Recounting the recent Microsoft-Yahoo stuff would be a waste of space; we all know what happened and who was involved. One name rarely came up, though, and in case anyone was wondering what Bill Gates thought about the outcome, well . . . he doesn’t seem to have lost sleep over it.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who are good friends, were interviewed by Liz Claman of the Fox Business Network. Claman did her job, asking each man about the acquisition, and neither billionaire treated the matter as inconsequential. But both of them gave little more than a combination of respectful party lines and genuinely amusing rich-guy jokes.
Bill Gates
As reported by Todd Bishop, Gates stated, “Steve Ballmer, the CEO, announced on Saturday in his letter that we had walked away and we were pursuing an independent strategy. And so that’s where the focus is. And, you know, obviously we have a strong competitor in that category, and so we need to do breakthrough software.”
Later, in response to a question, Buffett didn’t suggest anything should have been done differently. “I would not presume to advise Bill in that game,” he said. “That’s his game.”
Then the conversation moved on to whether Gates or Buffett should be higher on Forbes’s list of rich men, how houses can be built on an extreme budget, and the speed with which Sue Decker passed Gates some salt at a dinner.
Steve Ballmer doesn’t appear to have done anything that remotely bothered his company’s chairman.
