Bill Gates accidentally makes the case to regulate the hell out of platform companies
There’s a great video of Bill Gates speaking to a venture capital firm called Village Global going around today, in which Gates says that Microsoft losing mobile to Android is his “greatest mistake ever.”
“So the greatest mistake ever is whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is,” says Gates, adding “Android is the standard non-Apple phone platform. That was a natural thing for Microsoft to win.”
This is all true, and you can read a bit more about the circumstances of how Microsoft missed the mobile moment here. But I want to focus on what Gates said next, because it is incredibly relevant to the current conversation about platforms, regulation, and antitrust. Here it is, with my emphasis in...