Zero to One_ Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future ( PDFDrive )

distinctive persona? Or, in his incurable nerdiness, did his geek glasses choose
him? It’s hard to know. But his dominance was undeniable: Microsoft’s
Windows claimed a 90% share of the market for operating systems in 2000. That
year Peter Jennings could plausibly ask, “Who is more important in the world
today: Bill Clinton or Bill Gates? I don’t know. It’s a good question.”
The U.S. Department of Justice didn’t limit itself to rhetorical questions; they
opened an investigation and sued Microsoft for “anticompetitive conduct.” In
June 2000 a court ordered that Microsoft be broken apart. Gates had stepped
down as CEO of Microsoft six months earlier, having been forced to spend most
of his time responding to legal threats instead of building new technology. A
court of appeals later overturned the breakup order, and Microsoft reached a
settlement with the government in 2001. But by then Gates’s enemies had
already deprived his company of the full engagement of its founder, and
Microsoft entered an era of relative stagnation. Today Gates is better known as a
philanthropist than a technologist.