Monday, April 18, 2011

Paul Allen, the co-founder...


...of Microsoft, is out with a book this week that highlights his differences with Bill Gates. In an article in the Times this morning, "An 'Unvarnished' Peek Into Microsoft's History," Allen (my emphasis):

...portrays his role during the company’s early years as the visionary and technology strategist, while Bill Gates is presented as a brilliant business tactician.

At one point in the book, which will be published on Tuesday, Mr. Allen describes Mr. Gates as a partner “who could take my ideas and magnify them.” At another point, Mr. Allen writes, “Our great string of successes had married my vision to his unmatched aptitude for business.”

Nevertheless, Mr. Allen denied, in an interview on Friday, that the book was an effort to swing the pendulum of history in his direction, to claim more of the credit for critical decisions at the birth of the personal computer industry.

“I just think this is my side of the story told in an unvarnished, warts-and-all way,” Mr. Allen said.

Fiery confrontations between Mr. Allen and Mr. Gates drew considerable attention last month after an excerpt of the book was published in the May issue of Vanity Fair and on the magazine’s Web site. The clashes came over product decisions, hiring plans and their shares in the young company.

In the book, Mr. Allen quotes from a letter he wrote to Mr. Gates in June 1982, explaining why he planned to leave Microsoft. “Over the years,” Mr. Allen wrote in the letter, “the result of these and other incidents has been the gradual destruction of both our friendship and our ability to work together.”
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“We had an amazing friendship and an amazing partnership,” Mr. Allen said in the interview on Friday. “That unraveled at Microsoft.”
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Indeed, Mr. Allen describes his years at Microsoft as being “like a failed romance. Parts of the relationship had been wonderful, but I remembered the negatives, too.”
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Of his bitter feelings years ago, Mr. Allen said, “I got over it.”

Well, to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld in the video above, "I don't think you did."

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