Paul Allen: Bill Gates Was A Cheat And A Scumbag

Okay, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen didn't really say the scumbag part, but he DID call Gates a cheat:

SEATTLE -- It makes sense that in the Paul Allen Center at the University of Washington, the start-up spirit is strong, and young entrepreneurs are taking lessons from the building's namesake.

"Paul Allen's contributed so much, not just to our department here," said Josiah Adams, a computer science student, of the Microsoft co-founder. "My understanding is that they way things broke up between [Allen and Bill Gates] wasn't on the best of terms, but I didn't know the details of that."

But on April 19, he'll get a chance to see those details, at least from Allen's perspective.

Allen's upcoming book, entitled "Idea Man: A Memoir by the Co-Founder of Microsoft," focuses heavily on Allen's sports teams and other endeavors -- like his involvement in developing a commercial spacecraft.

"Paul Allen's been sick, his cancer's come back," said Brier Dudley, Seattle Times technology columnist who has covered Microsoft for years. "He's been thinking about stuff obviously, and how he's going to be perceived by future generations."

But the segments catching the most buzz are his candid reflections on a deteriorating relationship with his Microsoft co-founder, excerpts of which Vanity Fair published Wednesday, including:

I was Mr. Slow Burn, like Walter Matthau to Bill’s Jack Lemmon. When I got mad, I stayed mad for weeks. I don’t know if Bill noticed the strain on me, but everyone else did. Some said Bill’s management style was a key ingredient in Microsoft’s early success, but that made no sense to me. Why wouldn’t it be more effective to have civil and rational discourse? Why did we need knock-down, drag-out fights?

"It's an unusual glimpse behind the scenes of a company that's really changed Seattle and the world," Dudley said.

In the excerpts, Allen praises Gates's brilliance and business acumen, but also paints him as a man who kept trying to drive down Allen's control of the company. He included an anecdote, after he was first diagnosed with lymphoma, in which he said he caught Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer talking.

They were bemoaning my recent lack of production and discussing how they might dilute my Microsoft equity by issuing options to themselves and other shareholders. It was clear that they’d been thinking about this for some time.

...

I helped start the company and was still an active member of management, though limited by my illness, and now my partner and my colleague were scheming to rip me off. It was mercenary opportunism, plain and simple.

So emblematic of Gates - your partner's sick with cancer, his productivity is down because of the illness, you scheme to to get rid of him and screw him out of his money, and you do it all in secret.

What a fabulous man!

Okay, not really.

Actually this story serves to crystallize what a venomous, greedy, dangerous man Gates is.

Or as Allen terms him, opportunistic and mercenary.

I do wish all the people who cheer the Gates Foundation "philanthropy" would remember what an absolute scumbag Gates was when he was running Microsoft and realize that he brings that same criminal persona to his "philanthropic" work.