Robert X. Cringely Quotes

Google is a fierce competitor. I wish I was worth a bazillion dollars; that would be really nice. They're a fierce competitor, and they're very good in search. They're very good with their global map thing.

I don't really think anything Microsoft does puts pressure on Apple.

We got bigger, much scarier competitors. We ended up with Microsoft, a company with all the money in the world, the way I look at those guys. And IBM, another company that, historically, dwarfed us.

You know, Steve Jobs came to the music industry and pitched them the idea and they kept shootin' him down and shootin' him down, and now he makes money off the whole music industry regardless. Which is a minor part of his empire, 'cause obviously it's gadgets that make him all of his money. But regardless, he has basically monopolized the music game.

I am not out to destroy Microsoft, that would be a completely unintended side effect.

Microsoft has had clear competitors in the past. It's a good thing we have museums to document that.

It's my job for Oracle, the number two software company in the world; to become the number one software company in the world. My job is to build better than the competition, sell those products in the marketplace and eventually supplant Microsoft and move from being number two to number one.

Most companies in a capitalistic system compete mightily to obtain monopolistic positions so they can avoid capitalistic competition thereafter. Whenever a business person must compete for price, he tends to describe that derisively as a “commodity business” and tries to remedy the situation.

We’re far behind [Microsoft]. They are 3 time bigger than we are. They have a monopoly and we don’t—darnit!

The potential financial reward for building the 'next Windows' is so great that there will never be a shortage of new technologies seeking to challenge it.

It would be idiotic to position ourselves against Silicon Valley.

Microsoft is one of those rare companies to have truly revolutionized the world through technology, and I couldn't be more honored to have been chosen to lead the company.

I think few people in their lifetime have the chance to be involved in something like the creation of Microsoft - that's always going to be something I'm known for.

Apple is a failure because they missed social? Nobody would say that, because they are having great success.

We shook up the industry with our landscape-changing deal to acquire Time Warner, the logical next step in our strategy to bring together world-class content with best-in-class distribution which will drive innovation and more choice for consumers.

You can't replicate Seamless or OpenTable for another industry.

We've always anticipated that, as Nintendo would demonstrate business potential with an idea, others would follow. And we believe that based on history - rumble, joystick - things that we invented, if you will, and first put in video games, others quickly latched on to.

Compared to Apple, Internet companies like Google and Facebook don't have strong perspectives on the way they want the world to work.

If you bet on Microsoft, you are not going to ask anymore, 'Hey, where is the innovation?' The challenge going forward is how do we keep up with it.

Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft are building their own versions of the future. And they get bigger and bigger.

You want an idea that turns into a monopoly. But you can't get a monopoly, in a big market right away; too much competition for that.

You have to find a small market in which you can get a monopoly and then quickly expand.

Apple and Google will compete like crazy for our data because once they have it we'll be their customers forever.

I reckon that Stonehege was build by the contemporary equivalent of Microsoft, whereas Avebury was definitely an Apple circle.

In business, I look for economic castles protected by unbreachable 'moats'.