Backbytes - Bill gets basic

Backbytes hasn't been called as a witness in the Microsoft anti-trust trial, so we are unable to tell the judge our Microsoft negotiating table anecdote. We would have told the story of Visio, the drawing tools company.

Several years ago, Visio chief executive Jeremy Jaech was trying to convince Microsoft to bundle Visio software in Microsoft Office. Microsoft offered Visio less than $1 million for all rights to the software. When Visio complained that the figure was too low, the Microsoft executive conducting the negotiation told them: 'You guys don't understand. Bill says he could program your software in a weekend using Visual Basic.' So Visio's team went away and calculated how many millions of dollars Bill would make in that weekend, and offered the software to Microsoft for that amount. Sadly, Microsoft's deal-makers didn't see the joke.