Interview with Bill Gates

Bill Gates yesterday acknowledged that , the next version of its popular business productivity suite, according to The Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "He compared the current rivalries to legendary ones with Lotus, Novell and WordPerfect -- situations in which the Redmond company ultimately overcame steep odds to prevail. 'At any point in our history, we've had competitors who were better at doing something,' Gates said, ...underscoring the fact that it wouldn't be unprecedented to come from behind now."

"Sony is ahead of us in video games. We're just on the verge of something (the Xbox 360) that will help us close the gap there. In Web search, Google is the far-away leader. Big honeymoon for them. Even if they do 'me, too' type stuff, people think, 'wow.' And Apple in music has done a fantastic job."

Gates said Microsoft would match its competitors in areas where they have done well: "We'll match what they do, we'll bring new things to it, do it better and integrate it in with other things. And so it's very healthy for the consumer. We see that in search, we see it in music. It's not new at all that that's out there."

by MacNN Staff