“Some people have had the mistaken notion that in order to make the server smarter, you need to make the client dumber.”
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, defining dumbness down in defending his decades-old vision of client-server technology, News.com, 13 November 2000
“For the past nine months, I got a chance to see from ground zero an industry at its peak, and then to see it after the bubble burst, and as the bubble was bursting. Tom Wolfe would have killed to have my job.”
Unemployed journalist Ty Wenger, bubbling over about his experiences as executive editor of now-bankrupt startup TheMan.com, San Francisco Chronicle, 9 November 2000
“B-to-c is not dead at all, it’s just changed. We think the worst is over.”
Morgan Stanley Internet analyst Mary Meeker, on the slow recovery of her investment bank’s ability to reap outrageous stock-offering fees from Internet companies that sell to consumers, Upside.com, 9 November 2000
“Once [Pets.com] stopped burning their cash, they discovered that they needed more cash.”
Sanford Bernstein analyst Faye Landes, on the economics-as-pyrotechnics that doomed a kitty-litter-shipping, sock-puppet-advertising, $10-off-everything-forever dot-com disaster, The New York Times, 8 November 2000
“Under our old consumer model, we were too good at getting you the information and getting out of the way to succeed at monetization. That’s what people loved about us.”
Eric Tilenius, CEO of the freshly renamed Atomica, on plans for the company formerly known as GuruNet to make money by getting people to pay to have it stay out of their way, News.com, 7 November 2000
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