. Then I think there was
something like semi-.Net with Metro. Then there was basically
script in a webpage, which could be written in .Net or C++
and converted. All attempts to get payments from all parties
in computing, with even developers having to pay a fee.)

Longhorn was also ahead of it's time. Planned for 2005
release, it was an entire sandboxed Windows system based
on .Net. Essentially, it was Windows with a kind of .Net VM
built on top. (Contrary to popular belief, .Net is not really an
API. It's just a gigantic, bloated wrapper. Like Java.) By their
own admission, Longhorn failed because there was no hardware
that could handle the incredible bloat.
Not until 10 years later, with Win10, did they finally come
close to having a sandboxed service OS with Win10. (Maybe
handcuffs is more accurate than sandbox, and coercion is
more accurate than "service", but they're getting there.)

SPOT watch? That could have worked, if it wasn't ugly and
as big as an orange. And if there had been adequate wifi
buildout at the time. Also, Gates kept talking about getting
"sports scores and stock quotes" from it. Hundreds of dollars
to wear a big chunk on your wrist to play Dick Tracy with
Wall St.? Not likely. Even now, the wealthy and gullible
AppleSeeds are only slightly buying into the idea that they
want an expensive device on their wrist to tell them how
many fitness steps they still owe to their iPhone overlord
before the end of the day. You can fool most of the AppleSeeds
most of the time, but you can't expect to make billions on a
useless, overpriced Dick Tracy knockoff.

Yet, again, Gates was ahead of his time. But as usual, it
was his greed and ambition that got him there. Microsoft
always make the same mistake. They start with a bright idea
to vacuum cash from your wallet. Only then do they try to
figure out how to mold that into a saleable product. And only
after that do they address the issue of how their bright idea
might possibly be useful or interesting to anyone. That's playing
out now with Win10. They're planning the product "on the fly",
largely based on what people seem willing to put up with.

On Tue, 25 Jun 2019 07:36:00 -0000 (UTC), Chris wrote:

There are so many things that MS did wrong and BG chooses *that* one!? Not
even close. I'd say his biggest mistake was Steve Ballmer closely followed
by IE.

Given MS is one of the dominant platform players, I think the best thing he
ever did, was, of course, linking with IBM in the days when there was no
dominant "home" OS, and the second best thing he ever did was the marketing
agreements with the manufacturers such that every PC comes with Windows,
and the third best thing he did was MS Office grabbing the business market.

After that, I can't think of anything in particular that Microsoft does
better.

Can you?

Updates, dated today:

Bill Gates: Windows Phone failed because I was too distracted by an
antitrust case
https://www.techspot.com/news/82671-bill-gates-windows-phone-failed-because-distracted-antitrust.html

Bill Gates: You'd all be on Windows Mobile today, not Android, but I
screwed up
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates says the antitrust case stopped Microsoft
delivering a mobile OS.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/bill-gates-youd-all-be-on-windows-mobile-today-not-android-but-i-screwed-up/

"Had he not been distracted, Gates believes Windows Mobile would be what
Android is today."

Interview he https://youtu.be/ZMMZ1Qzr1ag

Arlen _G_ Holder wrote:

Updates, dated today:

Bill Gates: Windows Phone failed because I was too distracted by an
antitrust case
https://www.techspot.com/news/82671-...-phone-failed-
because-distracted-antitrust.html

Bill Gates: You'd all be on Windows Mobile today, not Android, but I
screwed up.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates says the antitrust case stopped Microsoft
delivering a mobile OS.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/bill-g...indows-mobile-
today-not-android-but-i-screwed-up/

"Had he not been distracted, Gates believes Windows Mobile would be what
Android is today."

So the corporate criminal thinks that if the US gummint had left his
shonky business practices alone, he'd have been able to corner *that*
makrket too?

Can you spell "excuses, excuses", Gates?

Can you spell "second-rate coding standards", Gates?

Interview he https://youtu.be/ZMMZ1Qzr1ag

In article , Arlen _G_ Holder
wrote:


Bill Gates: Windows Phone failed because I was too distracted by an
antitrust case

no, it failed because it was too little, too late.

by the time windows phone came out, android had already established
themselves and windows phone offered no advantages over either of
those, especially with limited developer support.

it also ****ed off customers and developers. just ask anyone who bought
window phone 7 only to find out it was a dead end when windows phone 8
came out and had to buy new phones, which they did, except that they
were ios and android.

https://www.techspot.com/news/82671-...iled-because-d
istracted-antitrust.html

Of course, the reality may be more complicated than that. The general
consensus among ex-Microsoft employees and pundits seems to be
that the company tried to replicate the traditional Windows licensing
model that worked well for desktop PCs but was otherwise inadequate
for mobile devices. Then it alienated app developers and hardware
partners with platform reboots, eventually sealing the fate of
Windows on phones.

they're right, especially the platform reboots.

In article , nospam
wrote:

Bill Gates: Windows Phone failed because I was too distracted by an
antitrust case

no, it failed because it was too little, too late.

by the time windows phone came out, android had already established

...ios and android..

themselves and windows phone offered no advantages over either of
those, especially with limited developer support.

it also ****ed off customers and developers. just ask anyone who bought
window phone 7 only to find out it was a dead end when windows phone 8
came out and had to buy new phones, which they did, except that they
were ios and android.


https://www.techspot.com/news/82671-...ailed-because-
d
istracted-antitrust.html

Of course, the reality may be more complicated than that. The general
consensus among ex-Microsoft employees and pundits seems to be
that the company tried to replicate the traditional Windows licensing
model that worked well for desktop PCs but was otherwise inadequate
for mobile devices. Then it alienated app developers and hardware
partners with platform reboots, eventually sealing the fate of
Windows on phones.

they're right, especially the platform reboots.

"Ned Latham" wrote

|
| Can you spell "excuses, excuses", Gates?
|
Strange excuses at that. What about the *total*
failure of Kin, SPOT watches, and buying Nokia?
They tried numerous times to make it work. But
they wanted to start out with lockdown. The real
problem, it seemed to me, was that MS thought they
could "leverage" their desktop monopoly to take over
phones and didn't realize that they were very different
devices. For a period of time they were advertising
everywhere about how people would increase the quality
of their "experiences" by living in a world of Microsoft
screens. PCs, tablets, phones, kitchen counter computers...
all syncing.

The trouble was that no one needed them
to sync. And the tablets never took off. Then the
phones never took off. So they were marketing a product
line they didn't even have. "Where do you want to go today?"
the ads asked. But MS could only take you to the office.

As with so many things (like Active Desktop, Passport,
DotNet and Hailstorm) Microsoft were imagining the
easiest way to make a bundle and have a monopoly, when
they should have been thinking about the best way to
make a product that would be useful. (DotNet did end up
successful, but not for the Web services they were hoping
to monopolize. It really only had success as a server-side
Java replacement.)

Gates and Ballmer wanted to own the world, and thought
they had a right to. Ballmer actually said as much in a
Business Week interview in 2005: "We will rule the Web.
We will rule the Web."
Such breathtaking arrogance and smallmindedness.

And now Gates, who's marketed himself as a mega-
philanthropist as he tries to control education while
pretending to give away money, is complaining that he'll
suffer if Elizabeth Warren gets elected and taxes him 6%
more. He claims he's giving away half his wealth, yet
he's upset about a 6% tax increase to pay for health care.
He has no shame.

On Fri, 8 Nov 2019 22:53:54 -0500, Mayayana wrote:

Strange excuses at that. What about the *total*
failure of Kin, SPOT watches, and buying Nokia?
They tried numerous times to make it work.

There is a 'strategy' going on here, by Bill Gates, which Mayayana is
clearly aware of.

The fact that Bill Gates said way back in June, and just now, again, in
November, these exact words below, indicate Bill Gates is repeatedly
attempting something of a marketing ploy, as Mayayana astutely noted.

The date of this interview appears to be November 6th, 2019:
o Bill Gates speaks at New York Times DealBook Conference - 11/6/2019
https://youtu.be/ZMMZ1Qzr1ag?t=1250

At 1250 seconds (~20 minutes) into that new interview, Bill Gates says...
"There is no doubt that the anti-trust lawsuit ... and we would have been
more focused on creating the phone operating system, where instead of using
Android today, you would be using Windows Mobile. If it hadn't been for the
anti-trust case... Oh we were so close. I was just too distracted. I
screwed that up because of the distraction. We were just 3 months too late
with the release Motorola would have used for the phone..."

I work off of facts.
o The fact is that Bill Gates is _repeatedly_ making this claim.

The fact is that Bill Gates is _repeatedly_ making this claim, so, either
he actually believes it (which, is a possibility), or he's trying to play
the marketing game of some sort (which Mayayana seems to know better than
I).