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Digital lifestyle will divide world: Gates
The world's richest man, in an interview to Sandeep Bamzai, was all praise for "Indian techies brimming with ideas".
As Microsoft founder Bill Gates moves from one pit stop to another, with the status of a visiting head of state, his energy levels are startling.
Even after over half-an-hour drive in car around the rajdhani, he is focused as he handles with his customary aplomb posers thrown at him.
In fact, the very first question has him in rapt attention as he argues vehemently about the single network — the Internet — which will drive the change in the future. Gates is the man who saw tomorrow, and as he says, “No device will dominate the future, there are times when you want a device in your pocket and other times when you require it as a PC. A single network riding on the Internet, be it wired or wireless, a television set, a personal computer or a cell phone, is the way forward. Form factors don't substitute one for the other. I am very clear that they don’t and won’t compete with one another.”
The world according to Gates will be divided into two — digital lifestyle and digital workstyle. “Now the question is how do you want to navigate through data and consume it, do you want to use a full screen device or a hand-held? It’s no big deal, we write software for everything,” he asked.
So, where will India fit into this global computing grid? Gates was once again quick on the uptake as he said, “We have great developers, partners, support staff here in India. Indians have unique skill sets and as such we are super committed to this country. Microsoft likes taking a long-term view and that’s why we are investing heavily in India. Look at the growth rates of Indian tech majors — TCS, Infosys and Wipro — think of the talent pool available here. Look at MS, three of the top managers are Indian.
I love interfacing with these guys because they are bubbling with ideas. They are going to get more responsibility in the company.”
While Gates spoke about scaling up with the troika, it is the consumption market in India that concerns him.
He believes the time has come to make the breakthrough in this regard but, as he said, “There can never be a single application for a market place. My guess is that given the Indian environment, video flowing over Internet backed by strong content creation on all sorts of devices could be the way to crack this code. Speech recognition software will play a big role in the Indian context. I reckon ease of use is a vital enabler in India. Our friends in hardware have to make it cheaper so that we can make communication cheaper.”
As he traverses the Indian subcontinent, is his mental space taken up by his known antipathy for Google?
Now Gates is charming, even smiling, suggesting, nay maybe even coaxing, that I have my facts wrong. And then a torrent, “Yes, it is a competitor, why do you think I get agitated about Google? I don’t. All I tell my people is let’s build a better search engine, I don’t get emotional about these things. You have been hearing a lot of bad rumours. I am very clear that we need to do the best in search — desk top, corporations and the web at large. Search is a treasure hunt and my contention is that one should be able to instantly access and get the answer directly. Google is a fine company, they have done some novel and interesting stuff, but don't blow it out of proportion. They have done an IPO and I guess there is a honeymoon period. Let’s wait and watch. Watch out for our search tool, it will be something very exciting.” Certain unsavoury comments were attributed recently to Bill Gates against a Chinese employee of MS who defected to Google.
Gates says MS is revolutionising telephony, gaming, search engines and is investing aggressively in natural language understanding.
What worries him is security. He thinks checking spam and creating deterrents against hacking offer single biggest challenge as he attempts to provide a safe and secure environment on the Net for people to put sensitive material on it.
