Friday, 16th June 2006
Bill Gates to leave M$
It was announced yesterday that starting July 2008 Bill Gates was to leave his day-to-day role at Microsoft so he could devote more time to charitable works. I wonder how much this will affect Microsoft. Will the company ever be the same again? I doubt it because Gates is a cultural icon who cannot be easily replaced. His name is almost synonomous with Microsoft. Ray Ozzie who takes over the role of chief technical officer is smart but not in the same class as Bill Gates. Now that Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates has started his two-year goodbye from a day-to-day role at the company, Many in the tech industry believe that it is time for CEO Steve Ballmer to set a resignation date, too.
Joel Spolsky of Joel on Software Fame wrote his first review on BillG. A quote from the article.
Bill Gates was amazingly technical. He understood Variants, and COM objects, and IDispatch and why Automation is different than vtables and why this might lead to dual interfaces. He worried about date functions. He didn't meddle in software if he trusted the people who were working on it, but you couldn't bullshit him for a minute because he was a programmer. A real, actual, programmer
Only time will tell what lies in store for Microsoft. One thing is for sure and that is, Microsoft faces difficult challenges over the next few years. Apple is firing on all cylinders. Linux continues to come on strong on a variety of fronts. Google is firing on all cylinders. Silicon Valley is rocking again (Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, Cisco, and tons of little companies are hiring). Firefox is getting downloaded in the tens of millions. Tough times it seems.
Posted by Nikhil on Friday, 16th June 2006 in TechnoBabble | Humour | Events