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Gates logs off
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Today marks the end of an era for Microsoft: After 33 years at the helm of the world’s biggest software company, Bill Gates will bid it all adieu–the culmination of a carefully charted retirement that began four years ago:
The paradoxical aspect of this period has been that while Gates has consciously been stepping back in some areas (almost no one reports to him, and he has limited his tech focus to a few key areas like search and the next version of Windows), his passion for the software world is as intense as ever. “Bill comes to every meeting like he’s going to be here for the next 10 years,” says CEO Steve Ballmer. So no one really knows how much culture shock will set in when Gates leaves the campus this Friday. Though he will remain the chairman of its board of directors-assuring him a huge voice in any big decisions-and plans to spend the equivalent of one day a week on company business, the idea that he won’t be there seems unreal. Microsoft without Bill Gates? It does not compute.
Gates, who will remain as part-time chairman of the board, is moving on this fall to focus on his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Meanwhile, Microsoft will enter a new phase without its founder, leaving many to wonder: Will Microsoft still be able to compete in a continually evolving technological world, or are Microsoft’s glory days over?
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What a dream. To change careers in early middle age to focus soley on philanthropy.
He certainly changed my life for the better. Let’s hope he and his wife do the same in third world countries. God speed, Bill Gates.
Microsoft’s glory days were over when their stock languished for a decade. The same thing happened to Apple from 85 to 98 too but Jobs was able to revive it when he came back. Microsoft faltered on Bill’s watch.
If they can’t get their act together then Google will eat Microsoft’s lunch - for breakfast. Bill won by accident when IBM refused to buy DOS from him for $75,000 which allowed Bill to license it to everybody who made a PC instead. This killed Apple when Jobs screwed up by refusing to license their software to every PC maker and decided to make PC’s themselves. Bill became the richest man in the world.
Microsoft became complacent with too much pride and ego and when they could have and should have bought Google for peanuts, they didn’t and the Google folks just hated Microsoft and would never have sold to them. But Bill should have made a hostile offer which he would have easily won It is best for all concerned that Bill go away and sell his Microsoft stock now.
His philanthropic goals are more ambitious than Vista, hopefully with better results.
The number one goal of the Gates Foundation is to reduce the world population. “When you improve health, you reduce population,” Gates said. “Then you get into a cycle of building infrastructure and government stability and you’re on track to eliminating global inequity.”
And so Gates is going about trying to improve health and eliminating global inequity. Abortion is considered a health issue. Warren Buffet added $31 billion to the Gates fund which will be used for Planned Parenthood, abortion, birth control, stem cell harvesting, etc.
Turn on the incinerators …
Alas, you may be right, Xion, but I’m hoping the focus will be on clean water and childhood immunizations–easier, cheaper and better for all.
I must say that Bill Gates is and will remain one of the giants of the computing industry, but also perhaps one of the most enigmatic and perhaps mecurial.
Certainly Bill Gates effectviely entrenched the computer in every home and business desk: most of the posts in this blog are coming from PCs.
But Bill appears to have gotten started by arguably misusing Harvard computing center resources and by being cleverer than IBM during the tough OS2/Windows negotiations.
And Bill learned early on that cheap and readily available was critical, and quality was in general second.
So despite Bill’s efforts to kill or control it, we have the internet as we know it as a result of his efforts, and arguably this is for the better for humans.
And looking at the Gates foundation, I believe we can clearly say that Bill and Melinda will use their wealth to significantly improve the world as well.
So even if it may be with mixed emotions about his actions in the computing field, my best wishes to Bill and thank you for creating computers as we know it today.