Microsoft Quotations

In the future, when Microsoft leaves a security-flaw in their code it won't mean that somebody hacks your computer. It will mean that somebody takes control of your servant robot and it stands in your bedroom doorway sharpening a knife and watching you sleep.

As the leadership team, we're taking bold and decisive action to evolve our organization and culture. This includes difficult steps, but they are necessary to position Microsoft for future growth and industry leadership.

Linux people do what they do because they hate Microsoft.

Apple knows a lot of data. Facebook knows a lot of data. Amazon knows a lot of data. Microsoft used to, and still does with some people, but in the newer world, Microsoft knows less and less about me. Xbox still knows a lot about people who play games. But those are the big five, I guess.

So, what you can do in Microsoft Word is what Bill Gates has decided. What you can do in Oracle Database is what Larry Ellison and his crew have decided.

I'm just an observer of Java, and where Microsoft wants to go with C# is too early to tell.

A lot of people think, and Microsoft is happy to let them think, that all great things are invented by Microsoft. In fact, very, very little has been invented by Microsoft.

Microsoft could help Facebook with one of the biggest challenges, namely monetizing its traffic without reducing the user's experience. It's obvious that Microsoft needs traffic and Facebook needs search.

Microsoft is committed to the ubiquity of the Skype experience - communication across every device and every platform will remain a primary focus.

I felt there was a need for us to build a new programming language. I also had come to see that Microsoft functions best when it controls its own destiny.

I think the combination of graduate education in a field like Computer Science and the opportunity to apply this in a work environment like Microsoft is what drove me. The impact these opportunities create can lead to work that has broad, worldwide impact.

If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won.

I think that Microsoft will increasingly feel margin pressure from Linux as well as people saying: well actually the applications that really matter to me are not on my PC. And so they're going to be able to extract less of a monopoly rent, so to speak.

I think reconceptualizing Microsoft as a devices and services company is absolutely what our vision is all about. Office 365 and Azure on the services side are representative of it.

There's more at risk in what happens in Microsoft than I could ever bet on a poker table.

It became clear to me by 1984 that Microsoft was likely going to be the big winner in the PC software apps and operating system category, partly because of the dynamics of owning and controlling the operating system: that gave you enormous power, and I came to see Bill Gates was fierce competitor.

What Microsoft is really good at is endlessly iterating and revving - incrementally improving things that already exist - and those things that already exist are generally acquired from the outside.

Driving up the value of the advertising is a big commitment for Microsoft.

We don't spend our days thinking about Microsoft or trying to get revenge on Microsoft. That's a really negative and backward way, and that's not how I want to live.

There's an entire flight simulator hidden in every copy of Microsoft Excel 97.

I'm a geek through and through. My last job at Microsoft was leading much of the search engine relevance work on Bing. There we got to play with huge amounts of data, with neural networks and other AI techniques, with massive server farms.

Bill Gates finds people in Russia to hire them to Microsoft. That's the Russian interest in this process.

Talking about Apple v. Microsoft without mentioning the Internet and the browser is like talking about WWII without talking about the nuke. Framing the conversation just in terms of open v. closed operating systems, the quality of the hardware or software or who the CEO was, is silly.

To be a nemesis, you have to actively try to destroy something, don't you? Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.

To help staff recharge and think better, companies are setting aside quiet places to relax, practise yoga or even take a nap. With hi-tech giants such as Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft underlining the pitfalls of being 'always on,' firms are imposing speed limits on the information superhighway.

I have spoken to a whole group of millionaires, head executives at Microsoft. Boy did I chew those guys out.

I think belief is like having the first Microsoft Windows - it's so rudimentary, in the human brainwork, it's so obviously a sham.

If Alibaba cannot become a Microsoft or Wal-Mart, I will regret it for the rest of my life.

I remember back in the early days of Microsoft that from the day that you decided that you were just going to put out an ad to a customer - and all you were usually able to tell them was that a new product was available - it was about nine months before you could actually reach the first customer.

It's Microsoft versus mankind, with Microsoft having only a slight lead.

I thought Microsoft did a lot of things that were good and right building parts of the browser into the operating system. Then I thought it out and came up with reasons why it was a monopoly

By the dawn of the millennium, the hallways at Microsoft were no longer home to barefoot programmers in Hawaiian shirts working through nights and weekends toward a common goal of excellence; instead, life behind the thick corporate walls had become staid and brutish.

As a person with the retentive mental capacity of a goldfish and a dislike of repetition, I frequently make use of the thesaurus built into my Microsoft Word U.K. Software.

Microsoft's new OS, Windows 7, may finally be a worthy successor to XP, eliminating the clutter of Vista and letting users get to what they want to use without the fuss. All this, while remaining compatible with their IT departments' demands for scalability and custom implementations.

I sent one e-mail in my life. I sent it to Jeff Raikes at Microsoft, and it ended up in court in Minneapolis, so I am one for one.

Early versions of Microsoft Word left a lot to be desired. However, to the company's credit, it quickly learned where Word fell short, made the necessary changes, and repeatedly introduced new versions of the software.

By turning every Yahoo search box into a Bing box, Microsoft may have bought itself the exposure it needs to be the next Google.

Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems.

The reason why Apple computers have worked so well over time is that, unlike Microsoft, they don't bend over backward to be compatible with every piece of hardware or software in the digital universe. To code or create for Apple, you follow Apple's rules. If you're even allowed to.

In my opinion MS is a lot better at making money than it is at making good operating systems.

How could this Y2K be a problem in a country where we have Intel and Microsoft?

In market research I did at Microsoft Corp. in the early 1990s, I estimated that the 'Wall Street Journal' took in about 75 cents per copy from subscribers, $1.25 at the newsstand and a whopping $5 per copy from ads. The ad revenue let them run a far bigger newsroom than subscribers were paying for.

When you think about the guys who started Twitter, and the Google guys, and the Facebook guys and the Napster guys, and the Microsoft guys, and the Dell guys and the Instagram guys, it's all guys. The girls, they're being left behind.

I'm never fully satisfied with any Microsoft product.

I have a company that is not Microsoft, called Corbis. Corbis is the operation that merged with Bettman Archives. It has nothing to do with Microsoft. It was intentionally done outside of Microsoft because Microsoft isn't interested.

I'm going to retain a lot of Microsoft's stock.

Only companies that have demonstrated high levels of customer service, proved their experience and attained advanced certification receive the designation of Microsoft Certified Partner.

One of the risks that Microsoft faces, following its admission to search through all of its legacy code, is that it may have encouraged hackers to join in the search.

One of the Microsoft representatives in attendance admitted that unilateral language extensions would be detrimental and said that Microsoft 'wouldn't be cowboys' by unilaterally introducing such extensions in their implementation of Java.

NCR and Microsoft are long-term retail industry partners, ... This certification allows us to more fully leverage Microsoft technologies in order to provide retailers worldwide with best-in-class software solutions that are easy to deploy and support.

I would go so far as to say that, not only is Microsoft wrong about the reduction of spam, but they are actually part of the problem. Microsoft could, for example, more aggressively attack spammers operating off Microsoft-owned Hotmail accounts.

I wouldn't call it anti-competitive in the sense that Microsoft has made it very easy to change providers. On the other hand, Microsoft could have made it easier still... I don't see why it didn't avoid making problems for itself by making it drop dead easy to find another provider.

When I look at Linux, the playing field isn't level because Microsoft is the incumbent.

One of the things that Microsoft plays on is that consumers will benefit from this. If you're the only player in town then how good is that for the consumers?

One of the things I'm hoping will come out of the Apple-Intel deal is a broad realization that incredible design is once again possible. Over the years the hardware OEMs have consistently used Intel and Microsoft as reasons they can't build really cool products. Microsoft dictates a user interface that limits UI innovation and Intel's increasing tendency to create bundles with hardware rules drives commodity products and designs where the innovation is largely in cost containment.

No doubt, I'm sure, the senior executives at Microsoft were pretty upset (with the latest Vista delay). Steven has a track record of shipping products (and he can) potentially take the reins and get the thing out the door and fix whatever process problems there are.

One of the things that has crept into the Microsoft discussion is usually Total Cost of Ownership. Microsoft likes to look at the long-term costs. They also like to look at the costs inherent in migrating from Microsoft to Linux, which is going to obviously be a complication.

My concern is that Microsoft has introduced too much complexity, making more difficult the arduous purchase decision process. Microsoft is right to get information out earlier, because evaluating an Office purchase will be much harder for businesses this release cycle compared to Office 2003 or XP.

Pocket Office is about a quarter compatible with Microsoft Office.

Obviously the Dow is being helped by the strength in Philip Morris, along with Microsoft and Intel. It's an 'old economy'-'new economy' rally. But volume is not all that great, so obviously the market will continue to guess what the Fed will or will not do.

Now that nobody's worrying about this quarter's earnings, they're now worried about if growth will slow and since Microsoft said yes, that led to a sell-off in technology. There's some worry about Microsoft being split up but I think it's actually more concern about their warning about the future.

Obviously these things (fixes) are experimental in nature but considering the options of being vulnerable or at least having a fighting chance--well, I think you get the point. Again, this is just another mitigation option until Microsoft releases their patch, which last was scheduled for April 11th, or 16 days from now.

Naturally we are delighted with the conclusions arrived at by Central Scotland Police, which enable us to prove the value and interoperability that Microsoft products offer. We look forward to working with the police force to introduce new products and services, including document and record management and collaboration technology,

Rick Rashid is one of the world's great research leaders. He built Microsoft Research from the ground up to its current status as one of the top computer science research laboratories. Microsoft Research couldn't be in better hands.

Right now it is Microsoft against the EU, and that is a huge imbalance.

Right now, Microsoft is very interested in gaining market share. In order to do that, they need to take advantage of the fact that their console is out before the PS3 launches.

Netscape, the object of protection in this case, had in market share what the government would call a monopoly until the Great Satan of Microsoft came along. Luckily for the consuming public those theories are just that - theories.

.NET was a company-wide branding effort at Microsoft that spanned multiple projects.

I have been working with the latest Microsoft software and even though this is the company's fourth major release, it still is not as easy to work with as my BlackBerry.

I have given Microsoft every opportunity to comply with its obligations.

I have given Microsoft every opportunity to comply with its obligations. However, I have been left with no alternative other than to proceed via the formal route to ensure Microsoft's compliance.

I have certain misgivings about Vista resembling Mac OS X. With its translucent windows, such comparisons are going to be hard to avoid. But Vista's similarity with OS X goes well beyond window dressing. Certain applications, such as Calendar, Sidebar, and Photo Gallery, appear to be directly, ahem, influenced by similar applications in OS X. Microsoft has a response to that claim, which I'll reveal in part 3 of this review, but suffice to say they're going to get eaten alive for these similarities.

If we ever stop innovating we will quickly be passed by other companies in this industry, and that's why Microsoft invests over $3 billion a year in research and development to continually improve our products for consumers.

If we execute, we will, excuse the pun, Eclipse the Microsoft environment. Microsoft is worried about the passion of what open-source software means to developers.

There are two critical PC-buying windows for computers: back-to-school and the holiday season. Microsoft is going to be on the sidelines for both of those this year. That has to benefit Apple.

When you consider alternatives such as Linux, arguments in favor of Windows are not as appealing. This worm was basically an exercise to show off the flaws in Microsoft security and Microsoft didn't fare too well.

Let me be clear, the Commission's position is that Microsoft is obliged to comply with the remedies imposed by the Commission's March 2004 decision, nothing more, nothing less. We are not moving goal posts, we are not changing our demands.

Let's say the judge finds that Microsoft is a monopoly and says, OK, I'm going to get my Sword of Solomon out and then we'll have 'Microsoft Applications' and 'Microsoft Operating Systems,' ... The applications division would then pursue other operating systems than Windows to put its applications onto, and the operating systems division would pursue ways to be more competitive without having to tie it to the applications.

Much like the browser was in 1995 before Microsoft declared war, Office has the very real potential to be a cross-platform middleware threat to the dominance of the Windows monopoly,

Much that Microsoft is doing right now is connected in some way to Vista and related software and services. They're focusing on getting users excited about the launch, and being careful not to have any negativity surrounding their image.

Much will depend on how Microsoft ties Internet Explorer to its big releases next year.

Since the information just appeared there, I told Microsoft and Netscape to go through their own cookie files to look for things that shouldn't be there.

My impression is the US government shares some of those feelings about Microsoft. The fact that it is closed source and they are at the mercy of such a large and dominant vendor such as Microsoft would seem to be a national security risk.

Moving from the theological to the practical implications of Sony's snafu, the company couldn't have picked a worse time to offend its customers. Sony has already conceded a six-month head start to competitor Microsoft in the upcoming market-share battle for the next generation of game consoles. Microsoft's Xbox 360 is expected to debut this fall; Sony's PlayStation 3 will not arrive until the spring of 2006.

Motorola and Microsoft have been working increasingly together on a series of fronts. This is just one more step to show and allow Motorola to differentiate in an area that they dominate in the United States, which is communications for police and emergency healthcare.

MSFT could feel modest selling pressure in near-term following 'shock value' of DOJ's proposal that Microsoft be broken up into two separate companies.

Most of the spokes are supplied by partners, Microsoft earns royalties, and the whole thing helps perpetuate the idea of Windows PCs as the central home entertainment device.

Most software lets you set formatting so that it stays consistent, no matter how it's entered by the end user. The problem with Microsoft CRM was that there was no such formatting. If you made a mistake, if you put a dash in the wrong place or didn't put a bracket around the area code, you couldn't search for the phone number because it didn't recognize it. In version 3.0, they've fixed that so you can standardize formatting.

Most software makers reveal for free the sort of information Microsoft is being ordered to license, because anyone not in a monopoly situation has every interest in making their software as widely available as possible.

She is a Microsoft program officer. She is a liberal activist. She's never held office. That is not a recipe for a top-tier congressional election.

made representations to us recently they are planning to modify that license, and we believe, if they do so in the way that we understand that they have spoken about...the next iteration of the Open Format standard will include some Microsoft proprietary formats.

Many of the enterprise customers we talk with wouldn't want major updates more frequently than a two- to three-year cycle, even if Microsoft could deliver updates on a faster cycle.

So if this case, and even many cases like this that are either in court or would potentially be filed in the next several quarters, actually do succeed and Microsoft ends up paying a few billion in damages ... it will have a minimal impact on the company's bottom line.

So instead of PowerPoint you have presentation software and instead of Microsoft Word you have word processing software.

Software as a service is something Microsoft wanted to pretend wasn't ever going to happen. The problem they have is that customers want it. Now more and more of the Microsoft franchise is being encroached upon, and not by a bunch of pimply kids like it was in the early Internet days, but by a company with a $100 billion market cap.

Shortages like this are one of the effects of Apple keeping announcements quiet. Many companies will begin moving product through the channel before an announcement. Sometimes you'll even see Microsoft software on store shelves before it's announced.

Security is a critical issue for all browsers. Microsoft incorporates security concerns into the design phase on all of its products, and with Internet Explorer 7, we paid particular attention to addressing not only known threats but also creating a foundation that is capable of adapting to protect users from new attacks in the future. Make no mistake, Internet Explorer 7 is a more secure browser from the foundation on up.

Security is an industry problem for all of us. Microsoft is collaborating with you and law enforcement to bring you products that do what they say on the box.

Security is an ongoing battle. Microsoft can never declare victory. But clearly, Microsoft has made great strides hardening the OS.

Old habits die hard. Microsoft would really need to communicate the benefits.