Simon Willison’s Weblog

Un-happened

27th November 2003

Charles Miller, in Google, Microsoft and Tall Poppies.:

Bill Gates’ original goal in forming Microsoft was famously to have (emphasis mine) "A computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software". You’ll not find the last three words of that sentence in any official Microsoft history (or at least I couldn’t, and I searched hard). They’ve been carefully un-happened: the dream of a nascent monopolist truncated into a facade of altruism.

Google:

• “desk and in every home” site:microsoft.com -“every home running”—167 results
• “desk and in every home running” site:microsoft.com—3 results, all from a Bill Gates speech at Stanford in 2002.

Fascinating.