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Bill Gates to step down as chairman of Microsoft today [economictimes.indiatimes.com]The world’s richest man, Bill Gates, is all set to step down as the chairman of Microsoft on Friday.
The God of geeks, an inspiration to many a wannabe millionaires and a shrewd businessman, Mr Gates would always be remembered for the huge contribution that Microsoft did for spreading the IT revolution in the world.
Over 90% of the world’s desktops work on Microsoft Windows and almost all of the world’s word processing documents, spreadsheets, are created on Microsoft software.
Love him or hate him, there's no denying Bill Gates' impact on the tech world. Microsoft will be a different place without him. They've needed 3 people just to cover the work he used to do.
kudos Bill!
[edited by: bill at 1:48 pm (utc) on June 28, 2008]
Microsoft is still king of the hill.
You have to respect his achievements, people like him only come along once in a while.
This may be the end of Microsoft with that loon Ballmer free balling from now on. Its like checks with no balances.
The world’s richest man, Bill Gates
I thought Warren Buffet was the richest by now? Or is it Mukesh Ambani? Or Carlos Slim Helú? A Google query leaves me confused...
... I love to see him there when MS playing war against Google. Ballmer has a character, decisive man ... but not that good! MS needs a more strategic kinds of guy to balance out Ballmer who foreseen further.
I can't say that Bill has gotten to where he is now by being lazy. He's a shrewd businessman, but not an evil SOB like certain other folks in the biz (the ones that had less foresight ;)).
Enjoy your billions, and have a nice life!
And to add fun, the article is cited as "New Delhi".... well, well, well.....
And I have nothing against India, I have good friends in India, just it does not make sense.
Amazing life story.
This day we see a living legend of computing step off the playing field.
As you look back on your accomplishments and forward to what the future may hold, I hope one word comes to your mind: Cool.
Thank you for your many years of service to the computing industry and being a vital part of a revolution that make life better for so many.
-Commerce
He seems too young to retire yet, he must think that there are no more challenges within the computing industry anymore.
He'll be back.
With XP being officially out of date effective Monday, I think Microsoft has reached its pinnacle, and is now on the downward slide. Our favorite billionaire left at just the right time.
If there was no MS, We would have not been able to disscuss things here in this forum.
He is the boss :)
The world’s richest man, Bill Gates, is all set to step down as the chairman of Microsoft on Friday.
He's actually #3 as Warren Buffet and Carlos Slim are ahead of him. But I guess "the world's third richest man" isn't as catchy of a title.
Love him or hate him, without him and Microsoft the industry we know would be far from where it is today because MS was one of the first to bring out solid computer languages that worked and weren't so buggy you couldn't get the job done.
I had the first computer in my COUNTY in Kansas and it had Microsoft Basic in ROM on that TRS-80, then I got MS Fortran-80, the MS Assembler and more for the same machine, and when I switched to CP/M it was BASIC-80 and their compiler and Assembler all over again.
Heck, MS even made the Apple II useful with the Z-80 Softcard which I used with Microsoft Basic-80 no less.
All the other stuff at the time was buggy beyond belief and there were people needing real business solutions and the only product that functioned well enough to run an actual business was built by Microsoft.
Other than that your only options were either real expensive, such as IBM mini's and mainframes, or a joke like CBASIC or the original barely hobbling along incarnation of things like dBase.
While people may complain about bugs in MS products I can tell you from first hand experience of 28 years using various products that MS were always some of, if not, the best of breed.
It's easy for people to slam a company when it's all they know, but I've seen the horror of the alternatives and it wasn't great.
Give him his due, Mr. Gates and his company almost single-handedly got us this far and created a certain level of software quality we've all come to expect which really didn't exist outside of the realm of MS in the early days.
Now it's up to the rest of us to keep it moving forward.
I salute Bill Gates!
Good job Sir, well done.
If there was no MS, We would have not been able to disscuss things here in this forum.
Not only am I writing this using a computer with no Microsoft technology, but I suspect the computer running the forum is Linux-based too!
I wonder where we'd all have been if Microsoft never existed.
I recently read Rick Chapman's "In Search of Stupidity". It's a rip-take of a book on business which took 10 successful businesses and tried to identify the factors that made them successful; its truth value dipped somewhat when the 10 businesses they'd looked at had all spectacularly "crashed" in the years after publication.
Instead, Rick looks at software companies [Microsoft being the only company to feature top 10 by revenue for the 80s and the 90s] , and propounds the theory that the software companies that survive are simply those that don't make hugely stupid decisions, rather than those with virtuous properties. I found it a good primer on the age of software back in the 90s.
My point though is that Microsoft in my view has done nothing innovative for the world - and their success is a result of shrewd business tactics and marketing, and that they have not made company-busting bad decisions like the other players in the market.
> Thanks for making life interesting and keeping us IT people employed fixing the problems with your systems. :)
Time better spent solving humanity's problems rather than Bill's?
My point though is that Microsoft in my view has done nothing innovative for the world
That would be incorrect as their software was more solid than any of the other junk out there at the time for many years. If SQA is an innovation, they did a decent job of it considering the size, scope and breadth of all their product lines.
Having been a former Lotus engineer I could give you some major insights into why MS killed them off as I was there at ground zero watching it happen. It was a lot of internal politics, poor engineering and the arrogance of Lotus thinking they had a lock on the spreadsheet market that would accept their sub par products such as the fist 1-2-3 release on Windows which was their undoing. The MS Excel product by comparison was far superior and had absolutely nothing to do with MS owning windows, it was the engine that ran 1-2-3 that was too slow, all internal software, all Lotus, all crap.
Same thing happened to WordStar and then WordPerfect and of course Lotus' AmiPro, all had the same fate.
However, you can look at companies like MacroMedia and Adobe, now the same company, which never dropped the ball, never sat and whined about MS, they just kept rolling out superior products year after year.
MS raised the bar and those companies that could meet the challenge are still doing well and those that couldn't are footnotes in Wikipedia articles.
Bill Gates was very shrewd and will be sorely missed in this industry.
All I'm saying is that they have reached their peak and are now slowly going downhill. Yes, 90% of computers run Windows, but open-source platforms (Linux) are slowly taking over.
Bill Gates was very shrewd and will be sorely missed in this industry.
Over 90% of the world’s desktops work on Microsoft Windows and almost all of the world’s word processing documents, spreadsheets, are created on Microsoft software.
That said, why does Vista off the shelf cost 200 quid? Why does Office cost 400?
Although, yes he is a good bloke, and yes MS developed some good stuff, and yes I agree with the positive comments in this thread. I can't help feeling that the software is a rip off at those prices. For me, they can't justify those prices considering they sell so many millions of copies.
He's used his monopoly to cash in, and that's where his billions have come from.
He seems too young to retire yet
I salute him and his efforts.
And those people who do not understand the impact Bill Gates have made, needs to understand the "Butterfly Effect". Well you might be using your computer with totally MS free products, however you might not be writing here or be in this line of work, if MS was not there. With its enormous expansion and popularity all over the world - Bill Gates has literally touched and impacted more life than almost any other person in the history (from the business point of view atleast).
The MS Excel
One of the Wonders of the World. I admire folks that stand behind it.
cost
This can be understood only when grasp what's all involved into it, including MS's daycare. OS is something that gives a base for everything else and the development of it is much more complex than of a single product. In regards of products like MS Office, what would one say for AutoCAD and its price of 5k? Or the price of already mentioned Adobe products?
They are all great products and world is using them a lot because they WORK!
That said, why does Vista off the shelf cost 200 quid? Why does Office cost 400?
It's a huge financial undertaking and those that haven't been in software development have no clue what it really takes to design, build and ship a product worldwide.
Let's see, to give some insight, I used to run a small development team within a company that cost over $1M+ in payroll a year (10 people, so it was a long time ago) and there were 4 other groups in the company. Not to mention QA, Tech Support, Pubs (documentation), Localization (language support), Marketing, Sales, etc. plus management with over 250 people total on a SINGLE cross platform product. There's a lot more involved than just employees too like rent, equipment, software, etc. but you get an idea of the scope of the costs of development.
How many $400 copies of anything do you think it takes to pay for 250 people a year to continue to build and maintain a product?
Most people only pay maybe $99 for an upgrade after the initial product purchase, so how many upgrades do you think it takes to pay 250 people a year?
Plus, the retail price isn't what the company earns, I'm not sure what the markup is these days but software makers ship to distributors that ship to retail outlets and everyone along the way takes a cut so that $99 upgrade may only net the software maker $50.
Now imagine you have that a company with more than one product, like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. and the whole situation scales bigger and bigger.
That's why it's $400 for office.
Microsoft does an amazing job of managing all of those products and keeping them fully integrated with each other and releasing everything together, it's truly amazing.
[edited by: incrediBILL at 3:44 am (utc) on June 29, 2008]
Yes, there are preachers for Open Source software that believe everything should be free, but after having spent several years doing work for no salary (for charities) and having to live without even life's basics as a result, I'd love to see these preachers quit their jobs and do work for no pay to see what it's like. Actions speak louder than words.
Much of the Open Source software I've tried is terribly buggy, there is zilch support, and once the creators decide it's no fun living off McDonalds seven days a week, it stops being updated.
It's a sad day when Bill Gates leaves Microsoft. He is one amazing person and the fact that he is leaving his company to work on charitable efforts underlines what a remarkable gentleman he is.
I've readily moved everything over to Mac and Linux. I just do not like the Windows platform anymore. I think it peaked with Windows 98 & 2000. After that, everything went down. Anyone remember Windows ME? No doubt though, the chairman will be missed. probably most by the stock holders. Leaving that nut case still in charge is amazing. Cannot believe Gates and Allen (which own together close to 20% of the company's stock still) with choose Ballmer as their CEO. Doubtful that Gates will give up the Chairmanship though. I give it maybe two years before Ballmer is reduced back to President and COO; if not forced out. Heck, Ballmer had the opportunity to buy Google in 2001. The first of many dropped balls.
[edited by: Compworld at 7:02 pm (utc) on June 29, 2008]
