March 30, 1998
Microsoft Corporation announced today that it is closing down its operations permanently, including all of its operating system and application groups, support, and development. Bill Gates issued the following statement through his lawyers: “With the introduction of the Power Mac G3 from Apple, We simply don’t see a requirement in the market for Microsoft operating systems or applications. Of course, since I bought Apple a couple months back, I can’t complain.”Microsoft is forfeiting it’s 99.9% of the market for computer operating systems. Although Apple currently has an unmeasurable share of the market for operating systems, it is expected to increase that significantly.
When questioned about the lack of applications that run on the G3, Mr. Gates replied, “I’m sure there are plenty of applications that run on it. MS Word runs on it, I think.”
Industry analysts point out that it may, in fact, be the applications that make the difference in speed between computers running Windows and the Power Mac G3. “It’s the large number of applications that slow down the Windows machines. Apple has so few applications that it doesn’t really have that many things to slow it down. Thus, it’s faster!”
When asked what the employees of Microsoft will do, Mr. Gates pointed out that they are all billionaires and don’t need to work, though some of them will probably stay in the business manning help desks or designing web pages.