Todd Bishop at the Seattle PI, among others, is reporting on a testy exchange on Tuesday between Bill Gates and blogger Jonathan Snook over whether or not Microsoft has been innovative or reactionary over the years. A transcript of the conversation can be found here courtesy of Kip Kniskern.

Several things come to mind when one reads the exchange. One is that the advent of the blogger, much lamented in some circles as a diminution of the professionalism and expertise of the paid journalist, has nonetheless resulted in much more interesting and informative interviews than traditional media ever have, because they regularly ask questions that no "real" journalist would dare.

Another, however, is that perhaps no real journalist would bother to ask the question about innovation because it is largely beside the point. If Microsoft has imitated others-and they clearly have as often as not-they've done so in ways that have eventually improved the product category, which is a benefit whether it came from them originally or not. Bill acknowledges this in passing, saying at one point, "In the computer industry the person who does something first and the person who does it successfully, they are rarely the same..." but he doesn't seem to take as much credit as the one who does it successfully, preferring to be seen as the one who has done it first.

Finally, it's striking how prickly Bill is on the issue; protesting a bit too much, perhaps. For every Tablet PC, there is a Zune; for each DOS there has been a Vista. I guess there is still a vestigial culture in development where the mark of honor is accorded to he who was first, but it is some insight into Microsoft that Bill still holds that perspective and doesn't place his point of pride in the perfection of concepts rather than the creation. Is that why everything is rushed out the door? Is that why the company seems unable to acknowledge the reflections of OS X in Vista that are so clear to everyone else?

If Bill is tired of being questioned on the point, however, he would do well to look at what drives the accusation. I don't think it is that no one recognizes the places where Microsoft has been first; I think rather that it is the astonishing hubris revealed in statements such as, "...by definition what we do is the baseline. Everything Microsoft does is the baseline, and what we don't do, that's what's innovative I guess."

Perhaps if the claims were not so overblown, the questions would not be as sharp.