Most Importantly - has almost turned creating startups into an assembly line.
Way more importantly though, PG hasn't turned creating startups into an assembly line. The closest thing to an assembly line he's got is converting strong founders into startups, and still the majority 'fail'. For him to continue that at Microsoft, Microsoft would need to attract strong founders consistently and there's no reason to suspect they can. My suspicion is Microsoft has about as many billion-dollar units as PG has billion-dollar investments, so the actual value is unclear.
Don't get me wrong, PG has a proven history in startups, technology, investments, he writes well, he seems incredibly smart.. but I don't think he nor Microsoft think he has the qualities of a Microsoft CEO.
They lack vision, a guy who has vision himself and can herd cats (visionaries) is the best thing for them. PG's about as good as anyone at that.
Edit: To be fair, Dropbox beat Microsoft to making cloud services popular. Microsoft do have a successful web services sector now though. Also I guess Reddit count for social, they have a very solid niche - but they wouldn't benefit under a company like Microsoft. They admitted it was a miracle Conde Nast didn't destroy their brand.
