Slashdot Mirror
Is Bill Gates the Cure For What Ails Microsoft?
theodp writes "After reading the recent call for Steve Ballmer to step down, gdgt's Ryan Block concludes that it's time for Bill Gates to come back to Microsoft. 'I've long seen it as a foregone conclusion that Ballmer isn't the guy to be running what was until quite recently the world's preeminent technology company,' writes Block. 'The more pressing question is: who should replace him? I think we all know damn well who — but I'm not so sure he's available. Yet.' Block adds: 'I'm not saying Bill's going to leave his new gig as the world's greatest living philanthropist with aplomb, but the multi-billion dollar wheels at The Gates Foundation have been set in motion — and lest we all forget, the Foundation's endowment is tied directly to Microsoft's long-term success. It may just happen that Bill can help the Foundation more by securing Microsoft's future.'"
I remember reading some books from Bill Gates when I was a kid and just learning programming. He actually had some quite nice ideas (and some that sound weird now a days), but underneath he is a geeky person. A lot more than Ballmer. Microsoft has really got their act together in the recent years tho, so I'm not sure if it's a good idea. Maybe Gates could start some new thing? He has nice ideas after all.
No.
With Buffett and a few others pitching in to help the Gates Foundation I hardly think the Foundation is reliant on MS. Also, I would hardly think Gates would be interesting in "saving" what is still a very profitable organisation - he's much more into pushing boundaries.
Technology is becoming social graph driven. Do we really want a socially inept person running a tech company that claims to be moving in a social direction (as evidenced by Bing's most recent commercial)?
"It's difficult to meditate on amphetamines." - Joe Walsh
They are trying to make a new Steve Jobs? The one that comes back to save the day? WTF?
Bill Gates is not the answer for Microsoft, but changing leadership is. They have become sloth-like in their old age and have become a market follower rather than a market leader.
MS probably needs to remove one or two levels of management to allow things to speed up again. Ideas and progress are slowed by too many filters.
Honestly if companies like Microsoft and Apple can't do without their great leaders then they need to sink forever in to the abyss. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs aren't going to live forever no matter how much money they have to get human parts to replace things like Jobs did. You can't even stick their heads in jars like Futurama did. Although I would be highly be amused if they ever did manage that one for real.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
No, he's retired. Ballmer is doing fine, that's a false premise for the debate.
developers, developers, developers, developers, developers.
For me, Bill Gates is the symbol of the junk-microsoft: DOS, windows 3.1; 95; 98; Me. As far as I see the history of Microsoft, since Gates left the CEO chair, things are slightly better. And, finally, the problem isn't Ballmer, but the fact that a company can't be the only big player in the entire sector forever.
MS may want to acquire their way into a profitable market, such as eBay or Amazon, (eBay is cheaper and they'd get PayPal with it), and then if they do get Skype, they could come up with tech to do 'peer-to-peer' sales, something that eBay/Amazon don't offer because they don't have that kind of tech and something Skype doesn't offer, because it's not their business, but if they did something like that, they could then have an online bank, an online retailer, an communications company all in one package, and in the current world, where their business model of selling OS and Office is slowly eroding away, they will have to be thinking about more online presence and shifting to these markets, that have plenty of opportunity to evolve further... or maybe I am totally off base.
You can't handle the truth.
Its overly simplistic to put the blame on Ballmer since it was Bill Gates that got Microsoft under close scrutiny from monopoly enforcement agencies all over the world. Bill Gates was also the one that won Microsoft the biggest EU fine in history for Bills predatory practices.
What Ballmer has done is followed in Bill Gates footstep with so-so products sold by extremely hard marketing and very shoddy business practices. If anything Ballmer is just a bleaker version of Bill. The return of Bill Gates would just be about more pressure on OEMs, more underhanded deals and more of using the monopoly again.
Personally i would love it if Bill Gates took the helm as it would make Microsoft become irrelevant even faster than today. The mobile and computing industry at large is right now liquid mercury and the tighter Microsoft squeezes the sooner it will slip.
HTTP/1.1 400
He says Bill Gates needs to come back, and then states Gates listened to J Allard about the Xbox, Microsoft's only real consumer success story in the last decade. Doesn't that mean that maybe J Allard should be the new CEO of Microsoft? Or can Block not connect the dots he himself puts down on the paper?
"It's a reverse vampire...they....they crave the sun!"
I don't think you're getting what you think you are asking for.
These are large crude parallels being drawn here: "Steve Jobs returned to Apple and saved it" is an interesting story, but Apple's story is certainly exceedingly unique.
Not many companies crawl back from hasbeens to dominance. Apple was a joke in the 1990s, a shell of its former '80s self. The natural arc is to go from dominance to hasbeen. This is Microsoft's fate. Google's. Facebook's. etc. Apple is the weird exception, not the rule, and I wouldn't let its experience try to teach us anything. It's like seeing someone hit the lottery and trying to figure out how they did and repeat that. No, Apple is a pretty unique story in technology and business. Microsoft can't find their Steve Jobs in Bill Gates.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
He knows Microsoft and he knows phones. BTW Ballmer did not exactly looked thrilled in the traditional photo after the big deal with Nokia was signed.
The board will probably look at Eric Schmidt as well, and pass.
I don't work at MS and don't know Steve Sinofsky (Windows chief), but my guess is he's too much of an MS insider to make a clean break with the past.
Bill Gates has moved on, and so has the IT industry. Not a good fit. Same with people like Scott McNealy, Jeff Raikes. These are all Cold War veterans of the '90s.
This was the man that should have taken the reigns of Microsoft by now. Instead he has left the company. He was a worthy successor to Gates in drive and vision.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Gates would be a better option than Ballmer but that's faint praise. My dog would do a better job than Ballmer. There are certainly better options out there. People with the ability to gut the entrenched internal bureaucracy and drag Microsoft into the modern world of technology.
The age of $150 operating systems running on an $800 desktop with $400 productivity software are drawing to a close. If Microsoft wants to stay relevant, they need new ideas that come from people who aren't being stifled by mid-level managers steeped in last week's technology.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
So why do they think Bill Gates would be better? The key problem is simply that Microsoft depends on two, long in the tooth products (Windows and Office) for most of its revenue. That's not going to change one bit, if Gates returned to Microsoft.
And if I were in Gates's shoes, I'd rather that Balmer had the thankless task of trying to find a new Windows/Office complex while I slowly sold off my Microsoft stock. That seems to be what happened.
...I would rather have the illness ;-)
Bill Gates taking the reins away from Ballmer might not solve the company's problems, but it would probably reduce the amount of overall chair-throwing.
He'd dedicated the company to developing scalable, human-like artificial intelligence. He'd dominate the computer industry AND get those who need aid by getting answers to all questions for which there are answers.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I'd rather they just go out of business. It is long overdue.
I vote for Mark! He is an excellent and awesome technical fellow that has impressed me a number of times. It's time for Microsoft to learn from Google; let the engineers take control again.
As the world moves to a post-PC era, Microsoft has no more advantage from their OS monopoly. They have no future. People are sick of dealing with the epic mess of PCs, and are moving to mobile devices and iPads faster than Apple can build them.
There's no future for Microsoft. Their only advantage was that most software was written against Windows. That advantage means nothing in a post-PC world.
If you think this isn't true... dream on. Apple is now the most valuable tech company on the planet, and it isn't because they are selling PCs. It's because they are selling mobile devices that people love, unlike Microsoft that sells things people hate but always had to buy before. Now there is a viable alternative, and people are flocking to it by the millions.
Thank you for making our jobs easier by continuing to pursue bad products with bad management. When we saw your pitiful attempt at a search engine, we laughed until our sides split.
Sincerely,
Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, and Sergei Brin
I am officially gone from
who thought the Internet was a passing fad and "one person, one pc" was mantra.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Doesn't even HTC pay them $5 for every android handset (I think I read that here??). Ballmer, Gates, etc.. they are old farts, you've seen them before, the old fart walking down the road with a stain in his pants. People laugh, and they don't know why people are laughing at them!
There is so much ego now? Really Nerds have ego? Comon, grow up, learn to make your own money and your own decisions instead of playing "Board of Directors" for a company you'll never even probably get a chance to work for, let alone be on the board.
I don't think that Bill Gates should be seen as the Microsoft messiah. If it i something wrong with MS is the business model. 1) The operating system had come a software commodity with time. Now people uses a varaity of OS and didn't feel excluded like it was happening on the 80's and 90's. So MS has to understand that with the OS is no longer going to make a lot of money like before. 2) The office suite is also becoming a commodity. Office will slow down and eventually will stop being the cash cow. Software licensing for the consumer is not what is used to be on the 80's and 90's. They have to deal with that first. So, Bill Gates is going to show up and change that? no, a change of business model is going to help MS, not the messiah.
The best way to fix Microsoft is to go through all the senior execs office and replace their 1998 desk calendars with something a bit more recent.... Seriously based on both ex Microsoft employees testimony and their product line(large numbers of different, incompatible products aimed towards the same market), Microsoft execs don't seem to realize that it's no longer 1998 and they have real external competition. Most Microsoft senior execs seem to be too busy sniping at each other than they are at trying to create something that bests their competitors' products.
Monstar L
to further the parallel, you would be asking bill gates to come back and somehow microsoft becomes a force that kills the cable giants and netflix as everyone moves to their boxes for television and movie content. and this is what microsoft becomes known for in the late 2010s
someone's going to converge the internet and the traditional cable company's market space, it could be microsoft. and then to complete the parallel to apple's story, windows 8 or 9 or 10 etc becomes a has been as Google OS takes over that space. or something like that
oh wait, didn't they just buy skype? there's another internet/ traditional phone company convergence story that hasn't played out yet. maybe that's what the minds at microsoft are hoping to do steve jobs style in terms of reinventing microsoft
could happen, who knows. or apple could master the telephone/ internet convergence or cable/ internet convergence. or google. who knows
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Having seen Microsoft in action close up, I've drawn the conclusion that a change in the executive ranks will not reverse its decline in prominence and industry leadership over the last decade.
True it does need bold leadership to see and promote a world beyond a Windows OS plus Office centric one, and that would be a start. But it needs an internal culture change even more.
Microsoft doesn't lack for incredibly smart, talented and capable people, though it is losing its best at a rate that would alarm most other companies. But it's internal culture of fixed winners, losers, and rewards, and individual performance over that of teams and/or product have resulted in an incredibly political and process-heavy environment where employees see each other, and not other companies or products, as their competition, and their energies and efforts are (mis-)focused accordingly. Until they address this, I believe Microsoft will be unable to be anywhere as efficient or agile as its competition.
He'd dedicated the company to developing scalable, human-like artificial intelligence. He'd dominate the computer industry AND get those who need aid by getting answers to all questions for which there are answers.
And if he dies before they can upload him into it, he wants everyone to know that they're to upload his secretary instead, and she can run the company.
.
What Microsoft needs now is a real visionary, not a phony one who built a company on borderline-illegal business practices.
I say, sure bring back Bill Gates. That would finish Microsoft off for good.
Really? Did Windows 7 suck without telling anyone?
All your database are belong to U.S.
seriously this is the guy who 10 years ago was preaching "consistent user experience" for mobile devices. he had vision to put windows on mobile devices but screwed it up buy trying to jam a desktop GUI on a tiny screen.
MS needs some fresh blood. Ballmer has been there almost as long as gates and paul allen founded the company. they need someone with no PC baggage to lead the company
Windows 7 is good now is not the time to push windows 8 so fast and the new GUI has to go. MS seems to have both the The Dilbert principle and The Peter Principle going for them. But they are so big that is does not get in the of big stuff like windows 7 but does make stuff like windows vista.
No.
Next question.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
...was stop running Microsoft.
History is littered with wildly successful startup companies turning into boring ones. It happened to Xerox. It happened to Apple. It happened to Microsoft. And it will happen to Google and Facebook too, to pick the current companies of the moment.
Gates was, I think, smart enough to realize this and found something more exciting to do with his time than run a boring office products company.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Companies can re-invent themselves: IBM, Apple for instance. That isn't usually the case though. Most companies have a life cycle and eventually decay and die. Nothing Bill Gates is likely to do will change that.
Note that I said "likely". There are things Bill Gates could do that would be brilliant and allow Microsoft to prosper and take over the world. I don't know what those things are and I'm betting that Bill Gates doesn't know either. ;-)
Microsoft has 90,000 employees. Apple has 50,000. Both founded in the mid 70s. People who think companies of this scale and maturity rise or fall based on their CEO have no idea how organizations work. Slashdot should not give attention to bloggers offering solutions which are simplistic, ignorant, and arrogant.
The problem with Microsoft is that it competes with every freaken tech company on the planet!
I read that as "every Frankentech company", which was confusing, because surely only Microsoft has achieved such a nefarious status.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Steven Wright
Just imagine it: "Developers
developers
developers..."
BillG was never even the architect of MS DOS/Windows success. That success was born from the cracking of the IBM PC's ROM BIOS. That is what made the clones possible and it was the clones that made Microsoft. Bill just went along for the ride. Gates' fabled aversion to ethics may well stem from his insecurities; he knows it was blind luck that made him the world's richest man.
The reason why Gates was so successful was not because he was an innovator, but because of countless acquisitions and the fact that he was able to get away with his unethical business practices for so long. It's how M$ gained its desktop monopoly. Which has since been eroding, not only because of the rise of Linux, Google, and Apple, but also because justice departments around the world have become more aware of how IT monopolies work, especially M$. Therefore, Gates can't come back and do it again with anything resembling the success that he had the first time around.
IBM is not the picture of gold in middle age. IBM is the picture of gold in the elderly years. IBM's business acumen makes steve job's heroics look tiny
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
WIth Linux and Unix variants (Apple, Android, Ubuntu) spreading out into the desktop space Microsoft's #1 main market share tool is gone. Lock-in.
Tool #2 is to buy-up the competition and kill it (Skype for Asterisk) thereby eliminating the possibility of any alternatives disrupting the Microsoft market space. This doesn't work so well with Open Source software. But that hasn't stopped M$ from trying.
Tool #3 is to FUD,FUD,FUD the bejeezes out of the competition until a false sense of reality is created/believed. This works well with FOSS and is the tack M$ has taken with regards to FOSS but they have not succesfully killed it off yet.
Microsoft has been an empire built on what ought to be illegal business tactics and it's *FINALLY* folding in on itself. Gates will not be back, at least publicly. He won't want to be at the helm when the place finally goes under in the next 5 years.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Most people have forgotten or are in denial about this. Gates does have excellent PR people. Microsoft's entire business model is based on leveraging their desktop monopoly. If that foundation erodes or becomes irrelevant, they are done. Gates built the business this way from the very start, and I doubt he has the vision to come up with something new.
Mr. Ballmer is the main issue. He needs to ask the BoD perform a search, announce his retirement and hire someone new. Preferably someone with "some" technical skill. Marketing types are less about utility and more about spin and fluff.
I say this as a MSFT stockholder.
Bringing Mr. Gates back is not the answer this company needs. He is doing much better things for humanity where he is.
Has he even been keeping up with new advances in tech or the business world? It seems to me that running Microsoft would require a a person who has put in a lot of effort to get and maintain a lot of key skills and with Bill Gates basically retired I would be surprised if he did this.
And I am not even sure that he ever had the skills to run the company that Microsoft has become, and I believe that after Gates left and Steve Ballmer took over the profits rose quite a lot so it is not like Gates was doing so good himself.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The original article and most commenters are completely missing the point. Anyone who has read "Who Moved My Cheese?" will understand that Microsoft has not adapted to disruptive technologies well. Bill Gates has no more vision than Steve Ballmer, Paul Allen, or Nathan Myhrvold when it comes to this fact. Here is a short list followed by one example each (because my time is better spent elsewhere):
-Microsoft's tactics of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish have been fairly useless against open source software. What worked against Netscape will not work with GPLed software.
-Microsoft's FUD tactics are no longer effective in the presence of the Internet. Their shills and lies are exposed quite often. For instance, running the original "Get The Facts" website on an OpenBSD server.
-Microsoft's cash cows are dying. People are starting to realize that they are being asked to pay for what they already have. Who really needs MS Office and their changing file formats, when LibreOffice is a viable competitor.
-Microsoft's political power is waning. They are reviled for their takeover of the ISO process.
-Microsoft's partners, such as Dell, Intel, and HTC are bailing in favor of Linux / Android.
-Microsoft is unable to adapt their software. Ever try running Windows on a netbook?
-Thanks to the Internet, Microsoft has been unable to enforce a pricing scheme on the entire planet. Why should a consumer in England pay more for a legitimate copy of Windows than a consumer in Egypt?
-Microsoft's proxies have been unable to successfully sue over copyright infringement matters. Good legal move though, since MS can't be countersued if they are not directly involved in (SCO) litigation.
-Microsoft can't afford to buy every technology that seems cool. MS can't fool all of today's best and brightest with a competition ( See Imagine Cup Rule "How will my entry potentially be used located here: http://www.imaginecup.com/about/imagine-cup-2011-official-rules ) or with an offer of employment ( Johnny Chung Lee )
-Microsoft can't close the door on other platforms. The open source community will just write around Skype codecs and create a compatibility layer (it happened with SAMBA).
-Microsoft can't stop copyright infringement of their software. What they call "piracy" is part of their business model. If all software was legit, MS would have a significantly lower market share.
-Microsoft has been ineffective in maintaining a quazi-police entity known as the BSA. Though they have pissed off lots of people ( Ernie Ball http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html ) in the process.
-Microsoft has a business model based on past practices. Online sales have lagged those of Apple, Google, Amazon, etc.
In the light of changing times, a new business model has emerged. Microsoft's founders still believe that they can litigate their way to profitability. When they are not fighting with each other over their empires, they are suing everybody else. I am not a lawyer but I understand that their are four areas of law that deal with "Intellectual Property": Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks, and Trade Secrets. Since copyright has failed to stop the competition (Linux / Unix) Microsoft has focused mainly on Patents.
Paul Allen is trying to extort profits based on all sorts of ridiculous patents. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703294904575385241453119382.html
So is Steve Ballmer. http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=6744 http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoftpri0/2015167534_htcpaysmicrosoft5foreveryandroidphone.html
So is Nathan Myhrvold. http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/12/intellectual-ventures-sues-nine-tech.html
As part owner of Intellectual Ventures, and Microsoft, Bill Gates is also suing.
Hell, even Steve Jobs is filing frivolous lawsuits: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Steve-Jobs-Sues-New-York-City-for-Copyright-Infringement-82656.shtml
So... the question comes down to this: What business or individual, given the facts, would want to continue doing business with Microsoft?
What amazes me is how many people buy into the CEO as savior idea. Microsoft is a many-headed hydra, no one person (especially a 50-60 year old white male with family legacy wealth already locked up) has the vision/skills/energy to overhaul it and make it something else.
Microsoft should be broken up. Apps & Servers, Operating Systems & Mobile, Gaming & Entertainment, with someone who is capable of providing a vision within those spheres and isn't burdened by monopoly lock-in requirements and ossified technology of their "partner".
It's certainly debatable whether the breakup makes sense along the lines above, or something else, but this seems workable.
Apps & Servers need no longer be tied to Windows OS -- Exchange for Linux/FreeBSD? Office for Linux?
OS fits mobile in that Mobile needs and OS and as we've seen with Apple, it's not hard to see iOS overtaking MacOS or at least overshadowing it, plus a new OS group would not be tied to some kind of corporate mandate to primarily be the basis for selling MS servers and apps.
Gaming and entertainment is the non-business business which is why it fits together and would allow such an entity to rebrand itself beyond the boring navy blue suit corporate image that probably helped doom Zune.
The question I have is, how long until Wall Street demands it?
what MS needs is Bill Cosby... now thats an OS I would buy,.... a 404 error would read "..oh noes, the beepin boppn' web lost your PAGE".
Basically, Microsoft is devouring itself from the inside out. Every team is competing with every other team, and this competitive factionalism has created an environment in which quality does not determine success. Personally, I think all they really need is a revolutionary corporate culture to re-hegemonize the factions into a coherent organization. I don't think it would be particularly difficult to accomplish, and I don't think it would take a new CEO - although Ballmer would have to at least be supportive of the project eventually.
Given a decent budget and a small team I could get it done within 3 years max. Anyone at MS wanna hire me?
http://newabandon.com/
Albeit a slightly desperate one, over Bill. An excerpt from the article reads:
"Someone recently asked me what it was like meeting Bill Gates, who I interviewed a few times back at Engadget. I said, I know it sounds like a cliché, but it is very easy, when you sit down with one, to tell that you're talking to a genius. As soon as Bill opens his mouth, you think: this person is on a different level than the rest of us. It can be kind of intimidating, but it can also be a little hypnotic if you let yourself get pulled into his vision. Yes, believe it or not, Bill Gates has his own Reality Distortion Field (and I mean that as a high compliment)."
I don't think it's too far a stretch of the imagination to picture the author frothing at the mouth while writing that little gem of literature one handed. That one paragraph is like a wank all on its own. First we have the foreplay - "Someone recently asked me what it was like meeting Bill Gates...", ooh getting warmed up! Then there's the main course of johnson beating that's on "...a different level". And finally, the reality distortion fieUUUuuh yeeeaah.
Far be it from me to suggest that if the person mentioned were Steve Jobs instead of Bill, everyone would have pointed this out already, but the article does read like an Ode to Apple with MS in its place.
It's a bit crap really.
Open source projects will have nothing to copy.
I kid, I kid.
But really - Microsoft doesn't need to go out of business.. they just need to accept the fact that they aren't the only game in town. They do a lot of research nowadays, which may or may not always pan out. But it helps to push technology. I'm not really into gaming, but Kinect seems to be a pretty interesting product. Sure, the Wii took the world by storm and was true innovation, and that likely is what led to the development of Kinect. Or maybe it was already in the works, who knows. But let them throw their piles and piles of money at research, and find out interesting things. Let them keep trying to improve their OS, and cramming their software down our throats... as a Linux user, I'm pretty immune to that. Except at work, and there it's business-use only, so it's Outlook/Communicator/GroupChat/Excel/Powerpoint/IE.. and I'm generally OK with that.
And yes, Gates has done a lot of great things with all his money. He didn't have to, so good for him and the rest of the world. But he hasn't really *sacrificed* anything. He has more money than he could ever hope to use. Percentage-wise, he can give away 99% of his net worth and still live quite comfortably. He's building his legacy, so his name carries on. I just don't think that makes him a great man. It just makes him a man so wealthy that he can give away more money than you or I will ever see in our lifetime. And the act of giving it away, or setting up a foundation in his own name to spend it, makes him great.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Microsoft is a drone cause and it would not matter if Billy Gates steps back it, it was dieing before he left.
Bill Gate's success was by cheating. The man was a true disaster for MS, Computing, and continues to this day. His work on killing mosquitoes, as well as trying to stop hurricanes is pure madness.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Gates could not control every aspect of the company. Remember his usability rants?
He knows what is needed, but there are too many project managers and fiefdoms and it's not a single company working towards a single goal. No Fortune 100 company could possibly be run by a single person. He gives up some control to people, they are expected to focus on that aspect.
In my mind, I would rather have the CEO finding problems with a product and complaining about it.
But that's not the point. The point is, so many things surprised Bill, and Steve is still stuck playing catch-up in so many different markets. They have lost their focus and now want to be everywhere, like Google. Except Google knows how to stay ahead of trends. Neither MS CEO knew how to drive that. The best thing for Microsoft is to hire a young guy, make the guy use everything Microsoft, from phones to cars (yes some run Windows), and give him the authority to call out problems. Bill is not the solution, just like Steve isn't.
While I don't like Ballmer, I fail to see what Bill G would do that is dramatically different.
They really need to start grooming younger blood for some future transition point, not at the squawking of some shareholders.
But really no CEO is going to change MS on dime and change it too what?
Ballmer actually scored a coup recently getting Nokia to switch to WinPhone, which may have saved windows mobile. He is also pushing windows 8 on ARM and will likely finally have a tablet strategy. Obviously late but changing CEOs won't speed it up at this point.
Instead of just a demand for a another body, what is it that Microsoft should be doing that it isn't?
Hmm... whether or not it is Bill or not, microsoft need to do something.
Apple are currently pushing things. Steve Jobs (like him or hate him) at least has his own clear vision of where he wants computing to go (you may or may not agree, but at least it is consistent - and plenty do appreciate jobs' vision). Steve Ballmer doesn't; microsoft are aimlessly following, copying and (generally missing the point of) other people's ideas.
They need some clear, coherent leadership and direction. At the moment they're just jumping on whatever bandwagon is currently doing the rounds, and often way too late and half-arsed.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Saying it was "malware proof", and it's far from that. They used the fake camoflage of "security-by-obscurity" and pulled the wool over millions of people's eyes who are now being afflicted with MacDefender and variants thereof. Lies don't save companies, they only destroy them when the lie comes out.
Back in the days when Bill G was the chief software architect, he was known for brutal meetings where he castigated engineers who weren't able to adequately defend their work. He had an overall vision for the PC-equipped universe through the 1990s, and that was informed by, and guided through, the software technology he understood best. So the key question one must ask in assessing whether he should come back focuses on his vision for the *next* ten years, and how that is informed by the technology he understands. He's not done a lot of work on mobile OSes and apps; by focusing on his foundation, he may not (yet) truly appreciate the challenges and forces that shape the mobile world that will be the major growth area in the next several years. Will Larry and Sergey bring a renewed vision to Google, in contrast to what Eric Schmidt was following? Is Google succeeding because it does many things well, or is it doing one thing *really* well (search) which allows them to expand into other areas (cloud apps, mobile OS)? Alan Mulally succeeded at Ford by simplification -- selling off ancillary businesses, and focusing the efforts and vision on specific, achievable goals. Steve Jobs is succeeding at Apple by relentless focus on his vision -- a walled garden for mobile devices, a premium user experience with premium prices and margins. Perhaps Bill G would take MS back to a simpler, focused vision; but is that what is needed? IBM reinvented itself to have a large services arm, as well as its HW and SW divisions -- a manageable level of complexity.
Microsoft announces it is closing its doors....
Windows Update Stops...no more updates; virus writers spring into action
Windows License Server Stops... no more windows installations can run. You cannot even move your existing "Property" to a new machine.
All those zunes probably self-destruct. All 2000 of them.
I guess unlocked site-license iso's would crop up to allow people to install the last available version.
All those planes, trains, cars, subs, destroyers, etc would have had their last update.
It would be interesting to model the implications as they percolate through society. Kind of like one of those "earth after mankind" movies where the plants and animals take over.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Remember when Google caught Bing stealing their search results? Thing is, Bing was only stealing the results people clicked on -- and I'd assume most people don't click on spam links on Google.
Is it possible the reason Bing has less spam is they have more of a human filter than a software filter?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Stop with the retarded titles. Even though this audience is obviously anti-MSFT, the title here is an extremely loaded question.
In all honesty, yes, Bill Gates is probably the only person that can really run Microsoft only if you want it to run in the anti-competitive manner it has since its inception. However, for the long term success of Microsoft, then all management under Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer need to be exorcised and an entirely new management team - at every layer - needs to take over - a team that would actually enable the company to work well with the FLOSS community, release stuff under GPL, etc - a team that would not be out to devour all competition but help make the company work with others to build standards instead of employing the infamous EEE methodology.
No, Bill Gates is not the leader for that. Neither is Ballmer. However, both of them still have enough influence to make it continue in its self-destructive, industry-destructive nature.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
I totally disagree with all the anti-Bill Gates rants here.
Let me see where MS was when Gates left? Oh yeah ...
1. IE owned 90% of the browser market
2. SQL Server was rapidly gaining marketshare over Oracle and DB2
3. WindowsCE aka Windows Mobile owned 90% of the smart phone market
4. Windows owned 95% of the desktop operating system market
5. Customers upgrading Windows/Office every 2-3 years during life cycling desktops.
6. MS was first with the MS tablet
Cons
1. XBOX lost 1 billion a quarter. Thats the only negative cost center under his leadership
Things were very good under Bill Gates
Today under Balmer
1. IE owns less than 50% of the browser market in North America
2. SQL Server is rapidly being replaced by MySQL for many internet/intranet sites
3. Windows Mobile owns only 6% of the market
4. Windows only owns 85% of the US market thanks to Apple. 10 years ago they had something like 3% market share rather than the 12 - 15%!
5. Customers are keeping and still buying WindowsXP and Office 2003 and refusing to upgrade if they life cycle to new desktops or not.
6. Ipads and now Andriod tablets are eating XP tablets for breakfast and took over the whole market
Pro
1.I think XBOX is now breaking even
So, in other words Microsoft is losing their existing monopoly slowly and every new market they are trying to get into is just a money losing division. Notice I did not even mention Linux up there. Apple and google, combined with MS incompentence for their existing monopolies are doing the work for us. The fact is MS already won the war over Apple and the Palm Pilot in the mobile wars. Now they are losing BAD and this is inexcusable if I were a shareholder. You can hate Bill Gates all you want for his business tactics, hence I chose his name back in 1999 as he was perceived as unstoppable then. Something needs to change
http://saveie6.com/
Did Warren Buffett die recently?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
So, Microsoft could change its fate if it started doing programs that do just one thing, and do it well? Who'd guess?
Rethinking email
...unless he's already done that.
My favorite Slashdot articles take the form, some guy has some opinion about something. He wrote an article stating the opinion. This article contains no original research, or even any information that is not well known. This person does not have any special expertise on the subject at hand. Why do we care what he thinks? Because he is a marginally successful blogger with an opinion about something. That's why.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
The business was built up on desktop and office app dominance. But now operatings systems are turning into commodities with the advent of virtualization/emulation/cross-platform frameworks and with widespread, sophisticated web standards. Applications are turning into commodities with the reverse engineering of formats and the advent of new standards.
Essentially, interoperability is bleeding the life out of Microsoft.
Microsoft's (current state of) livelihood is based on barriers; let them suffer. They won't die, not any time soon -- they make solid operating systems. They do make good products, despite all the security issues and bugs we've seen. But now that they've lost their stranglehold on the market they become just another player. They won't grow this big again based on being just another vendor.
This is what all those crazy advocates of "open standards" have been trying to achieve all this time. If all that griping about secret APIs and protocol pollution didn't make sense to you before, maybe it begins to make sense now.
Where Microsoft clamped down on diversity, it can no longer. And the gradual technological progress that Microsoft offered can now be replaced with the fertile offerings of a far wider sphere of operating systems and applications developers. Things like the Great Languish -- IE's stagnation for half a decade during what should have been a period of explosive growth for web technology -- are no longer possible.
I look forward to watching technology take huge strides, relative to what it had been doing under Microsoft's control.
If the time Bill spent at Microsoft didn't secure it's future, how is a return trip going to make the company immortal?
YOUR ANALYSIS IS INTERESTING STOP I THINK YOU RAISE A GOOD POINT STOP MOD PARENT UP STOP
(Lameness filter is lame. Lameness filter is lame. Lameness filter is lame. Lameness filter is lame. Lameness filter is lame. Lameness filter is lame. Lameness filter is lame. Lameness filter is lame. Lameness filter is lame. Lameness filter is lame. Lameness filter is lame.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Microsoft? "world's preeminent technology company" No! Lucas Electronics is. "The parts falling off this car, are of the finest British worksmanship"
Microsoft seems in the throes of a fully developed bout of Peter's principle (everyone promoted to their level of incompetence). Bringing back BG would not help that.
They have lost, perhaps temporarily, the edge they once had, because they do not know what to do in the post-PC era (tablets, readers, smartphones). Even though W7 is halfway decent, the platform is no longer the moneymaker it once was for developers. For once too, they cannot buy they way out so easily now by purchasing the smart new guy on the block, they cannot strongarm (haha) vendors, they are losing their most valued partners exclusive relationship (Intel, Dell, etc). Their developer tools are turning crappy (Visual Studio 2010 anyone?) and no one is really looking at them for direction.
Now Android is everywhere in that space. I wish this was really good news, but I'm not so sure.
IFF Gates decides to stop his assault on public education..
What a generous fascist he is, complaining about how state budgets are too drained while he charges ass tons to the state for his software that goes straight to privatizing our education system!
Down with philanthropists... Up with revolution!
This likely what would be necessary but it only delays the inevitable. In general, you can't perpetuate companies forever even thought they legally can. All companies have life spans and they are shorter than most people realize. The problem is that it's the vision, drive and ethics of the guy/gal at the top that solely define the success. You can't write that into a corporate procedure manual - it doesn't work. At best, you can be very, very, very careful about picking your successor and hope for the best. But usually that doesn't work either.
What some folks don't know is that Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard had to come back out of retirement to Hewlett-Packard 3 separate times to un-fuck what the folks they'd left in charge of their company had fucked up! This over a period of 20 years.
By the time the 4th need for their return came, both were already dead or incapacitated, and so the fuckage continued right through to spinning out Agilent, the original founding core products of the HP, and leaving the name "HP" with the computer/printer group which never had the basic ethics or drive of the old HP to actually deliver the brand value of HP.
And now you are seeing HP stumble financially and product/market-wise as well. They hitched their wagon to Intel and Microsoft, dumped the actual innovating technology and now, gee, surprise, they can't figure out how to compete with Apple like all their "low road" competitors can not - because they didn't keep up as it was seen to "too expensive" to do so. They "didn't get it" in terms of the HP Way. Not even a little bit.
MS has always been a fast follower (Geoffrey Moore)... not leading the market but getting in the market very quickly after the leader. With the iPhone that "fast follow" has turned into 4 long years... that's when Ballmer finally admitted that Win Mobile 5/6 was disaster and fired (or more precisely relocated) most of the management team and all the code was rewritten in Phone 7. that's just not viable in a fast follow scenario as ... if Phone 7 came out 1 or even 2 years later it would have kicked Apple's ass but now the it will take up years of ever to get to that place even with flawless execution from now on.
The first signs were with the whole VMware reaction about 5 years ago.... MS just hoped VMware would go away and how has an uphill battle with Hyper-V and System Center stack. If it took the queue that this was a massive change in the computing paradigm and reacted appropriately then the VMware battle would have been long over.
Currently MS has about 7-10 layers of management (in my case i have 8 people who separate me from Ballmer) that just bog things down in bureaucracy and political posturing and continual turf battles. Getting rid of 5 or so of these layers would make significant impact on the agility of the company. Of course with a billion dollars in profits coming in every couple of weeks this is hard to justify. And putting in someone like Sinofsky as CEO wouldn't make things much better. So I don't see any hope but a slow decline...
Humans callously wipe out all species which are not of obvious benefit to them. Human-like artificial intelligence is a doomsday scenario.
Piffle. This isn't the movies. An AI has no motivations we don't provide. It doesn't hate us or love us. It doesn't want to die, or survive. All it does is process information. We may be able to give AIs motivations, but these will be mixed, just as they are with any other species.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
We already have plenty of tools that vastly augment our intelligence; human level (strong-AI) is most often defined as being capable of sapience (i.e. wisdom as well as intelligence), which almost certainly implies motivation. I certainly didn't mean to imply that the AI's motivations would be significantly different from other species, ours included. Just the opposite, that they would tend to be the same. History is very clear: when two similar species co-exist they compete for resources till the weaker species is extinct. Given that the AI would have access to the sum of our knowledge, direct control over most of our infrastructure, and the ability to divide and evolve without physical constraint. It would almost certainly be the stronger species.
No, an AI's motivations would NOT be the same. Our motivations are a result of our origins as self-replicators in the organic chemical domain. A survival impulse is built in from the start. No such condition would exist in an artificial intelligence. Food, fear and reproduction, and all the secondary behaviors such as fashion, war or dominance displays; these are characteristics of organic self replicators and would be completely absent. The only time an AI would mirror our motivations will be when we tell them to, in order to further our own organic motivation agendas, of which an AI itself has none.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.