Do They Have Anything Else We Could Threaten Them With?
Bill Gates / Microsoft PR — Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft, Microsoft developer conference keynote and antitrust press statements
“Microsoft is dedicated to an open computing ecosystem where multiple multimedia formats compete on technological merit and developer enthusiasm.”
Bill Gates — Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft, Email to executive staff (Eric Engstrom, Paul Maritz)
“Do they have anything else we could threaten them with? We need to push them to cancel QuickTime... if they don’t agree, we should pull Office for Mac and kill their authoring business.”
The Split:Public remarks celebrated interoperability and free developer choice across computing architectures. The internal correspondence unsealed in United States v. Microsoft revealed explicit discussions to threaten canceling Office for Mac unless Apple dismantled QuickTime in favor of Microsoft NetShow.
The verb 'threaten' typed in an unvarnished email to vice presidents punctures any claim that platform power was merely competitive hustle.