Denver is the venue typically reserved for announcing Microsoft's next-generation technologies such as Active Directory, Windows CE and COM+. But CEO Bill Gates used yesterday's keynote at the Microsoft Professional Developers' Conference here to make a few comments about the government's attempts to regulate the software industry.
To a full house of more than 5,000 independent software vendors, partners and corporate developers, Gates asserted that the software industry is a driving force in the country's economy and, therefore, the government should not take any further regulatory actions that might deter growth.
Gates lamented that during the past two years, as more than 20,000 new software companies have emerged and the software industry has swelled to comprise 25% of the country's economy, the government has wrongly stepped up its efforts to regulate the practices surrounding software development.
"There is not a lack of innovation. There is not a lack of investment. There is not a lack of competition," he said. And if the government proceeds with its regulatory efforts, it "will take the steam out of [the country's] economic engine."
He continued by saying that the growing government involvement is stifling innovation.
"Imagine if they wouldn't let you put HTML in your application," Gates asked. "We would be doing a disservice to our customers if we didn't have HTML in our products."
Gates did not speak about the details of the pending Department of Justice case against Microsoft in which the government alleges anticompetitive behavior. However, he did allude to his disdain about the evidence the DoJ has compiled regarding how Microsoft conducts business.
"We went down to Apple to talk to them about putting QuickTime into our media player," he said. "Apple in the end decided not to take that opportunity. But that kind of discussion makes sense, and yet the government is twisting that conversation saying it should have never taken place. This is scary to me."
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IDG News Service, 10/9/98.
from IDG.net.
