He set up Softbank in 1981, became a pal of Microsoft's Bill Gates in the mid-1980s and has since built his company into Japan's top softwaredistributor.
Some now fear Microsoft could play that game after open-source softwaredistributor Novell (nasdaq: NOVL - news - people ) struck a sales and marketing pact with Microsoft last year.
Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) announced a pact with Linux softwaredistributor Xandros Monday that will the offer tiny company's customers so-called "patent covenants, " protecting them from the threat of litigation from Microsoft.
By the mid-1980s Softbank was Japan's top distributor of PC software (and still has 70% of the market) and published a dozen computer magazines created to educate consumers and hype Softbank products.
But despite its massive traffic, Netscape hasn't aggressively pursued the portal market, preferring to view itself as an enterprise software company rather than an online content distributor.