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.'"
Microsoft is in such a bad shape, it would be good for them if people thought Bill Gates still worked there :-)
neither Microsoft's growth nor its profits are what they were like when Gates was at the helm.'"
And what do they think Gates could do differently if he was still calling the shots? For better or worse most of Microsoft's key markets are saturated.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
When will /. replace the Locutus of Microsoft icon with Ballmer throwing a chair?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Yeah, kind of a no brainer here. Growth at a large company in a mostly saturated and slow-growing market during a recession is less than growth of a mid-size company in a largely uncontested and growing market during an economic boom. My god, it's the end of the world, sell all your MS stock!
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Don't forget that Apple has become the new Microsoft, in a sense. They've adopted Microsoft's approach of vendor lock-in, and taken it to a degree that Microsoft never could.
Not only does Apple lock you in at the software level, like Microsoft did, but they go so far as to limit what programming languages you can use when targetting some of their platforms. Microsoft never stooped that low.
But Apple takes it further, by holding a monopoly on the hardware stack their software runs on. Microsoft never managed this. They may have had deals and influence with some PC hardware vendors, but they were never really in control like Apple is.
Then Apple takes it yet a step further, and basically dictates how you can use your device when it's networked, and who can provide that access. Microsoft never did anything like this.
So as the Microsoft generation retires from the workplace, we're beginning to see a new generation of Apple supporters move in. Except they're far more gullible and brainwashed than the Microsoft supporters ever were, and these Apple users are willing to accept a far greater degree of dictatorship and vendor control. It makes me weep.
... leave, let the company tank, then make a triumphant return! :-D
Maybe, maybe not. Economists are still divided on that, many are predicting a double-dip too. I believe the Regan said
A recession is when your neighbor loses his job.
A depression is when you lose yours
A recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.
Assuming this to be true, there are a few possibilities
1) Recovery is not possible since JC has no job to lose
2) BO is the functional equivalent and recovery is when BO loses his job
3) Recovery is futile (after all this is an article re: Bill Gates)
Of course, the assumption may be flawed.
One way or another, I doubt if Bil Gates really cares very much. I seem to remember him saying right at the beginning that if he made it big, he would end up giving his money away.
Well, kudos to him: he is actually doing that. I dislike Microsoft on many levels (but mostly technical, since I am well and truly old enough to have only a remnant of my ideological principles), but Gates is doing more good with his own money than most of our governments are doing with ours.
Reality check: Microsoft is quite profitable. So is IBM. They make the wheels go around, and that's a solid business. That's what matters, not how much commentary the company gets on Gizmodo and Techcrunch.
There are other big companies like that. Consider Consolidated Edison, the power company for New York City. They've been selling electricity since 1882, and they made $14 billion last year. General Electric is still around, and with about the same product line they had a century ago - power station equipment, appliances, lamps, and turbines. (Along the way, GE entered and left semiconductors and computers.)
Google, on the other hand, is quite vulnerable. They've never had a second profitable product. Google has whole lines of money-losers, from YouTube to GMail. 97% of Google's revenue is still from search ads.
3. The failure to see the rise of the netbook/tablet.
This is I think somewhat unfair, in two ways (since those are two different markets).
For Netbooks, Microsoft didin't really see that coming but reacted very quickly and with skill, to where Windows dominates Netbooks when it looked at first like that would be the realm of Linux. They may not have seen that coming but they managed to win that one anyway to the point where it does not matter that they didn't see it coming.
Now tablets, that's a different story. They saw that coming, something like ten years ago? Off and on they tried VERY hard to make that market work. There they had vision, but no execution - and that I think is mostly the problem, Microsoft still can have vision but they have (for whatever reason) a ton of problems executing. It really seems from the outside like this is the old ossified company syndrome where endless layers of management just boil away any real innovation from a product because real innovation is too risky and focus groups all say they hate the new thing you are trying to do because it is different than what they are used to. I think even if Microsoft made their own tablet hardware (like Apple) they would have had the same issues.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.