Gates Fires Pot Shot at Google Team

It's no secret that there's no love lost between Microsoft founder Bill Gates and the team over at the Googleplex. Gates' feelings about the search giant were made abundantly clear last week during an interview with Computing's Brian Glick.

Gates spoke about the history of Microsoft and his early days as a coder, but the interview quickly shifted into a series of sharp barbs against Microsoft rival Google. While Gates acknowledges that Google presents serious competition to Microsoft, he was also fairly flippant in dismissing them as a threat.

'Which Google products are you talking about? Seriously? Other than search, which are you talking about? Google Talk? Wow. A total "me too" product. Even Gmail – what is the unique thing?’ he says.

'We need to surprise people and do a search that is way better than Google, and we are very on top of that. The idea of development tools, a natural interface, productivity software – Google is not in any of those categories. People are acting as if they will magically be in these other categories with something more than a "me too" offering. It is kind of fun that people underestimate what we are going to do here.’

After pointing out the long history of companies that have poised threats against Microsoft and failed (Netscape, IBM, Novell...), Gates went on to say:

'Google is great, they are smart people, the press should continue to feed their arrogance as much as possible,' he says. 'They say they are going to organise the world's information. Well, we don't think that is our job. We think you need to get tools to editors and subject experts to let them organise the world's information. There is a bit of a philosophy difference here. The only sure winner is the consumer.'