Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
They still make tons of money. How are they in bad shape?
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
Not only are they massively profitable, they are continuing to grow. Apparently growth means tanking.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
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
Pretty sure that the last quarter was during the recession...
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
I mean, besides being obviously anti-MS (standard /. fare).
If you look at MS's financials and check the annual reports, it doesn't much look like a company that has been "tanking in recent years". Most companies would kill for the revenue growth and operating margin Microsoft has had since 2005. Tanking in recent years, my ass.
It doesn't help that Microsoft is giving people plenty of reasons to switch to competitors though. Not upgrading their flagship browser for 10 years was a big mistake. Taking so long between XP and Vista, and then Vista being a flop was a big mistake. If Microsoft wants to stay at the top, they should constantly be releasing real upgrades to their products, to keep pace with how all the other guys are doing it. There's no reason they couldn't release a new version of Windows ever year, charge $50, and have everybody upgrade. The current model of, wait 3 or 4 years between versions, and charge $300 for it doesn't work, because nobody wants to drop $300 all at once, and they also don't want to have to buy a new computer, to get the price discounted.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
There's a pretty heavy recession going on, there wasn't one when Bill was at MS. I wonder if these two points are related.
This goes back to before there was a recession. Illustrated in pastel loveliness.
That's because if a company isn't growing, it's stagnant or shrinking. Markets are always changing, and we're seeing that in computing with the growth of the web and mobile devices--places where Microsoft is failing hard. Just having huge profits doesn't mean anything by itself, because that can go away quickly, and if a company doesn't change to match the market, it quickly becomes irrelevant.
still allowed to pedal Microsoft software
"peddle", not "pedal".
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
if only you knew how much harm he is still doing but is now using his foundation as his front company. You do know that Bill was publicly blasting the One Laptop Per Child program and not because of what it was doing but because it wasn't using Windows. You also should know that both he and Steve Ballmer went around the world talking to governments and their education leadership down playing the OLPC project and in some cases signing million dollar "support" deals which required them to use Microsoft software and therefore excluded the OLPC device. And lets not forget all those who have said that they've been told that once a school or library accepts money from his foundation, they are not allowed to use open source software.
oh yes, Bill is doing a great job at spreading Microsoft software while he still gets a pat on the back for "doing more good" with his money but who is he really helping? I've got an OLPC and it is an amazing device and while it does run Linux, the software is not like anything on Windows or Linux. But the millions of kids who would have had a chance to get books and learn something about modern technology won't get that chance. Windows could not run on that hardware without added costs and from what I read, they did not want the Windows user interface hidden under the SUGAR UI. Anyways, Gates is not helping anyone and is only feeding his greedy desires to push his own companies products and that is not helping anyone but Bill and his ego. IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
While he may own a large amount of stock, possibly more than anyone else (too lazy to look it up right now), he isn't a majority shareholder. Far from it. Yes, he has a large voice if he wants to, but it just a voice, not a authority.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
You may not remember, but back in the day, before Windows Mobile was called Windows Mobile, they competed on quality on it as well. Their main rival, Palm, stagnated for years rehashing the same products and Microsoft swooped in and ate their lunch.
With Palm dealt with, Microsoft then went on to do what they do, and stagnated Windows Mobile until someone else came along and ate their lunch.
Microsoft managed to get itself into a monopoly position while the PC market exploded.
Not exactly; there's more to it. Before IBM PC came on the market, there were a lot of competing PCs from different companies. All of them had proprietary busses, proprietary OSes, proprietary BIOSes. Although many if not most had variations of CP/M, you couldn't buy a CP/M program and expect it to run on any but one make of computer.
Then IBM came into the scene with what IBM considered a toy, and after being rebuffed by the top CP/M guy went to one of its lawyer's children, Bill Gates, who bought an OS and tweaked it to work on IBM's machine. Microsoft had already been shipping BASIC to many computer manufacturers.
Back then the battle cry was "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" and all the other companies* went out of business. Gates wisely held on to copyright on his OS, then named PC-DOS, rather than letting IBM get it. Then a few years later, Compaq reverse engineered and legally cloned the IBM BIOS, which allowed it to run Gate's OS, now named MS-DOS. This was before very many people had computers in the home, but PCs were saturating offices everywhere. Compaq came out with a PC that used the much faster 386 chip when IBM was still using 286s, and ate IBM's lunch.
IBM unwisely decided to ditch DOS and use its own in-house offering OS2, which bombed badly.
So it didn't exactly get itself into a monopoly position, it actually inherited its monopoly from IBM.
people are realizing there are options.
No, just us nerds. Non-nerds I know are amazed when I tell them there are not only options, but virus-free, more secure options that cost nothing.
* Except Apple, because it had gotten a foothold in the schools and graphics houses before the IBM PCs were capable of graphics.
Free Martian Whores!