I just finished John Malone’s 400-plus page account of his long and accomplished career. Whenever I read a memoir by someone I knew well earlier in my life, I admit I first search to see if my name is mentioned. Usually, it’s not. In my mind, I played an important role in their careers. They apparently thought otherwise.

https://www.amazon.com/Born-Wired-Transforming-Television-Discovery/dp/1668051532

A recent example was Barry Diller’s book *Who Knew*. I always believed I was instrumental in Barry’s transformation from traditional media to the internet, but clearly not in Barry’s mind.

https://twothirdsdone.com/2025/05/11/how-meeting-barry-diller-influenced-the-development-of-the-internet/

With Malone, I didn’t really expect to find my name. Still, I thought Intel’s role in creating the consumer broadband network we all enjoy today might at least merit a paragraph.

At 80, I find myself thinking about legacy—though I’m not entirely sure why. I know what I did. I can reflect on my successes and failures without anyone else’s validation. But to be honest, it does bother me when credit is misplaced—or when people claim credit for things they didn’t actually do.

Malone’s book, like many of these memoirs, is essentially a laundry list of deals. In his case, it’s heavy on transactions and how much money he made. John Malone is brilliant—one of the smartest and quickest people I’ve ever met. But he’s also one of the most transactional. At heart, Malone is an engineer: the son of a mechanical engineer, with an MS in electrical engineering and a PhD in operations research.

I first met him in 1992. That year, Andy Grove asked me to work with Microsoft after a tense call he had with Bill Gates. Gates had threatened to partner with AMD on consumer products because he thought Intel wasn’t interested in the home market. Andy corrected him, saying I was leading Intel’s efforts there. Gates, who had known me for over a decade, told Andy to send me up to Redmond to meet with Rob Glaser, who was driving Microsoft’s consumer work. I recount all this in my book *The Flight of a Wild Duck*. You can also read about it at https://twothirdsdone.com/2025/09/01/driving-the-creation-of-residential-broadband-2/

You can get the full book https://wildduckflight.com

Not long after, I had my first meeting with Malone at his office outside Denver. He was 51; I was 47. He was CEO of TCI, the largest cable company in the world—and also one of the worst in terms of quality and service. A year later he declared the famous “500 Channel Universe.” He wasn’t the first to see the potential of digital compression for television, but he understood its ability to transform TV transmission and redefine both the cable and satellite industries. At the Western Cable Show, the industry’s biggest conference, he laid it all out: the 500-channel future, video on demand, and HDTV.

At the time, the U.S. and Japan were fighting over HDTV standards—Japan pushing an analog system, the U.S. a digital one. I even testified before Congress on the issue. Malone recognized digital video’s potential, but his push was also born of necessity. TCI was a patchwork of weak systems, assembled through acquisitions. Other cable companies were upgrading with hybrid fiber-coax (HFC), a brilliant but capital-intensive approach. TCI was cash-strapped. By embracing digital compression, Malone could offer ten channels for every analog one. That bought him time, boosted TCI’s stock, and eventually allowed him to raise the money for HFC upgrades.

The true breakthrough, though, wasn’t more TV channels—it was broadband Internet.

Malone was actually late to that party. Comcast grasped the potential earlier. When I first met Malone and his team, it was to discuss interactive set-top boxes. Like Gates and many others, he believed the TV would become the interactive device in the home. Billions were wasted on that idea—Microsoft with WebTV, Oracle, Silicon Graphics, the phone companies.

Meanwhile, I was pushing Intel behind broadband via cable, DSL, and even satellite. Working with General Instrument, we developed the first cable modem capable of running on existing networks, using the same digital video technology. In 1992, while leading Intel’s set-top box effort with Microsoft and GI, I realized those semiconductors could enable residential broadband. By 1993 we had announced it, with trials at Comcast and Viacom.

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard of LANcity later called himself the “father of the cable modem.” I disagree. Cable modems existed before his work, though he did play a role in shaping DOCSIS, the industry standard. His claims, in my view, go too far.

In 1993–94, I became worried broadband would never take off because of the cable industry’s poor service culture. Cable companies wanted to rent modems like set-top boxes, with installation handled by their techs. I wanted modems sold where PCs were sold. Malone and I clashed over this—nearly a shouting match—until I appealed to his instincts. If computer companies and retailers sold cable modems, they’d also push cable TV subscriptions. That was critical when only 60% of U.S. homes had cable. Eventually, he agreed.

We solved the connection problem first with Ethernet, later USB.

In 1993, I floated the idea of the cable industry creating a single company to deliver broadband directly to consumers—one brand, one standard, reliable nationwide service. I pushed hard, but made the mistake of teaming with General Instrument. The cable operators didn’t want GI to gain more power, and they were distracted by efforts to deliver telephony over cable with IBM.

Then, in 1994 at the Western Cable Show, I ran into John Doerr and Vinod Khosla of Kleiner Perkins. We were friends, and I pitched them the idea. They, in turn, realized Malone had to be involved. Together they created @Home. It was a great concept, but Malone—and later AT&T, which bought TCI—mismanaged it badly. Still, @Home played a critical role in jump-starting cable broadband.

So why do I call Malone the master of sub-optimization? Because he was too transactional. His book is full of “I did this deal, I made this much money.” He was obsessed with avoiding taxes, sometimes making poor strategic choices as a result.

The book also omits things I would have considered important—like Peter Barton’s, my dear friend’s critical contributions.  He mentions Peter briefly and does not even reflect on his untimely death.

Despite all this, I liked Malone. He had a sharp humor, was endlessly smart, and I enjoyed our conversations. He even called me sometimes just to chat. But I found him lacking in long-term vision.

His comments on Bill Gates were interesting. And to his credit, Malone has given generously to nonprofits. I don’t think he was truly driven by money—it was simply how he kept score.