Dan Gillmor is an excellent journalist and a ferocious critic of Microsoft. His blog is widely read and respected – in fact, it’s on my must-read list daily. That’s why I was distressed to see that a recent blog entry from Dan contained a startling bit of misinformation. As part of a discussion of Google News, Dan quotes Andrew Orlowski of the Register as having written:
…at one point in an Antitrust deposition Bill Gates claimed that “the computer wrote” one particular incriminating email. It’s the “cat ate my homework” excuse of the 21st Century.
The Washington Post has transcripts of the infamous Gates depositions from the August September 1998 depositions. I read through them, and I can’t find anything remotely resembling what Orlowski wrote and Gillmor quoted without fact-checking.
I’m not going to give Orlowski the benefit of the doubt and say that he was just paraphrasing something else. If you look back, you’ll see that he has spread this story before. In this story about Google, for example, published earlier this year, Orlowski directly quotes BillG:
At an awkward point in his testimony to during the Antitrust trial, Chairman Bill was asked to confirm that he’d written an incriminating email that had come from the account billg@microsoft.com. ‘The computer wrote it,’ said Bill.
I copied the full text of the Gates depositions here and allowed Copernic Desktop Search to index them. I did a dozen searches on a wide variety of words and phrases and can’t find anything remotely like this exchange.
It’s unfortunate when a writer for a Web site that is known for its snarky but entertaining takes on technical news makes up a quote. I don’t believe very many people believe the Register follows the same standards as real journalists. But Dan Gillmor is a real journalist, and he shouldn’t be spreading this sort of misinformation so casually.
Update: I found the passage in question, and I was right. Orlowski is grossly exaggerating, to put it mildly. This is from the Deposition of Bill Gates, September 2, 1998 (follow the link above if you want to read for yourself):
Q. BY MR. BOIES: And you type in here “Importance: High.”
A. No.
Q. No?
A. No, I didn’t type that.
Q. Who typed in “High”?
A. A computer.
Q. A computer. Why did the computer type in “High”?
A. It’s an attribute of the e-mail.
Q. And who set the attribute of the e-mail?
A. Usually the sender sends that attribute.
Q. Who is the sender here, Mr. Gates?
A. In this case it appears I’m the sender.
Q. Yes. And so you’re the one who set the high designation of importance, right, sir?
A. It appears I did that. I don’t remember doing that specifically.
Q. Right. Now, did you send this message on or about August 15, 1997?
A. I don’t remember doing so.
One of the first things a lawyer tells you when you are about to be questioned for a legal proceeding is to answer the question exactly as asked. Don’t volunteer information. Don’t explain. In this case, Boies asked Bill Gates whether he typed a particular phrase at the top of the printed e-mail. Gates answers, truthfully, that he didn’t type that. As any Outlook user knows, that information was inserted by Outlook when the message was printed, based on the Importance attribute. Gates correctly made Boies work to get that information.
Now, you can argue, and I won’t disagree, that Bill Gates made some serious mistakes during this deposition, not the least of which was coming across as hostile and uncooperative. But that’s a question of public relations, not law.
Anyway, Orlowski’s repeated assertion that Bill Gates said “The computer wrote” that e-mail isn’t true. It makes a great urban legend, but it isn’t based on the facts. Unfortunately, when a savvy reporter like Dan Gillmor prints a story like this one without comment or fact-checking, it becomes another hit in the Google cache, and pretty soon this “fact” becomes common knowledge.
I know Dan has been busy lately with his new venture into “emerging grassroots journalism.” This is very exciting stuff. I wish him the best of luck and can’t wait to see and maybe even participate in it.
Ed Bott 
I agree.. I think the people at Microsoft get a real bad rap a lot of time, specially Bill Gates. It’s almost like it’s the “cool” thing to do is to Hate Microsoft.
Thanks for this explanation, I happened to read the mentioned The Register article and wondered about the quote (this entry is Google’s first hit for “the computer wrote it”).
Oh come on, Ed. It’s not a massive jump from Gates saying answering “Who typed in ‘High’?” with “A computer” to what Orlowski’s saying. Sure, he’s paraphrasing – in a somewhat humourous way – but it’s Gates who’s being deliberately obtuse rather than Orlowski.
He presents it as a direct quote, Ian. In quotation marks and everything. Not just once but repeatedly. And yet there was no such direct quote. A hack writer makes up quotes. A good reporter takes actual facts and works with them.