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Finding the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of the web 2.0 era

The PC Era is now finally over.The Bill and Steve Show that entertained us for over quarter of a century is over too. "You and I have memories longer than the road ahead." Steve Jobs once said to Bill Gates. Bill has pushed himself out of Microsoft while Steve is ill and can no longer look after his baby, Apple.

Where are the rivals of the web era?
Or, to be more fashionable, the web 2.0 era?

- The Google guys seem to have no quarrel with the world, ostensibly sticking to their 'do no evil' marketing mantra.

- The web 2.0 pioneers, Joshua Schacter (Del.icio.us), Kevin Rose (Digg), Gabe Rivera (Techmeme), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Matt Mullenwag (Wordpress), Evan Williams (Blogger), are either too young or too mild in comparison.

The Bill Gates and Steve Jobs show also featured an all-star supporting cast of Scott McNealy (Sun), Michael Dell and Mark Andreessen of Netscape, not forgetting guest roles by John Sculley, Andrew Grove (Intel) and other PC-era heavyweights. Those were the days when technology had only started to invade our homes and our lifestyles.

In today's age of blogs, Youtube, Digg, Comments for Everythings and what not, it is a shame we don't have more of these: "You Copied Us!", "How many Windows users does it take to change a bulb?"

Then, you had nerds versus everyone else.
Now, everyone claims to be a Nerd.
Everyone claims to be an expert, famous, or both, among other things.
Everyone has a blog, Twitter account, Facebook/Myspace/Orkut Profile or a Digg account.
The Nerd has gone mainstream.

Among other web 2.0 players, there is Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) who reportedly 'stole' his way to social networking riches. Zuckerberg tries to copy Steve Jobs. He tried to copy Jobs' seminal 1984 Introduction during the introduction of Facebook's ad system, Beacon: "Once in a lifetime...this is the future of advertising". As the cliche goes, rest is history.

There was a third big-time entertainer during that period, Larry Ellison.
This decade, all we got was Mark Cuban and he is nowhere as newsworthy as Ellison, despite scoring a double whammy - a blog and a team.

Any random sampling of quotes from the Bill Gates and Steve Gates tells you that Bill Gates played Kevin Smith's Silent Bob (or, muttering Bob) to Steve Jobs' opinionated Jay. Both of them are Geniuses, only one of them burns brighter than the other.

Some of my favorite quotes from Bill Gates and Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs quotes

"He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger." - Steve Jobs on Bill Gates

What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me ... Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me.

They are shamelessly copying us. - (On Vista)

Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don’t know any better. (1994)

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. (2005)

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. (2005)

The art of those commercials is not to be mean, but it is actually for the guys to like each other.
- Jobs On the "P.C. and Mac" commercials, at the All Things Digital Conference 5, where he shared the stage with Bill Gates, 2007

Bill Gates Quotes

Microsoft has had clear competitors in the past. It’s a good thing we have museums to document that. (2001)

Spam will be a thing of the past in two years' time. (2004)

Microsoft looks at new ideas, they don't evaluate whether the idea will move the industry forward, they ask, 'how will it help us sell more copies of Windows?' (1998)

I wish I wasn't ... There's nothing good that comes out of that. You get more visibility as a result of it.
- On Being Rich, in The Guardian, 2006

The Best quote on Gates
Bill Gates is a very rich man today ... and do you want to know why? The answer is one word: versions.
- Dave Barry

Labels: apple, bill gates, Microsoft, steve jobs

posted by Pramit Singh @ 9:12 PM