Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates says letting Google’s Android platform become dominant was his “biggest mistake” at the company.

The Windows desktop operating system has been a core piece of Microsoft through much of its 44-year history, but Microsoft has failed to win a leadership position in mobile operating systems. It lags behind Alphabet’s Google, and Apple. At today’s Microsoft, Windows remains a contributor of revenue and profit, but Microsoft has moved on to focus more on cloud infrastructure and applications, essentially ceding the mobile platform business.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates speaks

At the time mobile computing was taking off, Microsoft’s CEO was Steve Ballmer, not Gates. But Gates was still in some initiatives at Microsoft, holding the title of Chief Software Architect from 2001 through 2008 and Chairman of the Board until 2014.

The antitrust case “probably accelerated my retirement by five or six years, which, overall for me, probably was a good thing,” Gates said. He said that in Microsoft’s early years he bragged about not having an office in Washington D.C., and he has since come to regret doing that.

Gates’ comments invoking the antitrust case from the U.S. Justice Department also come after reports about how federal regulators could be changing their approaches to looking at major technology companies, including Google.

Earlier in the year Sen. Elizabeth Warren pointed to the Microsoft case as part of an argument that the government should seek to break up major technology companies.

Source: Editor/www.newslinegh.com