To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (21492 ) 11/17/1998 1:05:00 PM From: Daniel Schuh Read Replies (1) | Respond to
On Tape, Gates Seems Puzzled by Words Like 'Market Share' nytimes.com But the government argues that the Gates tapes provide important context for its case by showing what Gates, the central actor at Microsoft, did and what he said about it. The deposition excerpts, culled from more than 20 hours of tape, have been selected by the government, though some questions and answers Microsoft wanted to show have been included. Gates has a reputation as a brilliant, hands-on executive whose fingerprints are on every major decision made at Microsoft. Yet his deposition performance is so at odds with that reputation, professing to be forgetful and only vaguely aware of key decisions in the browser market, that it does seem to cast doubt on his credibility. At another point, Boies said he would ask another question, since Gates did not have an answer to his previous question. "I have an answer," Gates replied quickly. "The answer is I don't remember." Later, Gates was asked about his e-mail on Jan. 5, 1996, in which he wrote that increasing browser market share was a "very, very important goal for us." Boies asked, "So you don't remember what you were thinking when you wrote it and you don't remember what you meant when you wrote it; is that fair?"
