When Bill Gates testified through videotape in Microsoft's antitrust trial in 1998, he was combative and defensive, as if he can not believe how stupid the entire procedure was.
He didn't expect the tape to might be present in court. It was, and it was a disaster. According to public opinion he is genius who had built Microsoft into the most valuable tech company in the world, he was a condescending monopolist who didn't have time for the legal system.
Amazingly, Gates didn't see it coming. As Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen relates in his recent autobiography, the anti-Microsoft sentiment "cut Bill to the core." Gates said the media that government attorney David Boies was "really out to destroy Microsoft."
According to rational engineer's mind, Microsoft was simply a winner. It had defeated its competitors by being smarter and working harder. It seemed deeply unfair for the government to build a case based on the complaints of those competitors and undo everything that Gates had worked so hard for.
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