I am not Bill Gates

I'm not Bill Gates. People sometimes insist I look just like him. Well, i really don't, but I'll agree that we could pass for brothers and glasses and similar hair provide enough other visual markers to trigger the "he looks like" response.

Honestly, I do not find the comparison flattering. No, not on the basis of looks - I just don't like Bill Gates very much. I'm not an admirer.

I know, I get really surprised looks when I say that. "How can anyone not admire Bill Gates?", people ask. He's rich, he created the most popular operating system the world has ever known, he gives money to so many important charities, what's not to like?

Then they get that sly look in their eyes. "Oh, I get it", they say, "You must be jealous."

No. Trust me. I'm not jealous. I don't like the guy and I really don't understand why people do.

Well, no, that's not true.  I understand why.  I just don't agree.

He can be funny though

There are some funny stories about Bill. He's not always a creative thinker, or so you might after reading about his struggles with what I thought was a very simple puzzle. By the way, please don't post the answer to that here in the comments. I'll just delete your comment if you do that. I solved that after four examples and I'm not convinced Bill really ever did get it until someone explained it to him, but that doesn't mean anything. Sometimes we get stuck in patterns; I think that's what happened to poor Bill. It must have been a bit embarrassing though.

Bill flatly denies the story about him fussing over a lost 50 cent ice cream coupon.

Bill has been known to say some pretty odd things.  How about his "If you can't make it good, at least make it look good" ?  Some would say that pretty well sums up Microsoft's history with software and operating systems.

That reminds me of another Gates quote: "There are people who don't like capitalism, and people who don't like PCs. But there's no-one who likes the PC who doesn't like Microsoft."

There are plenty of Linux and Mac users who would disagree with that. Another quote that can caused raised eyebrows is "Microsoft is not about greed. It's about innovation and fairness."

Yes, Bill Gates of Microsoft, the Microsoft that was sued by the Justice Department for unfair trade practices and abuse of monopoly, said those words. Was it fair to PC makers to lock them into contracts that said they had to pay for Windows on every machine they sold even if the customer wanted Linux or something else? Were all those lawsuits about innovation?

He may have an excuse though: he may not know what common words mean. During the trial, he seemed very unclear what the phrase "concerned about competition" might mean. Possibily he has similar confusion about "innovation" and "fairness".

He is good to his employees, though. He made many of them millionaires. On the other hand, he once scheduled a mandatory retreat for Microsoft company executives on Mother's Day.

You can find more  at "Top Ten Bill Gates Quotes".

Let's get back to why I dislike Bill.

No, it's not because I hate Microsoft Windows. Oh, sure I used to hate it, but so what? Even Bill himself had his own fuming minutes with what his programmers had created. But that's all over now: Windows 7 is a decent OS. I happen to think Mac OS X is a better choice, but, if I were forced into it, I could get through my day with Windows 7. I would grumble, but I'd get by.

It's not because Bill was plainly a smart-ass young kid when he was arrested for speeding and driving without a license. Young kids are dumb and young kids with a lot of money can be even more dumb. I'll give him a pass on that.

It's not because some say he mistreated his original partner, Paul Allen and plotted against him. I will say that Paul Allen seems like a guy I could like, but many a partnership has gone sour, so no, it's not that. It's something much more basic.

Microsoft is a very ugly company

Yeah, I know: it's just business. Well, no, it's not "just business": Microsoft has been cut-throat, take no prisoners, morals be damned business. I could not look myself in the mirror if I ran my business the way Bill ran Microsoft.

Don't bother to tell me that Gates is no worse than X, Y or Z. I know that and I don't like X, Y or Z either, but if any company deserves to be called the Evil Empire, Microsoft certainly does.. That other Evil Empires exist is unimportant to me. You could show me that Apple or Red Hat or anyone else is just as evil: I don't care. I don't like Microsoft, Inc.

Yes, that is because they are the big target. But why are they that big? I would say it is all about the basic  philosophy. Steve Jobs may not be such a nice person either, but his obsession has been with building great products first and an Apple Empire second. Bill's focus has always been on destroying competition and giving Microsoft more of a stranglehold on the computer operating system market. Note his "make it look good" quote again in this context. Go look for a list of Steve Jobs quotes and you'll find that few of them have anything to do with money or power. Steve plainly is obsessed with quality, Bill is obsessed with business.

What about the Gates Foundation?

What about it? It's OK to be ruthless as long as you give some back? I don't buy that.

But even if I did, the dispersal of that great fortune has other problems. Bill doesn't believe in ethical investing (he feels it is more important to have the Foundation earn as much as possible), so the Foundation makes investments in companies that cause the very problems they are giving away money to solve. You can read more criticisms of the Gates Foundation at this Wikipedia article.

The Gates Anti-Fan Club

It's not hard to find other people airing their dislike of all things Bill on the Internet. Most of the results that turn up for "I hate Bill Gates" are complaints about Windows, but there are plenty of other reasons mixed in.

I wouldn't throw a pie in Bill's face as shown in the video at right, but I do agree with the guy who threw it. There are even Facebook groups dedicated to a dislike of poor Bill.

The person who really hated Bill Gates the most had to have been Gary Killdall. He insisted Bill stole code from the CP/M operating system that Gary wrote and that Bill had sabotaged Gary with IBM. Gary disliked Bill far more than I do.

A Bill Gates look-alike actually made money from the resemblance - it was Gates hating organizations who hired him !

However, not all you might read is true. For example, many Gates bashers include something like this:

In Word 6.0 and 97 for Windows, if you typed in "I'd like to see Bill Gates dead" and hit Shift + F7 to bring up the Thesaurus, the first entry was: "I'll drink to that."

That was true, but a little misleading. You could type in "I'd like to see a horse" and get the same result. This was just a dumb Thesaurus, not revenge from Microsoft programmers.

I don't hate Bill

He's just not a hero to me. Building wealth, especially at the expense of others, is not something I admire. Most of America seems to see it differently; all that seems to matter is the great fortune, not the actions that built it.

In fairness though, many of the younger readers never saw the machinations of Microsoft. I lived through them, and that's much different than reading a Wikipedia article.

If you'd like to read more about Bill and the other players at the beginning of the computer revolution, I really recommend Robert X Cringely's "Accidental Empires". Bob not only lived through these times, but was a part of them, so his book brings a unique perspective to Gates, Jobs and others.

Do you know someone who should be reading this? Click the Share button below to send it to them easily or to post it to Facebook or Twitter.