As many of you probably know, today is Bill Gates’ last day as a full-time Microsoft employee. He is stepping down to be Non-Executive Chairman, which essentially means that rather than spending hours everyday at Microsoft, he will only be spending a couple days each week there. The rest of the time he will be busy fighting diseases, reducing poverty, and enhancing education around the globe through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, leaving Steve Ballmer in charge as Microsoft’s CEO.
Many people feel that Ballmer is going to do nothing but harm to Microsoft and that this is simply not the right time for Gates to leave. I agree. Not only did Microsoft really screw up on their last OS upgrade (Vista), but Microsoft has been on a downward slope since Steve took over in January of 2000. For instance, if you had invested $10,000 in Microsoft at their IPO, you would have had $7.3 million when Bill stepped down from his position as CEO. However, had you invested $10,000 in Microsoft the day that Steve Ballmer took over, you would now have $4,700.
In regards to Microsoft’s actual products, Bill Gates has always seemed to know what was best for both the company and the consumers that used the products. Every product from the first version of MS-DOS until Windows XP was a huge step forward in the personal computing industry. Even Vista offered many advantages to XP, along with some significant drawbacks. Personally, I prefer Vista over XP because of its improved user interface, DirectX 10 graphics support, as well as its many other technological advantages, but it was not excepted well by general consumers because the only way that the advantages really outweighed the disadvantages was with the higher-end “Ultimate” or “Business” versions of Vista and a high performance PC to go with. I think, though, that Microsoft has learned its lesson from Vista and will make Windows 7 much, much better. After that, however, things may get a little bumpy again without BillG around every day to oversee things.
Bill has really been the brains behind Microsoft all these years, from both a technology standpoint and a business standpoint. That’s why he’s the one with the $44 billion to give to charity, and I think that Microsoft is definitely going to miss him. Windows 7 will probably turn out OK because he has already been around for a major portion of its development and will still be on the Board of Directors, but I think that it’s very likely that it will be a lot like when Steve Jobs left Apple and had to return. Microsoft just can’t survive without its great leader. I mean, he’s the reason that everyone has a computer now, and you can’t beat that.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: bill gates, microsoft, pc, steve ballmer, windows
