Thanks to Hypercube and Tonny Phang for the submitting this in.
Bill Gates, the head of Microsoft Corp. and one of the world"s richest men, gave his company a "C" grade on Wednesday for stumbling in its delivery of a set of Internet communications products.
"In some respects we"re further ahead than we expected. In some respects we haven"t made as much progress as we expected," Gates said of the project known as .NET.
In an unusual display of humility for the software giant, Gates told reporters and analysts at a briefing that Microsoft"s record was spotty when it came to bringing Web-based software experiences to users.
With .NET, Microsoft is promising to change the way information changes hands so that software and services no longer depend on single computers, but can be run over networks and available over a wide range of devices, such as handheld computers and mobile phones.
Gates gave a report card "C" for delivering software as services, one of his key tenets when hoisting the .NET flag at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington two years ago.