Gates stepping down from full-time Microsoft role

REDMOND, Wash.--Bill Gates, the man who started Microsoft and has been its public face throughout its three decades of existence, plans to step away from daily work at the company.

Gates announced on Thursday that he will gradually relinquish his current role, ceding the title of chief software architect immediately, while remaining a full-time employee for the next two years. In July 2008, he will become a part-time employee and chairman.

The announcement comes as his company battles pressures on all fronts: a sagging stock price, competition from Google and nagging delays in the Vista operating system.

In a press conference held Thursday after the stock markets had closed for regular trading, Gates announced that over the next two years he will gradually step away from his daily responsibilities at the company he co-founded some 30 years ago.

Microsoft's Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie will immediately assume the title of chief software architect, Gates said. In addition, Craig Mundie, CTO for advanced strategies and policy, will immediately take the new title of chief research and strategy officer and will assume Gates' responsibilities for the company's research and incubation efforts.

Gates will work side-by-side with Ozzie throughout the transition period, but a year from now, Ozzie and Mundie will begin reporting directly to CEO Steve Ballmer.

Gates explained that he has been working part-time for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and full-time for a company that has made him the richest man in the world, and he wished to reverse those priorities.

"The road ahead for Microsoft is as bright as ever," Gates said in a press conference here, noting that he plans to work full time through June 2007 and plans to remain as chairman for the foreseeable future. "So many seeds we have planted have just started to grow."

Gates said that his role has already changed significantly from the company's early days, when he liked to review each line of code and interview each job applicant. Although he said he likes to think he still has a significant impact on the broad range of company activities, he said that the products are already in others' hands.

Videos: Gates steps down

Gates going, but slowly
Microsoft co-founder plans his future.

Gates to hand off to Ballmer
Microsoft in for major executive shift.

Gates to hand over reins by mid-2008
"I'm not leaving Microsoft."

"The world has had a tendency to focus a disproportionate amount of attention on me," Gates said.

Although Gates will lower his profile at Microsoft, he will likely still have a huge effect on the company, predicted Nathan Myhrvold, CEO of Intellectual Ventures and former chief scientist at Microsoft.

"Part-time for Bill Gates is full-time for anyone else in this industry," he said. "I remember when he got married. People said, 'Oh, this will slow him down.' But it didn't."

Ballmer took the opportunity to characterize Gates' move as a broader shift for Microsoft, which has come under fire by some analysts, investors and employees for moving too slowly. "We're really also announcing the transition we are making as a company," he said.

He pointed specifically to work the company is doing, led by Ozzie, to add services to everything it does, as well as a move beyond the PC into other devices such as mobile phones and televisions.

In the audience for Gates' press conference were many of the company's business and technical leaders, including Ozzie, Mundie, retiring Windows chief Jim Allchin, incoming Windows chief Steven Sinofsky, as well as the three divisional presidents: Jeff Raikes, Kevin Johnson and Robbie Bach.

As for the company's stagnant stock price in recent years, he said, "Stock markets do what they do. That's their job."

Ballmer acknowledged that the company has "an opportunity to do better in some of the areas" in which it has products, but defended the company's overall record. "I think our company has performed very well," he said.

[mikezillion]

Should be interesting

I'll be very interested to see how this changes the trajectory of Bill Gates' philanthropic ventures.

[just_some_guy]

Well done.

I guess there's not much else for him to accomplish there, after building one of the most successful businesses in the world and maintaining that leadership position for decades. This leaves him more time to focus on his work with charities.<br /><br />Well done.

[thenet411]

Ding Dong...

"Ding Dong, the witch is dead" seems strangely appropriate here.

Well, It's About Time, but, It's Ballmer Who Really Needs to Go ...

since I'm convinced he's always been the one at the root of all of Microsloth's bad behavior, given his atrocious treatment of customers, employees, and competitors alike. If you've ever seen this raving lunatic at a Microsloth employees meeting, you'll completely understand where I'm coming from. Gates pleaded with him to also leave Harvard to come work at Microsloth because he desperately needed a bad cop marketing guy to deal with the partner and competitor counterparts in the rest of the industry, from IBM, to Lotus, Apple, Dell, Compaq, Digital Research, Borland, Sun, Oracle, and you-name-them.<br /><br />Gates stepping down will have absolutely no effect on the company, though, as Vista is still moribund after seven years of development, they still have no strategy for dealing with the threat from the likes of Google, open-source software, the EU, China, India, and, if it ever wakes up again, the Justice Department, not to mention its own customers, who get screwed on a daily basis because of Microsloth's complete inability to deal with security threats in a timely and responsive way. The undisclosed Windows Guaranteed Authenticity phone-home-to-the-mother-ship debacle is yet-another vivid example of how little they really care about their customers.<br /><br />Well, maybe he'll do better against biological viruses through his charitable efforts, than his company's failures against virtual viruses. I'm just glad my health doesn't depend on it.<br /><br />All the Best,<br />Joe Blow

[Ted Miller]

Can I take you seriously?

Joe Blow???<br />Microsloth????<br /><br />Seems like a good article...but then again...

[Ldanny]

Greedy Apple

you're an idiot,what has that greedy bastard over at apple done lately for for people, he takes but gives nothing back to society

[Norseman]

That's one down...

...??? to go.<br /><br />From things I've read recently about the Vista development process/atmosphere, it's high time for some management shakeup at Microsoft.

[YourM0m]

Should be good.

I think this is a good move for Microsoft. A change in direction is just what they need.<br /><br />--<br />Steve - <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://tail-f.net/" target="_newWindow">http://tail-f.net/</a>

[ServedUp]

Another delay in Vista. I suspect.

Message to Bill - Take Steve Ballmer with you too!

[Joe Blow]

Hold the Champagne, He's Going to Be Around for at Least Two More Years ...

as full-time chairman. Even after that, he'll be around part-time as a technical advisor. Ray Ozzie, will immediately assume the title of chief software architect and will begin working side by side wth Gates on all technical architecture and product oversite responsibilities. Craig Mundie, the current chief technical officer, will take the new role of chief research and strategy officer, also effective immediately. So, no real changes beyond the foreseeable future.<br /><br />Well, I guess that's good news for their competitors, but not their customers. I don't know what it will mean for the recipients of the charity, but we can only hope that the laws of random distribution will get the most good to the largest number of people possible. Just saving lives isn't enough, though, and even the $29.1 billion in the fund today can't do much to reverse decades of corrupt government and corporate actions, which is how most of the affected people wound up in such horrid conditions in the first place. It might be more cost-effective to just buy off the corrupt and get them out of the way so that some real benefit can accrue to the afflicted and end the cycle of poverty they're locked in, no matter how much health care they receive.<br /><br />All the Best,<br />Joe Blow

[pdude]

Message has been deleted.

[FutureGuy]

Well taken but..

...its odd to compare a loosing company like Sun to a company that makes a billion dollars a month.

[barrack]

Jobs to go?

Common man? Gates never did something important in his live. <br />Okay he inventended computerproblems, but common. The world <br />is better of without Gates

[larahs]

interesting

the comments here ranging from praise to hate... the guy worked, made money and is retiring... i dont get why people take things personally... its not like he did anything directly to anyone here... he was a business man not a murderer...

[larahs]

ease up

the comments here ranging from praise to hate... the guy worked, made money and is retiring... i dont get why people take things personally... its not like he did anything directly to anyone here... he was a businessman and a philanthropist, not a murderer...

[bobj123]

agree

The guy might have done some bad things in the business world but cut him some slack. He is not pocketing all this money a majority of his net worth will be given to charities, more so than his children. Now how many people do that, honestly?

[PhillyBoy919]

Wow, no love for Bill huh?

All the Gates bashers on here...wow. Pretty harsh for a guy who's leaving the multi billion dollar company he started so that he can spend more time working on the multi billion dollar charity that he and his wife started. You can hate the man for his company's business practices, but he gives back big-time. Keep that in mind when villifying him.

[advs89]

Yeah

Agreed.

[tango2x4]

Will miss good old Bill!

Bill and company gave us a great product and got a little carry away by trying to give us more and more... while others gives us a lot less.<br />Have you guys check your shopping cart lately?<br />Corporate America keeps repacking the same thing but putting less and less and charging you more money in the process...you complainers do some checking..

[Joe Blow]

We (and Everyone Else Who Uses a Computer) Don't Admire ...

having out pockets emptied by a corporate robber baron, while being held down by his accomplice thugs. The fact that he's siphoning off a relatively small amount of the filched money (somewhere in the neighborhood of half a trillion, yes, with a "t", dollars in revenue over the past 30 years) for _tax_deductible_ charity is no excuse for stealing in the first place. He's no different from the robber barons in the railroad, steel, and oil monopolies of a century and more ago. His company used unethical (bad enough for a "philanthropist"), not to mention illegal (where's the love in the "philanthropy" now?) activities for decades, and they're still pushing the legal envelope on a daily basis in their attempts to use their ill-gotten gains to spread into other markets (but, thankfully, they've been even more incompetent at that than they have been in developing robust, secure, high-performance operating system and office applications software).<br /><br />Go and ask the folks who worked for Digital Research and any other company "competing" with Microsloth in the 1980s how Bill and his cohorts intentionally coded Windoze 3.x so that their software would cripple their competitors' software products. Ask any of the PC manufacturers how Gates and Co. systematically forced them to pay Microsloth a Windows license fee on every computer they sold, whether or not it actually had Windows installed, or they found that they could no longer sell anything from Microsloth. Ask the judge that presided over the anti-trust case how Bill and his buddies swore up and down that Internet Exploiter was an integral part of the Windoze operating system, and the judge then proceded to remove IE from a computer right there in the courtroom, and Windoze continued to run (well, at least as badly as it normally would - I'm sure that if they waited for a few hours, it would croak anyway, but not because IE had been removed). If you'd like more examples of Bill Gates' immoral and illegal behavior, I'll merely direct you to the warehouses full of complaints, testimony and evidence that the Justice Department and about half of the state attorney generals in the U.S. amassed over the past 30 years.<br /><br />For those who eat up the revisionist history that passes for PR from Microsloth, Bill wasn't some wunderkind who was merrily tossing PC appleseeds across the landscape in the hope that everyone would benefit from his efforts by having a computer on their desk. He was a born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-his-mouth kid of one of the most successful corporate attorneys in Seattle, and could pick where he went to college. Apparently, no one at Harvard knew enough to teach him anything (his words), whereupon he spent his nights playing cards with Steve Ballmer and others who wound up at Microsloth. So, it was no skin off of his nose for him to leave and go to work for Ed Roberts at MITS in Albuquerque, NM. The only technical achievement he has ever claimed was porting BASIC to 8080 assembly language for the S-100 home-built/kit computers, and then he complained when people freely copied it when he brought it to show off at the Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley - an "organization" whose sole stated purpose was to _share_information_ in order to expand the then-tiny personal computer _hobby_.<br /><br />Then there's the mystery about why, when he had the chance, Bill Gates didn't allow Apple to die, or even kill it off, when he invested $150 million after Steve Jobs returned in the early 1990s. I suspect that it had something to do with the fact that Bill and Microsloth made its first $100 million from a now-forgotten little product called the Microsoft C/PM SoftCard for the Apple II, an 8080-based microcomputer-on-a-card that fit into a slot in the original Apple II computers. C/PM was the de facto OS for the first quarter of a million S-100 microcomputers in existence up until then, especially for business use (there are still banks in Germany and other businesses that rely on C/PM today - it was that reliable a product, unlike anything Microsloth has ever produced). Bill licensed C/PM to use on the SoftCard, and millions of them were eventually sold to go into many of the millions of Apple II systems that were the most popular computer on the planet for years (one is still running a telescope aiming system at an observatory on Mt. Haleakala in Hawaii - the operator's comment: "It it ain't broke, don't fix it."). So, Bill owed a lot of his early money to Apple, and Microsloth earns billions of dollars a year alone from sales of Office for the Mac to this very day.<br /><br />I'd rather direct charitable contributions to where I think they will do the most good - history has repeatedly shown that too much money in a few peoples' hands inevitably results in corruption and abuse of power. It's just human nature, and unless the rumors are true about him being a cyborg, even Bill Gates suffers from the same weaknesses everyone else does (and a bunch that some might not wish for, like endless guilt for his transgressions, and winding up muttering something like "Rosebud" on his deathbed).<br /><br />Admiration? You've got to be kidding.<br /><br />All the Best,<br />Joe Blow

[Sentinel]

Taxes

Oh yeah, giving your millions to the world. Because he is such a humanitarian. The only reward: he gets to write that off as donations in his taxes. Because he doesn't really want to be rich, yeah right.

[jbcahill]

Jumpin before the train wreck happens...

Yes, the article said he will be transitioning out over the next two years but I bet he is soon departed way before that time. I think Vista is going to tank big time and with the title of Chief Software Architech he won't want that albatross as his legacy. So get out while the gettin is good and when Vista hits the fan he can always claim that he left Vista development on a good track and that those crazy guys at the company messed it up. And I see Balmer having less than 10 years (at the most) left at Microsoft.

[t8]

True

It is a good time to jump.<br /><br />It is better to burn out, than fade away.

[aabcdefghij987654321]

Vista is good stuff

You forget that one thing MS isn't known for is producing new versions of Windows on a timely basis. It seems every release is late but ultimately successful so by what stretch of your feeble imagination do you think the delays for Vista are going to make it a flop?

[t8]

Great News

The IT industry will be much better off without this monopolist and perhaps a better synergy can be gained.<br />I wonder if he is bowing out as he sees the writing on the wall. Open source and weblications are the future and his company stands to lose a lot of money and cred.<br />Or maybe he is thinking of joining Google?<br /><br />Good riddance Gates. Let the real innovation begin.

[James_U]

Perspective

An old saying goes like this, "A prophet is without honor among his own people." It's so funny that "techies" view Gates so differently than the 99% of the non-techie population. However, such dichotomies between has existed forever.<br /><br />Bottom line is this: When all of the leaders from the technology companies we discuss so passionately on CNET are long forgotten, history will remember Gates as the single iconic technology figure of his era. He has etched a place in human history and is now headed in the direction of other historic businessmen who spent their latter years giving back to the world. <br /><br />Say the names Ozzie, Jobs, Hopper, Mauchly, Eckert, Forest and few people know who they are. Say the name Gates and "bingo". And so it will remain for the foreseeable centuries and beyond.<br /><br />Great job Bill. It's time now for the next Gates' to step up and take this industry to the next level. Can't wait to see what the next generation has to offer.<br /><br />James.

[t8]

Great news

The IT industry will be much better off without this monopolist and perhaps a greater synergy can be gained through the Web and open source with this inhibitor out of the way.<br /><br />I wonder if he is bowing out as he sees the writing on the wall. Open source and weblications are the future and his company stands to lose a lot of money and cred.<br /><br />Or maybe he is thinking of joining Google?<br /><br />Good riddance Gates and goodbye to Windows, even it is a slow goodbye. <br /><br />Let the Web Age begin.

[t8]

Great News

The IT industry will be much better off without this monopolist and perhaps a greater synergy can be gained through the Web and open source with this inhibitor out of the way.<br /><br />I wonder if he is bowing out as he sees the writing on the wall. Open source and weblications are the future and his company stands to lose a lot of money and cred.<br /><br />Or maybe he is thinking of joining Google?<br /><br />Good riddance Gates and goodbye to Windows, even it is a slow goodbye. <br /><br />Let the Web Age begin.

[t8]

Great News

The IT industry will be much better off without this monopolist and perhaps a greater synergy can be gained through the Web and open source with this inhibitor out of the way.<br /><br />I wonder if he is bowing out as he sees the writing on the wall. Open source and weblications are the future and his company stands to lose a lot of money and cred.<br /><br />Or maybe he is thinking of joining Google?<br /><br />Good riddance Gates and goodbye to Windows, even iof it is a slow goodbye. <br /><br />Let the Web Age begin.

[WJeansonne]

What jealousy.

Don't you realize how stupid and jealous you sound from attacking Gates and his achievements? What a simpleton you are. <br /><br />The man will be remembered for centuries (e.g. Microsoft, funding the world's largest charity), long after you're dead and nothing but a spec of forgotten dust.

[t8]

Great News

The IT industry will be much better off without this monopolist and perhaps a greater synergy can be gained through the Web and open source with this inhibitor out of the way.<br /><br />I wonder if he is bowing out as he sees the writing on the wall. Open source and weblications are the future and his company stands to lose a lot of money and cred.<br /><br />Or maybe he is thinking of joining Google?<br /><br />Good riddance Gates and goodbye to Windows, even if it is a slow goodbye. <br /><br />Let the Web Age begin.

[barrack]

Love for that traitor?

You got to be kidding me! He makes 90% of the wordpopulation <br />that uses a computer leap a decade behind and then leaves <br />without cleaning up the mess he made and you want us to show <br />him some respect? My middlefinger he can get! <br /><br />It's a good thing mister gates goes, if others will follow him <br />Microsoft might gain what it has been lacking for 30 years real <br />innovation. No more bad copies of good ideas would be good <br />start.<br /><br />So when is Darth Ballmer's time to go?