Microsoft needs to become a company of managers, not entrepreneurs. That is the key to GE's success and this is certainly an area that MS is failing at lately.

I agree that Microsoft needs to learn how to manage better. But just as with GE, you can't expect them to give up their innovation edge. Otherwise they'll go the way of IBM, once a leader in the computing industry, and now just another server vendor, and completely out of the PC business that they (and Microsoft) defined back in the eighties.

An area that Microsoft is NOT hurting is marketing. They've gotten to the point where they believe their own hype, which is extremely dangerous if you can't pull the rabbit out of the hat every - single - time. Ballmer is of course a major contributing factor, as while he shares the same *ahem* enthusiasm we see from, say, Steve Jobs, he doesn't have the follow-through to make sure the great ideas that are being sold actually exist before selling them. Thus, Vista.

truthfully, i thought he left like a year ago already. i suppose that was just the announcement i remember, but i think my mistake says something all the same. namely, who really cares about microsoft anymore? they might be as important as indoor plumbing, but they're certainly no more exciting.

Urg.

No, what MS should NOT do is become a company of managers. If you want to know what's wrong in the IT services industry, there are too many mangers who know too little about what it is that their managing. In things like IT services, technical and visionary skills aren't valued, unless it is supplemented with being able to reduce headcount and increase sales.

If MS wants to avoid becoming another IBM (or HP, for that matter), it should improve on innovation and not rely upon the managerial flavor of the month.

I think what sets MS apart from GE, or any large, stable, profitable corporations is how diverse their products are. MS has 2 profitable products, Office and Windows, both of which have open source competitors. GE makes washing machines, telephones, medical equipment, light bulbs, locomotives, jets engines, etc. etc. All of these product lines make money as well. See a difference here? If one business is bad, they can sell it off or keep it going until it is profitable again. MS can't sell off xbox or MSN or Zune. None of them make money. I think MS is in real trouble without a Steve Jobs level of visionary.

I've been reading your articles and watching your pbs programs for over ten years and I am consistantly surprised with what you chose to be interested in from week to week. Just when I think that someone who has provided so much information about MS over the years would have an incredibly nuanced and experiance related view to take on such an overlooked event, you don't. I am no MS fan on any level except in appreciating the historical moment this represents. If Steve Jobs said he was retiring today I would'nt be able to check the weather report without seeing something about it. Bill Gates is not the one steering the ship anymore, but the crew understands when the founder of the fleet retires. MS is beginning to list, and the only person that really knows why is leaving.

GE has been successful because of the way they managed their patents (at one time they had more than any other tech company). Something Apple did badly in the early days and Microsoft benefited by it. Gates unlike Caesar knows the "Roman Empire" is crumbling around him and it's better to leave on top than to have a Brutus show you the door.

The pharmaceutical industry has long known that a dollar spent in marketing yields bigger returns (in the short to medium term) than a dollar spent on research. It seems Microsoft has also learned this and is milking the cash cow. Like Rome, the ending is obvious except to those who fiddle. Microsoft doesn't seem to care that it is no longer seen as an innovator and is instead content to buy in new ideas (and promptly suffocate them).

Perhaps we should give Bill Gates credit for realising that the company had matured into an obese bore. We should certainly give him credit for devoting his energy and dollars to improving sickness in the developing world. Steve Jobs, for all of his instinctive brilliance, has notably avoided such good works (unless he's doing it anonymously).

I agree with Cringely... Microsoft's evil ways has tainted the company for many years to come. No one trusts them, no on wants to do business with them. Most good programmers would rather eat boogers than program in .net. Microsoft the name is equivalent to mediocre, non-inspiring software and the industry as a whole is just waiting for Microsoft to start patent wars at any moment when they can no longer 'compete' in the marketplace.

It's true. It didn't have to be this way. Microsoft could embrace open standards and open source without crapping on the community every chance they get. But they wont. They will continue their evil ways trying to bully everyone and every company in any way they can, legal or otherwise.

They have a large pile of money and a bunch of criminals at the helm.

"I finally figured The Money Programme was interested because of vestigial class consciousness in British culture, and especially in British broadcasting".

The Money Programme is about money right! So it would be rather strange if the programme makers were not interested in Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Carlos Slim Helú or anyone else who has truckloads of the stuff.

What's with the "...vestigial class consciousness in British culture"? Have you been there? Here are the instructions I received when I accepted an invitation to Ascot this year from a business associate http://www.ascot.co.uk/royal/enclosure.html

There is nothing "vestigial" about it :)

How's NerdTV Season 2 coming along?

microsoft is more like General Motors . people will realize that the windows operating system is fatally flawed and they will abandon it. the cash cow will immediately disappear with huge losses that will result in a bankruptcy like GM. both companies do not have reliable products. there is no way to fix GM or Microsoft. microsoft has been given to much credit for it's "supposed innovation". the only reliable product was windows 2000. i installed windows 2000 on a 1997 dell computer in 30 minutes; it works great.

Please...lets get off the musical about all the money Gate$ gives away. He doesn't! His foundation is a tax dodge.

What he does is pretend to give money to A, B or C. Gate$ then goes to various governments around the world - and cons the latter into handing their money to A, B or C.

Gate$ then takes the all the credit for all the money going to A, B or C. Meanwhile Gate$ still has his money sitting in the foundation - minus the lobbying money to buy whatever legislation he needs to protect his monopoly.

I wont argue that Gates no longer matters, and hasn't for a while now. Still for those of us who having been playing this silly IT game for a couple of decades (or more), it is the end of an era.

The Revenge of the Nerds is over :-(
Pat O
Nerd God
http://currentchaos.blogspot.com/2008/05/im-nerd-god.html

Anyone who thinks the Gates Foundation is a tax dodge only needs to ask those who received grants. Almost a billion has gone towards childhood vaccinations.

The Gates Foundation is extremely generous and gives away so much money, it changes the very way many organizations work. In fact, the biggest criticism against the Gates Foundation is not that it is stingy, but that it gives out so much money that it adversely affects the way various non-profit organizations work. In fact, by law, the Gates Foundation has to give away at least 5% of its assets each year.

Remember that this is a permanent foundation much like the Carnegie Endowment or the Ford Foundation. It gives away some money each year and invests the rest.

You can criticize Mr. Gates for many things, but this is not one of them.

The GE comparrison is very interesting. it's true that MS has essentialy only two profitable products - Windows and Office. Everything else they do seems to be either a massive cost centre, or yields pitiful margins. XBox has cost Billions and yields a few Milions in profit, MSN and Zun are lame no-hopers.

MS thinks it has to be in these businesses, but it doesn't. They are distractions that are incredibly hurtful to the company's image. Every pundit covering MS spends a few column inches a year on Office and Windows, but pages and pages about Zune, XBox and MSN. Why else would the most successful money machine in IT be seen as an underperformer?

Simon Hibbs

The one decision that Microsoft made was to bundle Windows 3.0 with MS-DOS, while making Windows "break" under DR-DOS. Before Windows, Microsoft had only 80% of the DOS market.

As far as how leaders can run a company for decades successfully, don't foget Ken Olsen at Digital Equipment Corp. Oh, ya, his transition didn't work out well...

Bill Gates - If it was not through the stupidity of Xerox and IBM, Bill would be less than a footnote in history. Xerox developed his Windows and IBM fed him by agreeing to license DOS from him instead of just purchasing it. Whatever he has put out was just enhancements to others hard development work. Microsoft stiffled and shut down competition unfairly all along and as a result, we probably are not as far ahead as we could be.

MS will evolve and transform once Bill Gates left. It won't be next year or a year after that. However, I will not be surprised that once MS evolve, it will embrace open-source movement,
take the initiative role in the Linux technology,
and crush the Linux technology with its own technology initiative.
Don't discount Bill in his new role. Remember, he still the chairman of the MS board and this position still yield some clouts within the company.

One hundred British pounds to the first person to list five real Microsoft innovations.

One hundred British pounds to the first person to list five real Microsoft innovations.

John, how about you list 5 apple innovations.

Bob: "So the ultimate reason for Gates' retirement is to allow Microsoft shares to rise so he'll once more be the world's richest man and can devote even more money to improving the world through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation."

The Gates Foundation is little more than a stock laundering scheme. Bill was restricted by Federal law as to how much stock he can convert into cash within a given period of time. But he can give it to his father who runs the Foundation and the Foundation can convert it to investments. What good is Microsoft stock to anyone if you can't convert it? The Foundation solves that problem for Bill.

It puts out a tiny fraction of its resources into actual charity - barely enough to qualify as a charitable foundation under Federal law - and the bulk of it into investments to control other companies.

I've been saying this for years, but have always been ignored, so I expect to be ignored here. Go look these facts in Google. They're there.

JohnMac...if this doesn't convince you that Microsoft is the pinnacle of innovation (at least according to the US Patent Office), then nothing will.

http://www.latestpatents.com/category/microsoft/

Oh and since I provided lists of hundreds, if not thousands of MS innovations, let me know when you can deliver the 100 to my egold account. Wouldn't want to waste money using Paypal and taking a hit on the conversion :)

Five. Difficult.

Um, the EULA for twenty quid? (joke - likely methinks Lotus had one for VisiCalc).

Actually, this is hard. Everything I recognise as key in MS products came from somewhere else like CP/M, Apple, Xerox.

MS hardware was good - e.g. the optical mouse - but who invented it?

Perhaps that's the way to make money - leverage other peoples work into commodities, stack it high and sell it cheap.

So that's an innovation: Bulk commoditisation of software.

Before MS software was rare and cost and arm and a leg; Apple products seemed cheap before MS.

Next one?

Bob, that is a Masterful Analysis.

Kudos.

William

I think that Cringeley spends too much time around the Mac fraternity. Certainly of late there has been a bias towards what Apple and Jobs are up to. I am sure that if Bob really wanted he could find plenty to write about MS.

The trouble is that MS are like all successful companies or people, once you have built them up and raved about them on their way up, human nature tends to then do the opposite when they reach the top.

I wish the Linux and Open Source boys would leave it out. I live in the UK and like the US, when I last checked, we are capitalist societies. I.e. our world spins on creating wealth. You get ahead by earning a living. You may idealistically feel that the Communist world is the way to go where everyone is equal, but I would say that in practice Communism has not really worked. We have all heard the phrase "some people are _more_ equal than others" and that for me sums up why communism will always fail. Humans do not like being equal they want recompense for hard work so that their efforts can give them a better life than their lazier neighbour. That is why open source and free software is great in theory but just won't work in practice. Somehwere somebody is paying for it!

So why in a capitalist society do we berate Microsoft or Bill Gates for what he has achieved. Is it just jealousy?

At the end of the day, Gates and Jobs although completely different creatures have been responsible for accelerating the development of the human race. PCs and Macs give the masses reasonably priced tools to do their daily work in a fashion that would have been unthinkable before they were invented and that if used correctly could save the planet.

I am an IT Consultant and developer using Microsoft development tools which are class leading products. I know there are equivalent tools in the Open Source Free Software world but like Windows, look at the numbers of people using them in real world companies and you have to see that MS is providing the majority of real world programmers with the tools they need. Like the Mac adverts that berate the dowdy PC, we may not be cool and trendy but we are getting the job done!

I think Gates' departure is historic and the end of an era.

I think now that he is gone, Micorosft should stop feeling that the Mac OSX is better than Windows and stop trying to emulate it. After all that is what Vista seemed to be all about and look where that got them.

After all, those who use PCs running Windows just want it to run fast, familiar and friendly. Sure give use neat features like 3D flip if it is genuinely useful and having it doesn't make your system run so slowly for the rest of the day that you'd perhaps rather not have it. If people really want cool artsy fartsy stuff then buy a Mac that's what they do. I'm sticking with that boring PC.

When history looks back on this era, the Windows Operating system will be seen as an enabling technology, admittedly with its flaws, but if you look carefully, Mac OSX is full of holes when given the kind of scrutiny that Windows gets, as does Linux. At the end of the day they are all written by humans and are therfore fallible!

MS Office is used everywhere in business and allows people to write, add up, communicate and publish their work.

DirectX turned the Windows Operating System into a great gaming platform. You don't see many good quality games on the Mac or Linux.

XBox 360 - The best all round gaming platform and combined with the XBox Live gaming system allows players around the world to race, fight or do what ever they want in their leisure time.

MS Small Business Server - A great and very reasonably priced server operating system that provides a cheap way into enterprise level back Office Applications like MS Exchange And SQL Server.

MSN Messenger - Practically all our kids are chatting to each other with this and grand parents are talking with video to their grand childresn and kids on the other side of the World.

The world wide telescope - MS Research at its best!

Come on, MS are not dead, just floundering about trying to understanding their place in the World.

Sad thing is that Gates could really have been a modern day hero based on his work with Microsoft instead of trying to buy cleansing via the gates foundation.

Instead for the last 30 years I have watched his organisation lay waste to so many innovative people and companies in order to attempt to maintain some sort of monopolist stranglehold on the PC. Gates could have both allowed and taken the world so much further forward and instead he was the handbrake on the computing revolution.

Such an incredible waste considering he would have made more money that any human could imagine either way and the world would be so much better off.

Greg

"MS is beginning to list, and the only person that really knows why is leaving."

Er, I think the point is that he doesn't really know either.

Bill's biggest inovation, well a mission statement really, A PC in every home!

I think back to how he helped achieve this, mass comodisiation of the hardware.

In the early 90's I was doing a lot of work with volunteer oranisations. Mainly helping out with flyers, advertising and the like. My choices for tools was a 12k MAc or a 4k windows.

I could never had stumped for the Mac but was able to for the Windows 3.1 PC. Sure it may not have been as elegant as a MAC, it sure had it's problems and perhaps not the most inoovative product I'd ever seen.

But it worked well enough to do the job and sometiems that's enough for governemt work!

The first action was...while the second was...

The first in your text or the first chronologically? I suppose I should be able to figure it out from context, but I can't quite.

So why in a capitalist society do we berate Microsoft or Bill Gates for what he has achieved. Is it just jealousy?

Well, it might have something to do with the grossly unfair way so much of it was achieved. Capitalists admire success, but we rightly resent cheaters.

Microsoft has made plenty of innovations, but almost none of them had to do with hardware. Similarly, I would give Gates credit for being a shrewd businessman, among the best in the history of business. As a technologist, I've never seen any reason to believe he was any more than mediocre, and I think his continuous string of ludicrous predictions over the years would bear this out.

Microsoft stopped being a software company in the early 90's. They've been in the business of being a monopoly since then, and software was merely a vehicle to exert their power. Given that they are so far behind the leading-edge of technology these days only goes to prove this. There is nothing in which they actually compete on quality or performance, and as far as I can see, they don't even try any more. Everything they do now is geared towards forcing lock-in and forcing unneeded upgrades, which is the only way they can continue to exist. If it weren't for that Apple and Open Source would be eating their lunch instead of making small but significant inroads. Unfair competition got them where they are today, and unfortunately because of the grotesquely dysfunctional management, that's all they have left.

There was definitely a downside of their take no prisoner behavior. Firstly whilst they were busy waterboarding Compaq over their Windows license, they missed the google opportunity.
Secondly had Microsoft not had such a terrible reputation then Yahoo would have been interested in doing business rather than wanting to chew their own leg off.

A few days ago I read another article on this same topic. It summed up Microsoft's current image in the IT world perfectly: "An old bully that produces lousy software."

Why the SIDS reference, Bob? Did you suffer a loss?

Great article. I only disagree with the premise that Gates is leaving because he has to; perhaps HE decided that he has to, but still, it's his decision.

I feel bad for Ballmer, he's destined to fail. Maybe that's the real reason Gates is leaving--he doesn't want to be the one in the captain's seat when Microsoft inevitably hits the reef.

Open source development is essentially a counterweight to excessive control of innovation in the software business, mostly by Microsoft. Effective (intentional) cultural change is extremely difficult, and Microsoft's culture reflects the way Bill Gates thinks. Microsoft suffers from the inertia of years of doing business a certain way, and it's not likely to change, whether he leaves or not. If they made Vista open source, it would improve by leaps and bounds virtually overnight, but Microsoft would still throw it's weight around whenever possible to extract revenue from it.

michael,
yes, Bob lost a son to SIDS... http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2002/pulpit_20020425_000431.html

As much as I detest MSFT, let's not leave out all the software companies that saw the rise of the PC and piggy backed on Windows to their success too. I'm talking about professional and business software from the likes of Adobe, IBM, Oracle, etc., that, once all these software become entrenched on Windows, made the switch to another OS platform seemingly impossible for an organization.

It's very hard to judge Bill and MSFT purely in the technology context alone when the society as a whole was transformed by the digital age. The First Emperor of China destroyed all of his enemy states, killed or suffered millions, but he united the entire continent, built the Great Wall, and installed a uniform written language. Perhaps it's a force of history that cannot be altered by people. Although I think Bill knew it is tim to go when he did not foresee the rise of Google. He no longer has the vision that can put the fear into his competitors.

However, the sins of the past eventually catches up. I believe the decision to integrate their IE browser into every aspect of Windows and such screwed up tech/biz philosophy that followed ultimately created the the bloated-ware that is Windows today. And it is too late to remake Windows now to make it power the next digital transformation.

Looking at Vista, I can't help but get the impression that the various open source projects and Apple have completely overtaken Windows in the rate of development. Windows 7 needs to seriously turn things around, if it is to compete with the future releases from Apple and the Linux distributors, and frankly, I see no indication that Microsoft is able to pull that off. The only recent point, that I can think of, where MS was forced by competitors to radically and rapidly improve quality was Internet Explorer 7, and even after its release Firefox has continued to gain market share.

Of course, Windows and Office will always be around by the sheer force of inertia alone, no matter how bad Vista and Windows 7 are.

Microsoft would still be where it is today even if it hadn't engaged in unfair competition? Coe\me on, Cringely! I don't see how.

Just considering Netscape, had MS not bundled MSIE into the OS, much of the threat that google and Firefox are today with their google apps and plugins and extensions (and OpenOffice) would have happened a decade ago!

If Netscape had thrived then, MS would have been reduced to server OS's, games, and maybe phone OS's by now. The PC world would largely already be free of them.

Turns out MSN has over a billion in sales - so that logic doesn't apply.

Cue the fat lady.

I've been wondering for years what is it exactly about Microsoft's culture that prevents their best and brightest technical people from releasing great products as compared to other cultures like e.g. Sun's that lets their best produce quality stuff. It seems like MS has no shortage of talented people being recruited, but after they get there something happens that only lets them produce average or sub-par software vs. growing and eventually producing great software. All their architectures and implementations seem rushed and haphazard and implemented without due revision. What's going on with the culture there? It seems like every idea gets put through a merciless business grinder and either gets rushed or trashed for business purposes, and folks aren't encouraged to develop cool things just for their own sake. It seems like if they were encouraged to develop cool and fun for cool and fun's sake, eventually it would lead to cool and good commercial products. Do they just not have a culture of quality? Do new recruits get trained that it really doesn't matter? Does management say it matters but then not provide the resources, financially, temporally, and personally to make it happen?

Can you do an article that describes what's going on there?

Bob, are you saying Bill Gates has his eyes set on the Nobel Peace Prize? How do you know?

The company's soul is corrupt. In your own words Bob:

"This word, which was hardly used at all until two or three years ago, feels to me like a propaganda campaign and a successful one at that,
dominating discussion in the computer industry. I think Microsoft did this intentionally, for they are the ones who seem to continually use
the word. But what does it mean? And how is it different from what we might have said before? I think the word they are replacing is "invention."
Bill Shockley invented the transistor, Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce invented the integrated circuit, Ted Hof invented the microprocessor.
Of course others claimed to have done those same three things, but the goal was always invention. Only now we innovate, which
is deliberately vague but seems to stop somewhere short of invention. Innovators have wiggle room. They can steal ideas, for example,and
pawn them off as their own. That's the intersection of innovation and sharp business.
Yes, Microsoft is an innovator and I don't think that is good."

Read the rest:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2003/pulpit_20030904_000784.html

Yahhoo was not the first company to choke on Microsoft's rancid tongue. After spending four years trying to push a spreadsheet called Multiplan,
Microsoft proposed a merger with Lotus.
Read: http://reactor-core.org/in-microsoft-we-trust.html

Here are lists of his innovations:
http://www.mcmillan.cx/innovation.html#windows
http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/microsoft.html

If you were CEO of Microsoft, what would you do?

I'd definitely eliminate a lot of waste, fiefdoms, middle-management, seriously re-organize the company into distinct autonomous divisions.

Find someone with great design aesthete and have them re-imagine and redo Windows Live/MSN and integrate it seamlessly with XBOX and Zune. Create an enterprise version of service.

Spin off the OS division as a separate company. The OS will be a moot point in five to seven years, the platform is going to be internet.

If one thinks of Microsoft not as a software company, but rather a marketing company that sells software, one can understand better how the evil empire lives.

Microsoft rarely had an original idea - they either stole an idea from the innovators (see; Netscape) or if they needed the underlying resource, bought it (ala Visio). Gates and Ballmer knew how to dance for the crowd and pitch the snake oil, whether the oil had any functional worth or not.

Pretty soon we were hooked culturally on the 2 elixirs (Windoze and Office) that guarantee the sales weasels continue to get their foot in the door to sell the good, the bad and the ugly, only because it has the Micro$oft label.

My company recently rejected out of hand Lotus Quickr for M$ Sharpoint because, "We're a Microsoft shop." What a poor excuse for implementing such a poor product. But it is what keeps the cash cow giving green milk.

While OS X has many security flaws, the features of the OS itself are not flawed. The features work the way they are supposed to, and some people prefer the way OS X works to the way Windows works. And you can't compare Vista to OS X. Vista's security is so overbearing that people turn it off rather than use it; this doesn't happen in OS X. OS X doesn't force you to purchase new printers because drivers don't exist for your existing hardware. There are many flaws in Vista that make it inferior to OS X; I would never write that about Windows XP, which is solid and practical.

Where would be we if there had been five companies producing software, each with 20% market share, rather than one Microsoft with nearly all the market share? Microsoft didn't get where it is by competing on a level playing field, it got there by cheating and breaking the law. How much would computing have advanced without Microsoft's stifling grip on the industry.

It was never in Microsoft's interest to innovate quickly. Why give away five features in the next OS or application version when you can give away only two? Such slowing-down of innovation is only possible when you have a monopoly, and then illegally use your monopoly power to gain a competitive advantage over your competitors.

You wouldn't know it to look at Apple today (they're one of the most aggressively litigious companies in America when it comes to defending their intellectual property), but Apple made one of the largest blunders in corporate history by failing to contractually limit Microsoft's ability to copy Apple's GUI. After that, it was only a matter of time before Microsoft revised Windows enough, and got it on enough diverse PCs, that Apple's market share would wither.

Moreover, Apple had at least four or five opportunities to take over the industry when Microsoft was smaller; Bill Gates appealed to Apple at least three different times to license the Mac OS to hardware manufacturers, but Apple refused. Apple balked each time a potential buyer wanted the company. Even Jobs himself had an opportunity to unseat Microsoft when he nearly made a deal with IBM to put the NeXT OS on their computers, but Jobs was too demanding.

As for innovation, what's the difference between Microsoft and Apple? Microsoft missed the internet wave completely, Apple caught the online music wave and owned it. As far as I know, Archos was the first company to market with a hard drive-based MP3 player, but Apple developed one that was easier to use and better marketed, and owned that market too; Microsoft just developed an also-ran in the Zune. Apple took an R&D project at Xerox, and used some of the ideas along with many of its own to create a shipping product; Microsoft just copied the shipping product. And after missing the internet boat, how the hell did Microsoft miss out on search?

I use both OS X and Windows, and although I prefer OS X, I see the huge mistakes made by both Apple and Microsoft.

And considering that Microsoft grosses $60B annually, $1B for MSN is hardly a success.

How could apple prevent microsoft from using the gui? apple stole it from xerox.

I can only think of one true Microsoft innovation, and it's undeniable: Microsoft Bob.

OK, so it wasn't a commercial success. But it did get reinvented as the Office Clippy.

I really hope someone can remember a significant quote that I recall being attributed to Bill Gates by an online columnist perhaps 10 years ago or so. He was speaking about the important characteristics of a successful CEO, and said that it was necessary to know not only what corporate actions were legal/illegal. It was also necessary to know how close to the line to act. I felt then that the implications were in a way a perversion (or not, depending on your perception of corporation law) of "fiduciary responsibility". Since then I have always wondered whether he meant how close *this* side of the line...or the other side. The history of Microsoft suggests the latter. If the likelihood of your company getting caught or prosecuted are relatively low, and/or you have enough money and power to outlast the legal process (or can count on sympathetic political powers), then operating over the line is paradoxically "a good thing", and simply a consequence of doing business. There is no inherent ethics in corporations, only the potential of consequences...or not.
So I would appreciate it if anyone remembers seeing the quote attributed to Gates and can post a reference here.

Thanks!

I really hope someone can remember a significant quote that I recall being attributed to Bill Gates by an online columnist perhaps 10 years ago or so. He was speaking about the important characteristics of a successful CEO, and said that it was necessary to know not only what corporate actions were legal/illegal. It was also necessary to know how close to the line to act. I felt then that the implications were in a way a perversion (or not, depending on your perception of corporation law) of "fiduciary responsibility". Since then I have always wondered whether he meant how close *this* side of the line...or the other side. The history of Microsoft suggests the latter. If the likelihood of your company getting caught or prosecuted are relatively low, and/or you have enough money and power to outlast the legal process (or can count on sympathetic political powers), then operating over the line is paradoxically "a good thing", and simply a consequence of doing business. There is no inherent ethics in corporations, only the potential of consequences...or not.
So I would appreciate it if anyone remembers seeing the quote attributed to Gates and can post a reference here.

Thanks!

I really hope someone can remember a significant quote that I recall being attributed to Bill Gates by an online columnist perhaps 10 years ago or so. He was speaking about the important characteristics of a successful CEO, and said that it was necessary to know not only what corporate actions were legal/illegal. It was also necessary to know how close to the line to act. I felt then that the implications were in a way a perversion (or not, depending on your perception of corporation law) of "fiduciary responsibility". Since then I have always wondered whether he meant how close *this* side of the line...or the other side. The history of Microsoft suggests the latter. If the likelihood of your company getting caught or prosecuted are relatively low, and/or you have enough money and power to outlast the legal process (or can count on sympathetic political powers), then operating over the line is paradoxically "a good thing", and simply a consequence of doing business. There is no inherent ethics in corporations, only the potential of consequences...or not.
So I would appreciate it if anyone remembers seeing the quote attributed to Gates and can post a reference here.

Thanks!

I'm one of those who thinks Microsoft were better at taking, developing and controlling other people's ideas rather than creating their own.

That's not a criticism, just a statement of fact, and I respect the skill it took to understand what people wanted and design for it.

I think open source software is doing to Microsoft what open source hardware did to IBM. I don't know whether Microsoft will find a future wave in which it can lead, as IBM managed to do. But this is just a business challenge.

I know there will always be challenges, and there would never have been a good time for Gates to leave. Who can blame him for deciding he isn't going to live forever, and he would like to do something different. I'm surprised he stayed so long.

Fingerbun

P.S. I mention open source not because I am Linux bigot or a communist, but because I think it is inevitable. Sometime real soon I will be able to buy PCs that have Linux and basic apps on a chip preinstalled. No installation hassles, faster boot time, and less compatibility issues as more stuff moves to the cloud. In that scenario, why would I want to pay for Windows or Office? Bob, you might consider an article on what that will do to the industry as a whole, not to mention America's place it in.

@ Will C.: Apple paid Xerox $1m in Apple stock for a project they weren't using and also ended up with most of the programmers on that project coming aboard as well.

MS got access to the GUI when Apple came to them wanting MS to stay out of developing Office for the Mac at a time when Apple was producing their own similar applications. MS said yes, but included a clause that allowed them to copy Apple's computer products without legal recourse. Apparently no-one checked that clause before the document was signed off, giving MS a gift. No-one stole anything, just leveraged what they got to the absolute limits.

About the main article: Gates has really been a figurehead for a long time now of a company that lacks purpose. I don't see open source ruling the day, or businesses worldwide moving to online applications (especially when some of the companies that offer them are so willing to open them up to 'authorities' when asked; see Google in China) so MS will have a good run yet. But they really do need a new plank to make money off of - out of their current offerings, the Xbox 360 seems the most likely consumer-side, but even that hasn't been pulling in the billions just yet.

If I ran Microsoft, I'd spin off Office and Windows.

Why leave the cash cows? Because they are the parts of the company that are preventing growth.

Since Ballmer has taken over as CEO, Microsoft stock has failed to outperform a savings account. Windows and Office make profits but do not grow profits.

By spinning Office/Windows off, the rest of Microsoft, the parts which have huge growth potential, no longer need to compete with the cash cows for resources and attention. With the spin-off, and through partial ownership, they can still feed off the cash flow. The cash cows keep the company from taking the risks necessary to grow.

Bill Gates : Cheers Buddy...time to go.

Microsloth : You can't polish a turd.

A good piece about Microsoft and the departure of Bill Gates! Thank you for this analysis.

Microsoft absolutely benefit from its corrupt anti-competitive practices.
That they were permitted to get away with their disgraceful lack of ethics for so long is a travesty of justice.

Microsoft proved that if you are unscrupulous and can steal the efforts of others, you can fatten your wallet rapidly.

An unfortunate truth - and nowhere near innovative.

Microsoft absolutely benefit from its corrupt anti-competitive practices.
That they were permitted to get away with their disgraceful lack of ethics for so long is a travesty of justice.

Microsoft proved that if you are unscrupulous and can steal the efforts of others, you can fatten your wallet rapidly.

An unfortunate truth - and nowhere near innovative.

Microsoft absolutely benefit from its corrupt anti-competitive practices.
That they were permitted to get away with their disgraceful lack of ethics for so long is a travesty of justice.

Microsoft proved that if you are unscrupulous and can steal the efforts of others, you can fatten your wallet rapidly.

An unfortunate truth - and nowhere near innovative.

It's clearly time for Bill to go, because the fight long left him. Everybody at Microsoft (and beyond) looked to him for leadership and innovation, and was able to provide that as long as the software business held his interest. When it stopped, he handed over the rains to his buddy Steve. This was the crucial mistake. Ballmer is the author of the anti-competitive responses of the past, the lack of vision and strategic thinking now, and Microsoft's continued decline in the future.
The question is, how long will it take Bill and the rest of the BoD to see that Steve is running the company into the ground? One year, five years?
Bill clearly needs an extended break. However, Microsoft needs a break from Ballmer.
Microsoft needs to merge MSN into Yahoo and allow the combined Y! to do the battles nobody at Microsoft has a clue on how to win. Sell or create a joint venture with Apple for the hardware business.
Its time Microsoft starts spinning off some groups as well, to allow smaller groups to react faster to the market, and reinvigorate the innovation that used to define the company.
Perhaps after a few more years of Ballmer at the helm by himself, Bill will be forced to step back in, a la Steve Jobs. I think only then can Microsoft be saved from itself.

I can think of just one thing Bill could have done that would have been a equivalent shake up and steered the company in a new and ironically more profitable direction. Bill could have done what IBM did and insisted on taking Microsoft OS and Office freely into the open source market and becoming the a stunningly large service company. Not that for a moment I believe he could do it. Perhaps too many things would be revealed that need to be kept secret.

I personally don't think it benefitted. Maybe Internet Explorer wouldn't be as dominant now however what has that really got them today and Firefox is even eating into that at a rate of knots.

Basically Windows and Office are the two products that make them their money and thats been in place for over 20 years. Up to the last few years they've also been relatively good compared to the competitors. I've only recently moved over to Mac but that's simply been because until OS X there was no reason. Up to then Windows was the best, not just the most popular - in terms of usability.

It's interesting about how bundling Office killed it's competitors. Again I'm not sure, I think it was simply that MS Office was the best.

The problems MS are going through now are simply related to the fact that they don't make good software anymore and the competition is catching up.

As for the internet, they have made a lot of progress. MSN Messenger, hotmail, MSNBC, Slate, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Exchange and Outlook.

It's simply that google have made a better search engine and.... people hate Microsoft because of it's anti-competitive and anti-consumer practices.

Back to the original answer... If anything it's the reason for ALL of Microsoft's problems right now. Well that and google have a better search engine.

Apple turned the company around by embracing Open Source and standards, they're now ruining that reputation by trying to hold on to monopolies they've gained iTunes and iPod and by using them to move people over to Mac by making them rubbish on PC. And by also making products that are shoddy and will break a week after warranty due to some built in redundancy mechanism.

MS need to realize that they need to do what google say "do no evil" AND concentrate on making better products and like Apple make their customers love them. That's how they will turn it around. Apple have to stop doing what MS did.

They should put the XBox guy in charge.

This says all I want to say:

http://computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=985

Especially the last two paragraphs.

This says all I want to say:

http://computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=985

Especially the last two paragraphs.

Steve wrote:
MS hardware was good - e.g. the optical mouse - but who invented it?

The optical mouse was a spinoff from a handheld scanner project in HP Labs. The mouse sensor business went with Agilent, and now Avago. Microsoft bought HP patents to get into the mouse sensor hardware business also.

Become a company of managers? I think not.

Microsoft is in the business of computer technology—software and hardware. And if one thing is true in this business, it's that change happens rapidly, and new opportunities arise often.

20 years ago, the PC was in its infancy. 10 years ago, the internet was in its infancy. 5 years ago, home gaming systems and iPod-like devices were just getting off the ground (yes, I know, all of these things started earlier than I've stated, but it takes a few years for them to reach mainstream consumers, hence the term "infancy"). And now, all of these things are huge markets that came into existence out of nowhere.

Believe it or not, I do believe that MS is following the right course…taking stabs, looking for that next big thing. As Windoze and Office and the iPod demonstrate, you only need to hit the bullseye once every now and then to find yourself another cash cow.

Microsoft needs to isolate their Windows and Office divisions and let them run like the mature corporate cashcow monopolies that they are, while using the capital they generate to continue taking educated guesses as to the Next Big Thing. This is simply How It's Done in this business. Sometimes you end up with crap (eMate, Bob), sometimes you end up with something great but unprofitable (the Newton, Google Earth, Tivo, hotmail/gmail), and sometimes you end up with a new near-monopoly cashcow (Windoze, Office, iPod, Google search engine).

If Microsoft has a sin, it's that they've let their big, slow divisions hold the rest of the company back; they haven't been nimble enough. It always takes MS three tries to get anything right. Apple bought and then rapidly developed the iPod with a small, secret team. Facebook code was written in a weekend.

MS needs to let their hunters hunt and their gatherers gather, so to speak.

"They should put the XBox guy in charge."

Honestly? That "Xbox guy" would've bankrupted Microsoft if it were not for MS's cash reserve and financial muscle in other departments. Business has to make money, not just be innovative and win a popularity contest.

As many others have implied (explicitly or implicitly), fixing today's MS is a complicated business in its own right and no "Xbox guy" can solve that. It's no good opting for a different path just for the sake of ideals and go bust to exit the market all together.

You mentioned SIDS again. I apologise for looking at this from the old fat guy perspective. I do not know where you currently are now but I would like to suggest your system be used for sleep apnea.

It seems to me your equipment would monitor breathing and sleep information to tell people from there own house that you have a problem and you need to do something.

Maybe double your market potential.

Bob

The demise of M$ will not happen for a century or not at all. Like IBM, or other former monolith's ; it's a matter of time. Raking off the cash, slowly losing one per cent here, 2 per cent there to better ideas. Not anticipating or even acknowledging new innovations, like ATT it just will slowly wither at the roots.

It will not get any new innovators or tolerate them,
because it is too disruptive to the status quo.

I have seen this with successful companies or startups for over 30 years. Great innovation, then financial success, then slow atrophy and stagnation. Well M$ is in the stagflation mode, can't grow much, being blocked by EU, China, India and other masters of the faked copyright and the free use of Open Source.

What is M$'s choice, create another boring release of Windows, same security holes, same tired outmoded interface, same boring utilities.

Then the iPhone comes out, changes the paradigmm,
who needs a laptop anymore, except the big corps.

What's next? You know M$ won't be leading the charge, they will have enough cash to be the johny come lately, but lead the charge?

Oh well look at the ASUS eee, see the future M$ embedded OS laptops, Nokia 810, with add-ons and
tiny, who needs a 10 lbs laptop with Vista when
a 2 lbs. or less linux unit will do?

Caught on yet m$ I doubt it.

Jan Clairmont, KMGO
Paladin of Security

Oh no, not this again: "...Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce invented the integrated circuit,.."

Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments invented the integrated circuit. Bob Noyce "invented" it also, a tiny bit little later, but beat Kilby to the patent office.

I think it's a shame that a technology company like Microsoft is led by someone who has no real passion or vision for the next turn that technology will take. Steve Jobs is a quite the obnoxious teenage boy, but I don't think that anyone could deny his passion or vision. He is a slightly warped example of how a technology firm should function. When you have a driving force that doesn't know what it wants but knows it wants something *new*, you get Vista. Ha!!!