Mr. Gates Was Not Amused

By Rick Horowitz

At the time -- at the very beginning, anyway -- it all seemed innocent enough. There wasn't anything anyone could point to, any particular thing that would make someone sit up and say, "Now, wait a minute!"

Well, maybe the snakes.

This was back when the government tried to crack down on Microsoft, back when the government and Microsoft were two separate things. The Justice Department just got it into its head one day that Microsoft had gone too far, that some of its business practices weren't quite on the up-and-up. It all had something to do with "browsers," the software that let people back then use the Internet and "surf the Web." (The early language was certainly colorful, wasn't it?)

Anyway, Microsoft had a browser called Internet Explorer. It wasn't the only browser out there. It wasn't even the most popular browser out there; that was another product, from another company, called Netscape Navigator. True -- there were actually other software companies(!) back then, offering products every bit as good as Microsoft's. Mr. Gates was not pleased. But he also had Windows 95. Nobody else had anything like Windows 95.

So Microsoft insisted (or so the Justice Department claimed) that if a computer manufacturer wanted to install Windows 95 on its computers -- and they all wanted to install Windows 95 -- it also had to install Internet Explorer whether it wanted to or not.

"Anticompetitive!" huffed Justice -- you're trying to put Netscape out of business! Not at all, replied Microsoft. We're just making the computer "easier to use." We're on the side of the consumer.

Justice wanted Microsoft to stop the strong-arm stuff, and to pay a big fine until it did. But a million dollars a day was just pocket change for Mr. Gates; it was the principle of the thing. Besides, Microsoft said it was confident it would win on the merits, which is why nobody paid much attention when those computers started to go down.

All over the Justice Department -- and particularly in the antitrust division of the Justice Department -- computers started to fail. Important files, files about Microsoft, were vanishing without a pixel left behind. Other files suddenly had words like "not" and "No way!" dropped into the middle of perfectly good sentences; the files were useless.

"Power surge" -- that was the official explanation at the time. "An unexpected power surge."

"An unfortunate accident" -- that was the official explanation soon afterward, when one of the Justice Department lawyers was suddenly splattered on the sidewalk directly beneath his office one night. They said he'd tripped over a computer cable next to his desk and had crashed right through the plate glass. On his computer screen, investigators found a single sentence: "Windows will not save you."

Just a coincidence, everyone agreed.

Most people never even heard about the lawyer, let alone about the vanishing files. For some reason, Internet Explorer was unable to access any of the areas that carried that news. Instead, it showed pictures of Mr. Gates in flattering, consumer-friendly poses.

Of course, there were people who were still using that rival browser from Netscape on their Windows 95 computer. Did they get the news about the lawyer, about the vanishing files? Not quite. Every time they tried to shove Internet Explorer aside and use Netscape Navigator instead, their screens were filled with snakes -- dozens and dozens of slithery, slimy, thoroughly disgusting snakes.

"Software glitch," Microsoft explained. "Not our problem."

Neither, apparently, were the laser-beam strobes that came a week or two later, or the eardrum-piercing squeals, or the 50,000-volt keyboards.

"These things happen," Microsoft explained, and people understood.

Although the keyboard thing did raise a few eyebrows.

10/21/97