Gates was widely revered by the public as primarily a positive wunderkind business genius until the later half of the 1990s, when he became particularly richer than everyone else, Microsoft became increasingly powerful, and the robber baron image took over. In the early days he didn't have to survive an era of everything-public as Zuckerberg did (there are no leaked chat logs from when Gates was 19 et al).
At 30, most people in the US still didn't know who Gates was (maybe they had heard his name once), much less know anything of consequence about him. Today, if Zuckerberg does or says anything embarrassing, tomorrow hundreds of millions of people will see the headlines and read about it on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc.
Gates and Microsoft got to ride rather quietly to the top of the tech universe until the mid 1990s. Tech just wasn't nearly so important circa 1980-1990 (vs comparing Microsoft or Apple to GM or McDonalds or Coca Cola today).
This definitely makes sense - my knowledge of that time period is much more relevant to internet/hacker culture, and much about the views of the general public.
Hah, no, don't get me wrong - Facebook sucks, the Zuck sucks. Full stop. As much as I dislike what Microsoft has done, Facebook is far worse.
But I've seen less art of Zuckerberg drawn as a demon coming for your software - though that may just be a difference between the internet now and what I've seen of the internet in the past.
At 30, most people in the US still didn't know who Gates was (maybe they had heard his name once), much less know anything of consequence about him. Today, if Zuckerberg does or says anything embarrassing, tomorrow hundreds of millions of people will see the headlines and read about it on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc.
Gates and Microsoft got to ride rather quietly to the top of the tech universe until the mid 1990s. Tech just wasn't nearly so important circa 1980-1990 (vs comparing Microsoft or Apple to GM or McDonalds or Coca Cola today).