Charles RB
06-19-2008, 02:59 AM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7461783.stm
Bill Gates ends his full-time job at Microsoft on a Friday afternoon and the company opens for business after the weekend as if nothing has changed.
At least, that is how Gates' successors want to play it.
The 'transition', as it is called inside the company, was announced two years ago.
On the face of it, the only difference after 27 June will be that Gates will be non-executive chairman rather than executive chairman, spending just one day a week on Microsoft business.
The new leaders, none much younger than Gates himself, mix warm tributes to their founder with reassurances that all will be fine without him.
...
Gates' departure has a symbolic value that no amount of PR planning can avoid.
Microsoft staffers who don't know the official company line happily admit that "Bill is Microsoft". And outsiders agree:
"No-one speaks Microsoft, lives Microsoft, embodies Microsoft as Bill Gates does," says Charlene Li, from consultants Forrester Research.
"What they're going to lose is that founding focus, and the ability to rally the troops."
Gates' achievement since setting up Microsoft in 1975 has been world-changing.
He has all but accomplished his famous mission statement, to put "a computer on every desk and in every home" - at least in developed countries.
The really interesting-slash-ominous stuff, however, is:
But deep in the psyche of the company is a fear that just as IBM defined the first computer generation and was displaced by Microsoft, so Microsoft could find itself part of the technology infrastructure rather than at the cutting edge.
And the size and solidity of its profits offer no protection against that.
Ray Ozzie admits Microsoft, like other technology giants, always needs to fear "two guys in a garage" who come up with something new and move fast.
Some say that has already happened.
"Much as IBM was the defining company in the seventies," says technology writer John Battelle, "and Microsoft in the nineties, I think that this is Google's decade."
Microsoft's recent attempt to buy Yahoo! is a sign that behind the soothing mood music from company HQ is a sense of urgency about the future.
...
Gates himself is keen to keep the Yahoo! bid in perspective, pointing out that if it had been successful it would have represented just 15% of the value of Microsoft.
But it would still have been Microsoft's biggest acquisition, and the bid itself drew attention to the company's poor results from its online businesses.
A botched Yahoo! bid has been, in many ways, the worst possible way of marking Gates' departure. The internet is a high profile part of the company's business to which Gates himself has devoted considerable time and energy.
Bill Gates ends his full-time job at Microsoft on a Friday afternoon and the company opens for business after the weekend as if nothing has changed.
At least, that is how Gates' successors want to play it.
The 'transition', as it is called inside the company, was announced two years ago.
On the face of it, the only difference after 27 June will be that Gates will be non-executive chairman rather than executive chairman, spending just one day a week on Microsoft business.
The new leaders, none much younger than Gates himself, mix warm tributes to their founder with reassurances that all will be fine without him.
...
Gates' departure has a symbolic value that no amount of PR planning can avoid.
Microsoft staffers who don't know the official company line happily admit that "Bill is Microsoft". And outsiders agree:
"No-one speaks Microsoft, lives Microsoft, embodies Microsoft as Bill Gates does," says Charlene Li, from consultants Forrester Research.
"What they're going to lose is that founding focus, and the ability to rally the troops."
Gates' achievement since setting up Microsoft in 1975 has been world-changing.
He has all but accomplished his famous mission statement, to put "a computer on every desk and in every home" - at least in developed countries.
The really interesting-slash-ominous stuff, however, is:
But deep in the psyche of the company is a fear that just as IBM defined the first computer generation and was displaced by Microsoft, so Microsoft could find itself part of the technology infrastructure rather than at the cutting edge.
And the size and solidity of its profits offer no protection against that.
Ray Ozzie admits Microsoft, like other technology giants, always needs to fear "two guys in a garage" who come up with something new and move fast.
Some say that has already happened.
"Much as IBM was the defining company in the seventies," says technology writer John Battelle, "and Microsoft in the nineties, I think that this is Google's decade."
Microsoft's recent attempt to buy Yahoo! is a sign that behind the soothing mood music from company HQ is a sense of urgency about the future.
...
Gates himself is keen to keep the Yahoo! bid in perspective, pointing out that if it had been successful it would have represented just 15% of the value of Microsoft.
But it would still have been Microsoft's biggest acquisition, and the bid itself drew attention to the company's poor results from its online businesses.
A botched Yahoo! bid has been, in many ways, the worst possible way of marking Gates' departure. The internet is a high profile part of the company's business to which Gates himself has devoted considerable time and energy.