In August of 1997 Bill Gates buy shares Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), worth 150 million dollars at his request Steve Jobs to save the company from bankruptcy. The announcement made by Jobs on the stage of a conference organized by Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), was received with a multitude of boos from the employees of those in Cupertino while Bill Gates watch the entire event via a video connection.
Agreement supposed including offering Internet Explorer as the native Mac OS browser and providing support for Microsoft Office in OS X, but both companies only had to gain from the partnership. Microsoft then bought shares worth 150 million dollars that did not offer him the right to will within the Apple company, so Bill Gates could not control anything in Redmond.
If you wonder what Microsoft did with all those actions, well now you will find out. In 1997 Microsoft bought 150.000 preferred shares that could be converted into common shares at the price of $8.25, they were converted into common shares in 2001, their number increasing to 18.1 million. By selling all these 18.1 million shares in 2003, the Microsoft company was left without any investment in Apple and this decision could be regretted by some managers now because at the current price, all those shares would now be worth 21.86 billion dollars, i.e. almost half of Apple's quarterly revenues.
