Bill Gates’s videotaped deposition became a memorable episode in the Microsoft antitrust trial because excerpts were played in court over multiple sessions and drew a pointed, carefully qualified comment from Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. The “spectacular failure” label is an interpretation of the episode—not a judicial finding. Jackson said Gates had not been particularly responsive in many respects, but also said he was not judging the deposition’s ultimate significance.
What happened in the Bill Gates deposition?
Gates, then Microsoft’s chairman, gave deposition testimony in the U.S. government’s antitrust case against Microsoft. The Department of Justice archive lists sessions on August 27, August 28, and September 2, 1998. The September 2 transcript says testimony began at 9:11 a.m. at Microsoft’s headquarters, One Microsoft Way, in Redmond, Washington. The DOJ’s case index labels the material “Deposition Testimony of William Gates.” DOJ archive and case materials; September 2 transcript.
The testimony was videotaped, and trial participants later watched selected excerpts in court. Harvard’s trial archive records the Gates deposition being shown on November 2, followed by playback entries on November 16 and 17, and later entries in December and January. This was a sequence of courtroom showings, not one uninterrupted public screening. Harvard’s Microsoft trial archive.
Why was Gates’s deposition described as evasive?
The public reaction was shaped by both the substance of the questions and Gates’s on-camera manner. The Washington Post’s contemporaneous report described him fidgeting and responding testily, and said he repeatedly did not remember emails bearing his name. Those are the newspaper’s descriptions of the courtroom presentation, not separate findings about his intent.
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Judge Jackson’s reported comment captured the criticism while limiting what could be inferred from it: “It’s evident to every spectator that, for whatever reason, in many respects Mr. Gates has not been particularly responsive to his deposition interrogation.” In the same reported exchange, Jackson said he was not making a “judgment as to what the ultimate significance is” of the deposition. The Washington Post, November 19, 1998.
What do the transcript exchanges show?
The DOJ transcript is the primary record of the questions and answers. It shows questioning on matters relevant to the government’s case, including Netscape, Apple, DR DOS, and emails presented to Gates. An adversarial question should not be mistaken for a proven fact: the transcript records what was asked and how Gates answered, not the truth of every premise embedded in a question.
The DR DOS email
In one exchange, Gates was asked whether a message relating to DR DOS had been deleted. His answer, in the transcript, was “No.” The short answer is meaningful only in the context of the surrounding question; by itself it does not resolve broader questions about Microsoft’s handling of messages or the underlying dispute. DOJ September 2 transcript.
The MacOffice 97 email
Another line of questioning returned to a June 1997 email describing a threat to cancel MacOffice 97 as a bargaining point. The topic gave the videotaped questioning a concrete point of tension: jurors and courtroom spectators could compare the language of an email with Gates’s recollection and explanations. The transcript supplies the exchange; the Washington Post supplies a contemporaneous account of how some of his answers appeared on video. DOJ transcript; The Washington Post report.
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The DOJ archive is the direct place to start. It lists Gates deposition testimony for August 27, August 28, and September 2, 1998, and provides the September 2 transcript. The case archive and Harvard’s trial index help place the testimony alongside the proceedings and the dates when video excerpts were shown.
- DOJ United States v. Microsoft case materials: archive index for the litigation and deposition materials.
- DOJ September 2, 1998 Gates deposition transcript: the transcript identifies the start time and Redmond location.
- Harvard Microsoft trial archive: trial-session index, including entries for courtroom playback of deposition excerpts.
What the episode does—and does not—establish
The record supports calling the deposition a striking courtroom episode: it was videotaped, excerpts were played on multiple trial dates, contemporary reporting described Gates’s demeanor, and Jackson publicly criticized his responsiveness. It does not support presenting “spectacular failure” as a court’s conclusion or treating Jackson’s comment as a final assessment of the deposition’s legal importance. The available sources establish the dates, transcript content, playback sequence, and reported courtroom remarks; they do not establish the full private context of every exchange or whether every video excerpt is currently playable.
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