Bill Gates Doesn't Work At Microsoft Anymore

itwbennett writes "The recent Fortune article on Bill Gates' post-Microsoft life made one thing very clear to blogger Steven Vaughan-Nichols: 'Bill Gates was, and still is, the face of Microsoft. What Microsoft doesn't want you to know though is that Gates has almost nothing to do with the company anymore.' The fact is that Microsoft doesn't want to draw attention to Gates' absence because the company 'has been tanking in recent years,' says Vaughan-Nichols. 'While Microsoft's last quarter was far better than it was a year ago, thanks largely to Windows 7 finally picking up steam, neither Microsoft's growth nor its profits are what they were like when Gates was at the helm.'"

Comments

Doesn't upset me much

[rwa2]

Bill was always the cutthroat business nerd. I wouldn't miss him.

Now if Larry and Sergei leave Google, I'd be pretty damn worried. I really like everything I've ever read about how they ran the company.

Re:Natural Consequence.

[Ephemeriis]

I'm sure other people could add plenty to this list.

I think a big part of it is that the standard Windows PC isn't as relevant as it used to be.

You can get a DVD player or a television that can stream Netflix and Pandora, or play videos from YouTube.

You can get your email on your iPod, iPhone, BlackBerry, or whatever else.

Just about everything can play MP3s now.

There are plenty of different ways to edit text on a computer... Various free products and alternatives, web-based services, etc.

You've got an assortment of pseudo-computers out there... Netbooks, iPads, sophisticated/open smartphones...

Tons of gaming happens on consoles of various types.

You've got digital cameras that can upload directly to Flickr, and print straight to a printer.

The fact of the matter is that you just plain do not need a PC running Windows to do a lot of stuff these days.

To a large degree you don't even need a genuine PC/laptop/workstation to do this stuff. And if you really do need to sit down in front of something with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor - it probably doesn't need to be running Windows.

People became wise to Microsoft's ways

[OwlWhacker]

"neither Microsoft's growth nor its profits are what they were like when Gates was at the helm."

Isn't this because people started to see just what Microsoft was up to?

Having to pay to upgrade the operating system every two or three years (which is what Microsoft would have liked).
Having to pay for new hardware in order to run the new operating system.
Having to pay to upgrade Microsoft Office every two or three years or be unable to open newer documents.

For a few years people were blindly paying out to keep up with new technology, until they suddenly realised they were spending too much with very little gain, purely in order to keep Microsoft afloat.
People used to think that operating systems and software were expected to crash multiple times each day. It was at the point when Linux and Open Source software was in the mainstream news that people realised that security and stability could be achieved.

People have become wise, and they're no longer just accepting everything Microsoft produces as 'normal'. Microsoft has had to work overtime in order to overcome this.

Re:Never mind.

[Eskarel]

OLPC was and is a joke.

It's been so riven with ideology that it's original purpose has become completely lost(even if you make the presumption the original purpose was viable in the first place).