submitted to:  TIME, Newsweek, The Economist & NY Times  June 2000


I am so fed up of hearing Mr. Gates and Microsoft's (MS) woes. Face the
facts Bill & Co., you got your hands into too many cookie jars and this
one exposed you, your company, your techniques and practices. And I think
you are realizing that your company is not infallible.

Mr. Gates if you are so paranoid of losing the market maybe you should
improve your products, company image, dealings with other companies and
technology to better the consumers not just you and your company!  Also
your consumers should not be your Beta-testers after a product comes to
market.

As for your company needed for innovation in the computer industry,
exactly what has MS innovated from start to finish without copying or
mirroring from your competitor(s), or, you buying the company that made
the product.   MSN? No-AOL is the innovator; PC Networking? No-before NT
arrived Novell;  GUI interface?  No-Xerox and Apple had it YEARS before
you did. Spreadsheets? No-Lotus  was the innovator once again.  Web
Browser? No-not here Mosaic and Netscape came out first before you bought
the company that made what you today as Internet Explorer. Myself, and
many others can probably list many more. Its seems like your more of a
follower than a leader. Just using your muscle to force others out
regardless of whoever has the better product, let alone who actually
innovated it. The reason the world has his products is that they have no
choice.

If anything he prevented innovation of new and more effective products.
Instead some of his products such as WORD occupy so much disk space he is
very lucky the cost of memory went down the last few years.

His upgrades are purely fixes of the last release of bugs MS knew of when
they went to market, or later found out. I wish I could sell "buggy"
programs too.

Also I refrain from telling people I work in computers anymore because I
am always asked questions for their PC's which use your Windows.  

I am very pleased to see the new landscape of both Computers and  PC's
changing with Java, Linux, Oracle and Unix. We will really see more
innovation not under one company's philosophy and intentions. 

Beware of the Penguin and others Mr. Gates.

Sincerely

George R. Lewycky