Fear and Trembling in Silicon Valley:
wired.com
McNealy a libertarian, ROTFLMAO!!
The fact that Klein doesn't consider Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, to be the optimal front man comes as no big surprise. Ellison is seriously over the top, thoroughly unpredictable. He's also a man who, for all the transparent joy he derives from tweaking Bill Gates, has played a remarkably limited role, publicly and privately, in the antitrust battle. Klein's avoidance of Sun's CEO, Scott McNealy, is somewhat more complicated. Though their worldviews could hardly be more different - Klein is a Clinton Democrat, McNealy an Ayn Rand Libertarian - for many months their relationship was cordial, respectful. McNealy thought highly of Klein, and was amply impressed with his handling of the case. And Klein was grateful for McNealy's famously big mouth; for the fact that, almost alone among Valley CEOs, he was willing to talk (and talk) publicly about what should be done to Microsoft.
The trouble, however, is that McNealy's position on remedies has been rather like Microsoft's defense was in the trial: loud, energetic, multiplicitous, internally inconsistent, and maddeningly all over the map. In the months before the trial started, McNealy was prone to putting forward proposals designed mainly for shock value. "We should shut down some of the bullshit the government is spending money on and use it to buy all the Microsoft stock," he told me in 1997. "Then put all their intellectual property in the public domain. Free Windows for everyone!" Once the trial got rolling, McNealy switched tack, embracing the idea, through Sun's chief counsel, Mike Morris, of the Baby Bills approach. Then, in December 1998, McNealy informed his board of directors that he was changing course again. His preferred remedy was no longer breaking up Microsoft, but banning Microsoft M&A: no takeovers, no minority investments, no joint ventures for the foreseeable future.
McNealy's shift caused deep unhappiness among certain Sun executives and board members. So why did he do it? "Scott had himself a little epiphany," a lawyer close to Sun said. "Today, Microsoft is the number one operating system company and Sun [with its brand of Unix, known as Solaris] is the clear number two. But if Microsoft is broken into three OS companies, Sun immediately drops to number four. And if Microsoft is broken into six OS companies, Jesus, Sun falls to seventh. The more McNealy thought about it, the more keeping Microsoft in one piece seemed like a pretty good idea."
Good or bad, the idea didn't last. "Scott has changed his mind again - hopefully for the last time," a Sun insider said not long ago, sighing and laughing in one weary breath. At a Sun board meeting last November, just a few days after Jackson's findings and nearly a year after McNealy's initial flip away from advocating the Baby Bills scheme, Sun's CEO told his stunned directors that he had flopped once more. The scope, the onesidedness, and the cogency of Jackson's findings - along with press coverage suddenly suggesting that a breakup was not only possible but plausible - had convinced McNealy that, despite its perils for Sun, the slice-and-dice solution was the way to go. He also floated a new, exquisitely McNealyesque behavioral remedy: Just as Michael Milken was banished from Wall Street for his crimes, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer should be "disbarred" from the software industry for theirs. "Scott knows it'll never happen, but he can't help saying stuff like that," the Sun insider said. "It's just so ... Scott." |
