Bill Gates' Chronicle of a Death Foretold

As you might imagine, we've been eagerly perusing Ken Auletta's new book on Google (GOOG), searching for tasty tidbits on the Monster That Ate Silicon Valley. And we're ready to deliver to our faithful fans!

The first treat is a slap at Bill Gates, the last monster. When Auletta interviewed Gates back in 1998, he asked him, "What challenge do you most fear?" His reply? "He rocked gently back and forth, sipping from a can of Diet Coke, and silently pondered the question. When he finally spoke, he did not recite the usual litany of prominent foes. ... Instead, he said, 'I fear someone in a garage who is devising something completely new.' "

That someone was Sergey Brin, who even then was sitting in the Computer Science department at Stanford, thinking up something completely new. In his spare time, he exercised his brain by reorganizing the numbering system for the rooms in Stanford's computer science building. That building was constructed thanks to a generous grant by ... Bill Gates.