Catfight: Microsoft co-founder lashes out at Gates
In new biography - extracted at length in Vanity Fair - Paul Allen says Bill Gates schemed to cheat him out of shares, and claims credit for many of Microsoft's great ideas.
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In new biography - extracted at length on Vanity Fair's website, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen says Bill Gates schemed to cheat him out of shares. Allen also claims credit for many of Microsoft's great ideas.
The two school friends co-founded Microsoft in 1975, but Allen left in the mid-80s.
In 1982, he was laid low for several months by Hodgkin's lymphoma - around which time Allen claims Gates maneuvered to grab his shares.
But in the event, Allen maintained a large holding in the company, which over the ensuing decades has made him one of the world's richest men (57th on Forbes' most recent billionaire list, with a wealth of $US13 billion).
And while Gates toiled on obsessively at Microsoft, a recovered Mr Allen did what most of us would if we became multi-billionaires: sponsoring the X Prize for sub-orbital spaceflight, building a Jimi Hendrix museum in the shape of a guitar, buying sports teams, and playboying around on a series of ever-larger super yachts (in between times, he has dabbled in tech start-ups, and backed various philanthropic causes).
Today, Gates took the high road, releasing a statement that said, "While my recollection of many of these events may differ from Paul's, I value his friendship and the important contributions he made to the world of technology and at Microsoft." (Various of Gates' supporters have taken a sharper line, saying Allen did not even attend several key meetings he recalls in his book).
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Catfight: Microsoft co-founder lashes out at Gates
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