Comdex Gates Interview (1):
Gates: "We Still Need to do More to Make Computers Easier"
Few figures have towered over the IT sphere the way Microsoft founder Bill Gates has. In his first year as Microsoft's chief software architect, Bill Gates has returned to his roots of technology research and innovation - but he continues to spark discussion and debate as well as drive change that reverberates across the world economy. In this exclusive interview with the COMDEX Daily he talks about the future of the user interface, ponders open source and Microsoft's AI research, and says the death of the PC has been greatly exaggerated.
Daily: Tell us about your first year as chief software architect. What have you been doing that you weren't doing as CEO?
Gates: In some respects the transition has been fairly evolutionary, because Steve [Ballmer] and I have always worked so closely and run the company as a partnership. But it's also been kind of dramatic in terms of the increased amount of time I now spend working with our engineers on things like tablet computing or speech input, and on making sure we're continuing to transform the PC in some pretty significant ways. I'm also spending a lot of time focusing on how all the pieces of .NET come together.
Daily: As you immerse yourself in all the technology currents, what's the most surprising, delighting or peculiar issue you've seen this year?
Gates: From the outset we totally believed that our vision for .NET was the way computing and communications would evolve and converge over the coming decade. But I was still quite surprised by how many people immediately bought into the vision - it seemed to validate their own thinking on the future and put it into a context they could relate to. I've also been amazed at how PC technology and Microsoft software continue to set new server performance records. A few years back, nobody dreamed that the PC would one day outperform even the most powerful mainframes.
Daily: Has your current vantage altered your views on any key areas of the industry?
Gates: Not significantly. This still looks like the most competitive, innovative industry in the world to me, and shows no sign of letting up.
Daily: Have you taken a deeper look at Linux this year? How about OS X? BeOS?
Gates: Well, we're always focused on what our competitors are doing, and the degree of focus is clearly related to how well they are performing. Plus we're the biggest maker of applications for the Mac, so we're obviously very interested in Apple's OS work.
Daily: Non-proprietary software models continue to find success around the globe. Have your views on open source changed?
Gates: There's always been a role for open source, and there probably always will be. At the same time, most people who create intellectual property will still want to get paid for their work. But for any kind of software to gain broad acceptance - particularly with corporate customers - it has to have the infrastructure and support that make it reliable, easy to deploy and scale, and truly economical. So far we haven't really seen that with open source. I believe that a lot of software that started out as open source will be transformed into commercial software, as customers demand more consistency and support.
Daily: The market still seems confused about .NET. Some analysts say .NET is essentially Microsoft's plan to become a vast ASP. What does .NET really boil down to?
Gates: .NET is our vision for the next generation of the Internet. Today, the Internet largely mirrors the old mainframe model, with your browser as the "dumb terminal." It's easy to browse information, but difficult to edit or manipulate it. By enabling rich clients and rich servers to talk to each other, Microsoft .NET will help create a rich, collaborative and interactive environment. For example, on a very simple level, .NET would not only allow you to view the schedule of your favorite baseball team, but also to interact with that schedule in a much richer way. So you could easily take the data from the team's Web site and overlay it onto your own personal calendar to figure out which home games you are able to attend. Then you could have the tickets automatically purchased and sent to you. Microsoft .NET enables the world of applications on PCs and devices, and the world of Web sites - which today are separate - to collaborate seamlessly.
We expect the majority of our applications to evolve into subscription services over time, at the same time as we continue to offer existing platforms and applications. So certainly we will supply services for .NET. But it also represents a platform on which thousands of independent software developers can build advanced solutions.
Daily: How much of the total .NET infrastructure do you foresee as proprietary to Microsoft?
Gates: We will provide a set of maybe a dozen building block services that correspond to areas of functionality where Microsoft has assets, expertise and can offer value to a wide range of developers. Anyone will be able to compete in those spaces using the same XML-based paradigms. And developers will be able to leverage and customize our .NET building blocks in their own applications and services, cutting the effort needed to create great products. So there will be a very broad mix of Microsoft and non-Microsoft components in the .NET infrastructure. |
