rifice some of their privacy for the sake of convenience. But Gates sees a future that does not depend on government intervention to protect privacy (Gates 258). Instead, he envisions a world where the superhighway provides its own policing and censorship, a dubious vision given the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which includes attempts at censoring the Internet.
Microsoft's role on the road ahead is to provide the software which will power the information superhighway, and which will define the ways in which people use computers. This is no small objective, and there are critics of Microsoft who suggest that the company seeks nothing less than complete domination of the software industry. Gates takes a less dramatic approach to the role that his company will play, recognizing the continuing entrepreneurial spirit of software development (the recent success of Netscape illustrates this well), but also recognizing that Microsoft has the financial resources to effectively and successfully enter new markets, and dominate those markets in which it already participates.
Microsoft's mission is to provide software solutions to computing problems that individuals, companies and various organizations face. This can be discerned from the business units the company has established, and the various ways in which the company markets its product. In addition, the company spends a significant amount of its resources (13 and 14 percent of sales in some years) on research and development in order to maintain a competitive edge in the markets in which it competes (1996 Annual Report 3-7).
Bill Gates and Paul Allen entered the computer software market almost by accident, and certainly without the strategic vision that is generally now ascribed to entrepreneurs. The pair were computer enthusiasts who knew each other from high school; Allen had worked for Honeywell while Gates attended Harvard. Playing with a small Altair computer intrigued...