On August 6, 1997, Microsoft’s Bill Gate invested $150 million in Apple which was in the brink of bankruptcy. Following the deal, Steve Jobs told Gates, “Bill, thank you. The world’s a better place.”
At the time, Time Magazine used the quote on their cover.
The show of friendship between rivals shocked the tech and business communities. Describing it, the New York Times wrote in its opinion section: “Even in cyberspace, the moment can only be described as surreal.”
“Apple was in very serious trouble,” CNBC quoted Steve Jobs as saying. “And what was really clear was that if the game was a zero-sum game where for Apple to win, Microsoft had to lose, then Apple was going to lose.
“There were too many people at Apple and in the Apple ecosystem playing (that) game,” he added. “And it was clear that you didn’t have to play that game, because Apple wasn’t going to beat Microsoft. Apple didn’t have to beat Microsoft. Apple had to remember who Apple was because they’d forgotten who Apple was.”
The investment meant that Microsoft was helping one of its greatest competitors, but it was also a new business opportunity which Bill Gates admitted in 2007.
“That’s worked out very well,” he had said. “In fact, every couple years or so, there’s been something new that we’ve been able to do on the Mac and it’s been a great business for us.”
The deal eventually resulted in Apple and Microsoft shaping the computing industry together.
