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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.'"
Compare MS stock and Apple and Google and go back 5 years, or even 3 years. Look at the hype for the iPad, for Android. Notice the FTC looking at Google, Notice no one cares about MS anymore; They're becoming irrelevant. They're were IBM was in 1990, or Novell in 1998. Ballmar really wasn't/isn't up to the task of running the company. In 2000 they should have copied Apple again and based their next windows(that would become Vista) on a BSD or Linux kernel. It is very likely that they will continue to shrink and in another 15 they'll be just another softare vendor like Adobe.
This isn't such a joke.
Hate him or Loath him, Gates was a Geek. While he was at Microsoft he actually did some coding. Not the most elegant code mind you but it compiled most of the time and ran only a little less often.
Because of this the other geeks at MS (shock and horror, they actually employ thousands) folowed his orders without question, the way soldiers folow a battle scarred General.
Without him, that voice of command is gone and none too soon as the core software and business model itself are under threat from OSS.
What is that Business model? Manipulate everything from OEM deals to hardware prices so that the cheapest way to do most of the normal computer work in a normal office or home is to use your products. This was fine when they were competing with the likes of Lotus, IBM, Apple, and Sun.
Some of those companies are still around, but now you can buy cheep PC Hardware with Free Software and be ahead of the price curve. Investors see growth slowing and about to reverse and are jumping ship in droves.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Perhaps not, but he could do a better job of acquiring products (or whole companies) that are well chosen to position Microsoft in new markets.
No. He got 10,000 hrs of computer programing time before he finished college, he was well connected, well educated, was in the right place at the right time and he was a bully. The total package is nothing like luck. Luck is only one limiting factor for growth, to become the richest man on earth you need a shit load more than luck.
p.s. On a side note MS needs to fire Balmer. He was OK when being a bully was effective, but that time is gone.
p.p.s PAY A FUCKING DIVIDEND YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER.
Having libertarian tendancies and liking to test my assumptions, I did a quick linear regression of HDI VS Tax Rate. I included the 20 countries with the highest HDI (.950 or higher) and excluded Liechtenstein since I couldn't easily find its tax rate. Taxes were measured as Tax Revenue as a percent of GDP to control for the various types of tax systems.
R = -.17. For countries with high development indexes, higher tax rates have little effect on HDI, and the effect seems to be negative at that. So, governments are not using higher tax rates to improve the lives of their citizenry. Therefore, I'd like to use my own money to improve my own life, since giving it to the government seems to be a poor investment.
Of note, Japan, the US, Switzerland, Australia, and Canada have the highest HDI to Tax ratio (i.e. best bang for your tax buck), respectively. HDI^3/Taxes only swaps the position of Switzerland and Australia.