Bill Gates invested in Apple in the hopes that he could sell more Microsoft Office licenses to companies who wanted to be cool and use Macs. It was $150 million, which was pocket change for MS in 1997.
It wasn’t the money, but that Apple’s iMac took a massive bite out of Microsoft’s desktop market share, that pissed off Gates. He actually was going to the press in those days and openly insulting Jobs and Apple.
Yep. He figured he may as well get as much marketshare as he could. The OS portion would never be his, but he could certainly sell other application packages to Apple users.
He had to. Apple nearly folded, if it did it was a risk of monopoly status and government intervention. He did it to keep the competition alive to prevent that.
Agreed. However, he wanted to keep them on life support, not have them become a major player.
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