Unless it is guaranteed Microsoft will climb out of the hole it is in when Gates gets on top, it can only hurt him in terms of pressure and imago. He should stay in the think tank and consulting group, far away from anything really mission critical. No, Gates deserves to be remembered as-is and not as a broken, old man who desperately tried to save an old legacy company to the day he died.
It will take some time (say years) to get Microsoft with Gates back on track again and the end result is unclear. Will it improve or will all his effort vanish in vain? Does he even know how to do it, after all those years? No, he currently has enough disposable income to do what he does. In fact, he can triple his efforts and he will still not run dry in his life time. It is hardly about money anyway, saving the world takes time - negotiating takes time. Money puts it in fifth gear but bureaucracy and human psychology can only change this fast.
Bill Gates hasn't got Steve jobs's ego,and he hasn't got anything to prove.
The days where PCs took over from minicomputers, and where Microsoft was the disruptor, are long gone. It isn't clear if Gates or anyone else can make Microsoft disruptive again.
That's too bad, because one of the few sources of truly novel work in operating systems is Microsoft Research.
For example, I bet that Bill Gates would have foreseen the iPhone as a really big threat from day one and we would now be marveling at one of his famous internal angry emails that changed Microsoft's direction (leaked because of a new anti-trust suit, no doubt). Bill Gates is no Steve Jobs, but he's a heck of a strategist and even now I don't think there's anybody that wants him as an opponent.
For me, it's not sad that Bill Gates left Microsoft. They were too big, too powerful, too eager to eat the launch of other companies. The industry is better off without him at Microsoft's helm.
Just like he foresaw the Internet as a big threat, right?
Somebody has to be the leader in the voice driven interface, as always on communications in cars become the norm, users are going to run into the wall that is Siri, Google Now, Samsung S Voice, and the OEM platforms behind them. They just aren't that capable, they can't really deliver voice results to simple questions, or effectively control navigation. They can't do full queries of contacts or calendars, or integrate with other systems. They are limited by the bandwidth of the company building them. Microsoft was always about empowering developers to create software, and voice is a platform with no category killer. There are no good APIs for voice input, no good app store for delivering small pieces of functionality to expand the ability of a voice interface, and no real work is going into building one. The smartphone is seen as a device with a focus on interaction through the screen, but it is an audio-based device, a telephone, and it makes sense for the wide capabilities of it's applications to be available through a hands-free interface.
Where's the disconnect at Microsoft that allows this to happen? They have the knowledge in-house, that's a given.
People seem to forget but MSFT's stagnation started under Bill's reign. It just continued under Ballmer.
Bill was the one that 'vowed to crush Google' by investing $2B in R&D in search and web services.
We see how much that worked.
I think they should get someone that can lead them into the web services future - not someone that is deeply attached to the desktop.
Bill Gates's legacy is pretty secure, and obviously he's not hurting for cash. And it seems as if he's in a more humanitarian mission at this stage in his life. But if there were anything that could lure him back, my guess is that it would be the goal of keeping Microsoft relevant -- making it into a 100+ year company.
Gates' time has passed. I'm sure any insights he has had over the last few years have been passed on to Ballmer. Microsoft needs to change. Gates would bring more of the same.
Steve Jobs had a comeback Jesus would be jealous of, but he also founded/built up TWO rockstar level companies Pixar and Next Computing in the ten years being kicked out of Apple. Bill Gates is just doing charity work... he's out of the game.
Another choice, PG. It would be refreshing to genuine tech talent at the top instead of another career climber. PG could turn Microsoft into a giant startup factory and literally explode the market cap to trillions. Microsoft investors need to seriously consider this option.
All the above listed are the biggest names in tech today. There are others, Gates, Ellison, Zuckerburg, but I don't consider them as talented as the ones I listed.
Has that ever been Microsoft's goal?
If microsoft was to fund 500 internal startups tomorrow, what's the chance any of them would even produce any real revenue? Out of the thousands of startups that are active today, how many of them have even the remote potential to generate 1b in revenue, or even be successful? This isnt even considering how maintaining 500 internal startups would be a micromanagement nightmare. How can you tell if someone is worth keeping? With the failure rate of startups so high, does that mean you should fire startup cells when they fail?
The resources that would be used to maintain such a division would probably be much better used focusing on one new, amazing product - backed with loads of market research and QA. You cant ship that kind of product with 5 developers and a years worth of hotpockets.
http://www.amazon.com/On-Lisp-Advanced-Techniques-Common/dp/...
Most Importantly - has almost turned creating startups into an assembly line.
