Bill Gates bows out (mostly) at Microsoft
Today is Bill Gates' last day in the office as a regular employee of the company he co-founded in 1975. But as non-executive chairman and someone who is deeply married to Microsoft, Gates is not disappearing from the company.
Chairman Bill Gates
(Credit: Dan Farber)The transition has been well orchestrated, and he will still spend about 20 percent of his time working on Microsoft issues, such as the next-generation Office, natural interfaces, and search. And, he will still obsess and strategize about how to defeat Google.
Bill Gates field questions from this reporter.
(Credit: Michael Arrington)I have been covering Microsoft and Bill Gates for the last 25 years, and I've had a few memorable run-ins with the him over that time. I remember asking him about upstart programming language Java's write once/run anywhere capability in an interview I did with him in the early 1990s. He sat forward in his chair and said with conviction that Java was a stupid idea. Behind that answer, the hyper-competitive Gates was thinking about how to slay the Java dragon. Several years later Microsoft C# appeared.
And who can forget his duel with David Boies in the U.S. Justice Department vs. Microsoft antitrust case. Gates believed that the government was out to destroy Microsoft, and went on the offensive. To this day, he chafes at being called a "convicted monopolist."
In many ways Gates is very much the same as when I met him a few decades ago. His tenacity, intellectual intensity, passion for technology, and competitiveness have remained intact. Now he will be applying those character traits more fully to eradicating polio, malaria, AIDS, and other diseases at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
I can imagine one of his chief rivals, Steve Jobs, giving him a gold-plated iPhone 3G for his retirement with the inscription: "To Bill Gates: Look who's ahead now. Best of luck, Steve Jobs."
That would like dangling meat in front of a hungry lion. Gates would accept the gift with a wry smile and at the same time think about what it would take to trump the iPhone. Even though Vista didn't leapfrog the Mac OS, and Microsoft has rarely been able to out-innovate Apple, the fire is still burning and Gates will be firing off a flurry of e-mails to Steve Ballmer and others he's left in charge.
Chairman Bill Gates and three top execs: Craig Mundie, Ray Ozzie and Steve Ballmer
(Credit: Microsoft)In an interview this week, Tom Brokaw of NBC asked Gates if he had an iPod. He responded, "No," and added, "The Zune is a better way to carry your music around." Vintage Bill Gates competitiveness.
(Credit:
NBC)
The planet will be better off with Gates focused on technologies and strategies for saving lives rather than defeating Steve Jobs.
See also:
Dan Farber is editor in chief of CBS Interactive News, which includes CBSNews.com and CNET News. He has more than 25 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. E-mail Dan. 
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Its like the robber barons - rape and plunder your markets while you climb up the dead bodies to see how high you can go, and then buy your salvation in charitable causes.
Anybody out there want to do the calculation on how many hundreds/thousands of hours you have invested rebooting, reloading, trying to make things work but can't get anyone to answer the phone or respond to your e-mail? Multiply THAT times 1-B copies of the MS-OS in the world.
Anyone feel as though they had no choice because their work has insisted on Windows because of the sweet deals they got on perpetual upgrades?
Was there one original idea coming out of Gates in the last 25-years or did the revolutionary ones come out of PARC.
Good bye and good luck Bill. Think of us while you cower under your mosquito netting - in the Hilton - trying to figure out what to spend our money on next.
That doesn't cheer me up.
What will cheer me up is the day I know he is burning in hell.
The man made the personal computer popular...whether you all want to admit it or not.
Now he's going to give his money back to the world. Does it make him a saint? Hell no. The man lied and cheated his way to the top. Let's just not blindly hate either, and instead realize his impact coupled with his faults.
Jobs...what are you going to do for humanity?
If that were the case, then every thief, liar, and murdered would just give money to charity and have their past wiped clean. If you want a fresh start, you need to ammend that which you have done wrong first.
Most study agree that wealth provides people the time to be happy. The people who are creating all the violence now due to rising prices are the poor people who THINK they are happy poor. =)
The trouble is, Steve Ballmer and his management team has not shown any sign of changing the way Bill Gates ran the business. Microsoft's focus is domination and money. Their customers and software quality are lower priorities than power and glory. This is why I tend to be one of the "haters". If Microsoft were to clean up their act and finally start releasing quality software (and yes, I know a couple of their products are better than the rest), I'd be less likely to hate them. And why should I hate them for this stuff? Because I've been continually forced to use their crappy products, at work and elsewhere.
I talked to a sales person trying to sell me Microsoft office 2007 professional for $200. I told him, how about you give it to me for $5. He laughed at me. I told him HP got it for $5. He told me, go ahead and get it from HP. I told him, you going to die. He hung up.
If you don't look at your bottom, these guys -- Bill Gates and Steve Jobs -- will rip you off.
Open source software all the way baby!
It's only a matter of time before Steve Ballmer and his army of misfit managers run poor Microsoft into the ground ... much like Apple from '85 to '97. At that point, Bill will return to save his baby just like Steve Jobs did.
Good god, it's over for that company.
RSB
Why doesn't anyone write about the boot loader issue?
http://tinyurl.com/6q7b8z
Ubiquitous PCs yes. Usability no. They've set us back YEARS in lost productivity due to poor products.
Microsoft has lowered the bar for programming quality and advanced mediocrity as a defacto standard.
Would Steve Jobs have given a rats ass about a platform? Would Steve Jobs cared one iota about developers? Would Steve Jobs cared one tiny smidgen about YOU? The answer, in case you are truley stupid is NO. Bill Gates is responsible for more income in the computer business than anyone. Linux? Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. Go ask Richard Stallman for a job. Opps! He doens't employ anyone!
Before you write about how Gates "destroyed" companies let me say that they were companies that self imploded because of the egos of the people running them. That includes IBM, and a pile of others.
So, if you work in the computer business, thank Bill. He is a geinus and ultimately a caring man.
- by sherlock871 June 30, 2008 3:28 AM PDT
- good luck to you bill. i think the people in this world will remeber you untill they live!
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