How Microsoft Has Changed Without Bill Gates

mightysquirrel writes "It's been a year since Bill Gates left Microsoft in his official capacity. At the time many speculated his departure would spark a significant shift in Redmond. But how much has really changed during Microsoft's first year without Gates?"

Comments

Re:How soon we forget

[Chyeld]

You can demonize Microsoft if you want to but the reason people think Microsoft did it first and did it best is because everyone else who faded into the history books of vague references and foot notes did so because they failed. They failed to market themselves, or they failed to meet volume, or they simply failed to find financial backing.

Or Microsoft stole their code and released it as their own as part of an OS (Doublespace vs Stacker), or Microsoft coded their products specificly to refuse to work with them and then lied about it (any DOS product after the release of Win95 vs MS-DOS), or Microsoft bundled their competing version in the OS to ensure people would use it (Netscape vs IE)...

The reason Microsoft took off was not because it was inovative, it was not because they saw what was 'good' and ran with it, it's because they had a leader who admired the tatics of the olden day Robber Barons and never let an opportunity to undercut, sabatoge, or otherwise play dirty pool go to waste.

And yes, many companies also play fast and loose when it comes to ethics and business practices, and I don't look up to any of them or their leadership either.