Quotes on Microsoft

What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down. They’re turning you into Microsoft. They’re causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.

The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn't think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.

I want everyone inside of Microsoft to take that responsibility. This is not about top-line growth. This is not about bottom-line growth. This is about us individually having a growth mindset.

At Microsoft, we're aspiring to have a living, learning culture with a growth mindset that allows us to learn from ourselves and our customers. These are the key attributes of the new culture at Microsoft, and I feel great about how it seems to be resonating and how it's seen as empowering.

Without a doubt, I wholeheartedly support programs at Microsoft and in the industry that bring more women into technology and close the pay gap.

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.

Many companies aspire to change the world. But very few have all the elements required: talent, resources and perseverance. Microsoft has proven that it has all three in abundance.

One thing I've always loved about the culture at Microsoft is there is nobody who is tougher on us, in terms of what we need to learn and do better, than the people in the company itself. You can walk down these halls, and they'll tell you, 'We need to do usability better, push this or that frontier.'

An awful lot of successful technology companies ended up being in a slightly different market than they started out in. Microsoft started with programming tools, but came out with an operating system. Oracle started doing contracts for the CIA. AOL started out as an online video gaming network.

I loved every minute of my time at Microsoft, but I had always envisioned having another phase of life just because I thought that would be interesting. It had never been my plan to work until I literally didn't want to do anything and then hang it up.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo should be developing new technologies to bypass government sensors and barriers to the Internet; but instead, they agreed to guard the gates themselves.

No one person controls Microsoft. The board and the shareholders decide whether they want to have me as CEO.

The way to be successful in the software world is to come up with breakthrough software, and so whether it's Microsoft Office or Windows, its pushing that forward. New ideas, surprising the marketplace, so good engineering and good business are one in the same.

The opportunity ahead for Microsoft is vast, but to seize it, we must focus clearly, move faster, and continue to transform.

The outside perception and inside perception of Microsoft are so different. The view of Microsoft inside Microsoft is always kind of an underdog thing.

IBM has research and development; so do Microsoft and Nike and even Jose Andres. But there hasn't been enough R&D on feeding people in the Third World. This has to be part of the process; if not, we'll keep throwing money at the problem instead of investing in true solutions.

I'm interested in Linux because of the technology, and Linux wasn't started as any kind of rebellion against the 'evil Microsoft empire.'

I don't try to be a threat to MicroSoft, mainly because I don't really see MS as competition. Especially not Windows-the goals of Linux and Windows are simply so different.

When you say 'I wrote a program that crashed Windows,' people just stare at you blankly and say 'Hey, I got those with the system, for free.'

If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won.

A breakthrough in machine learning would be worth ten Microsofts.