Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft, has written a memoir, Idea Man, which is excerpted on Vanity Fair‘s site. His fellow founder Bill Gates doesn’t come off well in the excerpt–Allen says he pushed and pushed to reduce Allen’s ownership in the company–and the Wall Street Journal says that the book has caused a “rift” between Allen and Gates and may include some inaccuracies.
I’m looking forward to reading the book, which goes on sale on April 19th–not because of any juicy stuff it may contain, or because I relish the thought of Microsoft’s creators being at odds with each other in public. (That’s kind of sad whether Allen has a point or not.) Whatever you think of Microsoft, the founding of the company is one of the most visionary things that’s ever happened in the history of personal technology, and it’ll be interesting to hear the tale told by one of the two guys who know it all.
(Fuzzy-but-evocative 1983 photo of Paul Allen and Bill Gates borrowed from a 1983 issue of InfoWorld.)