Gates Memo Sheds Light On Intel
Relationship
(06/23/99, 8:33 p.m. ET)
By Reuters
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Microsoft chairman Bill
Gates wrote a long and angry e-mail in 1997 to
then Intel chairman Andrew Grove, but said
later the two companies must get along, a newly
disclosed document at the Microsoft antitrust
trial showed Wednesday.
"When Intel finds someone who has some humility about
developing operating systems and the complexities
involved then maybe we can try to work together," Gates
said to Grove in the Nov. 2, 1997, e-mail.
Microsoft makes the software that runs in most PCs,
while Intel makes many of the chips that run them,
including the Pentium. Advanced Micro Devices, or
AMD, also makes chips that run on PCs, but focuses on
the low end of the market.
When he wrote the e-mail, Gates was furious with a
series of slides that Grove had shown him at a meeting
between the two a few days earlier. In his e-mail, Gates
took issue with Grove's presentation, slide by slide.
For example, Gates said one slide entitled, "Rules for
Working with Microsoft," "is not a slide about Intel
products and how we help Intel with its products. These
are a set of attitudes suggesting Intel entitlement."
But for all of the anger Gates expressed to Grove, he
took a more cautious tack in an e-mail one day later to
Paul Maritz and other Microsoft executives, attached to
his Grove message.
"I didn't say this in the other message, but the meeting
with Andy was actually a big attack by him on how we
are so hard to work with," Gates wrote to the others in
Microsoft.
After listing some of Grove's complaints, Gates said, "He
also attacked me personally, talking about my intensity
being an awful force."
Gates said during the meeting with Grove he (Gates) was
"apologizing for the areas where I think we need to do
better."
Gates said one of the lessons of the meeting was that
Microsoft must "work with Intel no matter what."
The Intel relationship with Microsoft became an issue
earlier at the trial, when an Intel executive testified the
chip company was forced to back off from its own
development of multimedia software.
Intel vice president Steven McGeady said that a
confrontation resolving the friction occurred in August,
1995.
In a videotaped deposition played early in the trial, Gates
said in 1995 he was primarily concerned about the quality
of software produced by Intel, which he thought was not
in that company's own interest.
"When we saw Intel doing the low-quality work that was
creating incompatibilities in Windows that served
absolutely no Intel goal, we suggested to Intel that that
should change,"testified Gates.
Testimony in the trial finishes on Thursday. Microsoft
released three boxes of documents of materials it wanted
in the trial record, including the Gates e-mail.
The government said in the trial that Microsoft used
monopoly power to compete illegally against other |
