Frankly speaking, sword guy....Steve Jobs was not a good person and Gates generally is so in my view Gates made a deal he likely regrets to this day.
Business men generally have a code of conduct among themselves just like anyone else. I never, since very long ago had any respect for jobs, although I do have admiration for what he achieved. I simply found Jobs the person to be a total craphead.
Yes, MS did take a gain on the stock. They did not need it when they exited the investment but my read was that they basically disassociated themselves with apple for personal reasons. They got out in two tranches if I recall but they handled it with delicacy.
My read is that if they had to do it all over again in a history repeat, they would have never pursued it.
Gates was the better man and was always much wealthier. It really killed Steve Jobs that he could not amass the billions that Gates did. So he worked like crazy and behaved like a tyrant. All in a futile attempt to make more billions than Gates. And this stress is what drove him to an early grave. Now Jobs loony liberal wife is blowing Jobs' billions on dumb liberal projects to compete with Melinda Gates who runs the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation..
Gates is the good guy???? You have it exactly backwards. I have friends who had Gates and Microsoft rip off their Disk Stacker software and incorporate it into MS-DOS 6.0 as DoubleSpace. When Stac Electronics, my friends, sued Microsoft for patent infringement, Microsoft then tried to run their company into bankruptcy by counter suing them for using an undocumented system call that Microsoft engineers had actually showed them for pre-loading files, demanding tons of paper documents in discovery, and piling on delaying motion after delaying motion in an attempt to run them out of money. This went on until the trial judge censured Microsoft for delaying the case. Microsoft eventually LOST to Stac Electronics and was awarded $120 million for infringement of two of Stac's patents, but the jury was deadlocked on whether it was willful infringement or not (despite Stac showing their code in Microsoft's code and showing that Microsoft had requested copies of Stac's code for "compliance" purposes, just months before it suddenly appeared in MS-DOS 6.0).
There are many confirmed stories of Gates and Microsoft using this pattern of appropriating technology from small companies or individuals, waiting for the lawsuit, dragging it out until the plaintiffs run out of funding for the lawsuit, settle out of court for pennies on the dollar, or often Microsoft buys the assets of the company they bankrupted from the bankruptcy auction. . . including the IP they infringed.
Microsoft has a history of such infringement lawsuits. . . they were known for it in the industry. It was one of the reasons they got the name Microshaft!
Apple has a reputation of PAYING for the technology the use in advance. . . for example the Xerox PARC GUI visits. . . which Steve Jobs arranged with Xerox management by arranging for Xerox to be able to buy into Apple pre-IPO in exchange for the visits and the rights for what they learned. Microsoft LIFTED the ideas without paying a damn thing.
So your viewpoint is that Dear, Sweet, good, angelic Bill Gates was bamboozled by the evil conniving Steve Jobs into just giving Apple $150 million, re-starting MS Office for Mac, agreeing to keep producing and developing MS Office for Mac for an additional five years, agree to giving Apple free access to all of Microsoft's intellectual Property for the life of the copyrights and patents, paying ADDITIONAL royalties to Apple for the in-suit infringed patents and copyrights for five years that forensic auditors estimate totaled more than $2 BILLION of the five years of the agreement, AND agreed to do this all on the QT, while Apple merely had to include MS Internet Explorer, license the infringed software, issue stock certificates, and drop the lawsuit with prejudice.
You claim that the CEO of a company with a Market Cap of $164 Billion is out-negotiated into a BAD deal by a new-interim CEO of a company with a Market Cap of $2.4 Billion. . . because the new-interim CEO is a bad ass.
You are delusional, if you think that.
Then you tell me that a MAJOR CORPORATION disposed of a major asset worth multiple hundreds of millions of dollars for "PERSONAL REASONS"???? That, my friend is not possible. They disposed of it after the passage of Sarbanes Oxley in 2002, and that required lots of government paper work. "Personal reasons" can have NOTHING to do with it. . . and everything has to be reported when it is done and why. PUBLICLY.
My read is that if they had to do it all over again in a history repeat, they would have never pursued it.
REally Never pursued it???? You are REALLY delusional. Microsoft had to do it and had NO CHOICE. It was not a matter of choice; it was a matter of settle a lawsuit, or go to trial and lose a lot more, both in cash and in good will.
What part of "The judge told them the evidence was so overwhelming they would LOSE if they went to trial" do you fail to understand???? Gates chose the less expensive way that allowed them to save face. . . and got the decks cleared to be able to handle the more important matter of the DOJ investigation.
Microsoft was trying desperately to get Apple to drop the lawsuit. They were trying to force it by first threatening to discontinue MS Office for Mac and then doing it. Gil Amelio though they wouldn't. They did. Steve Jobs came to Microsoft with a plan beneficial to them that would end their problems but also told them that if they did not, he was prepared to go to trial, because he knew they needed the case to go away . . . they accepted it.