D3. billg on Linux

It may seem, billg is now saying, that Linux is doing very well, but really it’s “just a significant competitor on the server.” I would have thought that this constitutes a considerable failure for Microsoft. Walt lets it go, but he then asks whether or not Linux is doing better on the desktop in countries like Brazil or China. Billg, in that whiny voice he adopts when he is annoyed or impatient or not getting his way, cries out like a wounded child, “That’s not the case, Walt. I think the Brazilian government has made some noises about Linux.” But industry CIOs, he says in a palpable swipe at Steve Jobs’s self-congratulation the previous night, have always supported Windows desktop–even in Brazil or, by extension, China.