Windows Vista Comes To Russia
As a special correspondent in London in the mid 1990s, I tried to interview Microsoft's owner during one of his visits to Britain. It was to no avail. The corporation's press service made it clear: Bill Gates wanted nothing to do with Russia, the nursery of intellectual piracy.
That was a long time ago. At the end of 2006, Gates chose to personally come to Moscow to present the new operating system Windows Vista, which is to replace the widespread in Russia and elsewhere Windows XP. He even delivered a lecture on the humankind's digital future to a Moscow audience.
There could be several reasons for this drastic change in the global computer guru's attitude toward Russia. Microsoft has probably realized that the sins committed by Russian pirates could not compromise Russia's huge potential as a legal software market. Which, in fact, means "a Microsoft software market."
