Author: Matt

“I’m in the security business, and the security business is the business of paranoia.”

Cryptonym chief scientist Andrew Fernandes, explaining the connection between taunting Microsoft about a newly discovered Windows security hole and maximizing shareholder value, ZDNN, 3 September 1999

“We are going to do fewer things very well.”

Microsoft president Steve Ballmer, announcing new MSN chief Rick Belluzzo’s plans to make a network of lackluster sites even more lackluster, USA Today, 3 September 1999

“Everybody’s confused, including ourselves, about what we are. Are we a software company? An Internet company? A financial-services company? A portal? I get this all the time.”

Intuit CEO Bill Harris, explaining that despite his company’s identity crisis, he can’t get permission from the shareholders to go off on a two-year voyage of self-discovery in Nepal, The Industry Standard, 20 August 1999

“In 1982, you could diagram the whole Internet on one sheet of paper.”

MCI WorldCom vice president Vinton Cerf, remembering the roots of the Internet; he added later that packets then had to be pushed uphill both ways, through the snow, ZDNN, 31 August 1999

“We would have done this five years ago and taken [Microsoft] on with a fat client.”

Sun Microsystems president Ed Zander, on his company’s plan to take on big, bruising Microsoft Office with a skinny little kid program from Germany, The New York Times, 31 August 1999