My first thought when I read about Microsoft is the Bill Gates interview on the Charlie Rose show shortly after Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing hit the world’s front pages.
Mr. Gates was angry with Mr. Snowden. Gates thought that what Snowden had done would be very harmful to….somebody. (He didn’t say who or how, though, but whatever). Snowden was no “hero”. The empty speech bubble coming out of Mr. Gates’s head was dying to be filled in with the word “traitor”.
Mr. Rose, as Mr. Rose does, didn’t dig deeper. He didn’t, as he doesn’t, ask the big questions, like “Who?” and “How?”
What was not discussed were Snowden’s reports that Microsoft was one of the big tech firms that had “collaborated” with the Five Eyes program to spy on, well, pretty much the entire world population. Microsoft’s collaboration was described as having left backdoors for the spy agencies to spy on people. These backdoors, if I remember correctly, were to be found in Microsoft software and hardware (though the hardware might have been from other companies).
Mr. Rose did not ask any questions about said alleged collaboration. He did, however, on multiple occasions, refer to Mr. Gates’s astronomical wealth. No dots were connected. As in, one question might have been: “Mr. Gates, do you think you would be the world’s first or second richest man if Microsoft customers had become former Microsoft customers after hearing that your company, even with the best intentions, was installing backdoors in your software?”
We may never know.