"Bill Gates: PC Genius, Internet Fool"
Toshifumi Kitamura / AFP / Getty
"Bill Gates, who for years was the richest man in the world, is also one of the smartest. But even he couldn't figure out how to beat the Internet-how to transition his grand old monopoly software company, Microsoft, into a business that thrives on the Net. And so he begins his retirement today from Microsoft as the PC era's biggest winner, and the Web era's most spectacular casualty.
It's pretty well known by now that the Internet, for all its world-flattening glory, is a destroyer of businesses without parallel. How many companies roared along for decades, minting money, only to see the Internet eat their business plans? We live in a media age and the media industry is Exhibit 1 in the murder trial. Newspapers, magazines, music, television, movies — all of the traditional models are dead or dying as bloodied moguls everywhere scramble to survive. But the Net has brutalized old-line business across most industries-retail, tele-com, financial services and the technology industry itself, is, ironically, no exception.
Few companies not born on the Web have figured out how to thrive there. (Apple, with its post-PC iPhone could be the shining exception.) As Gates turns his attention full time to philanthropy, I wonder what will be left of the great company he founded, Microsoft, by the time Gates picks up a Nobel Prize for Peace. Clearly, a business with $26 billion in cash reserves isn't exactly at death's door. And Microsoft continues to be enormously profitable, thanks to its operating system monopoly. Thanks, that is, to Gates's genius.
But big, complicated operating systems such as Microsoft's latest, Vista, aren't necessary in the Web Age, where applications are delivered for free and on demand — often without users even being aware of it. The Net is where the money is, and it's the one place that Gates-like so many others-hasn't left his mark.
He saw the Internet missile coming of course. But by the time he sounded the alarm, it may have been too late. (Read his famous "Internet Tidal Wave" memo, sent to the troops May 26, 1995, over a year after the browser company known as Netscape launched.
Gates was always more accustomed to being a disruptor than being disrupted. At the age of 25, he licensed a primitive operating system, PC-DOS, to IBM for $80,000 rather than sell it outright, a move that's usually ranked as one of the Greatest Business Moves of All Time. Gates figured that many PC makers would copy IBM's open architecture, and make their own PCs; they'd need to license an operating system, too. PC-DOS soon became MS-DOS, an operating system for all IBM clones, and Microsoft was on its way to becoming the one thing that billions of PCs around the world would have in common.
From 1980 until 1994, when Mosaic/Netscape emerged, Gates played a scratch game, parlaying his little "Micro- Soft" company into an empire that defined the PC Era. By opening up Windows to third-party developers, he created a platform that made many developers rich, and built out an eco-system that put a desktop in almost every home.
But there is no greater blinder than success, even for a visionary like Bill Gates. By the time he realized the tech world was quickly shifting from PCs to the Network that connected them, his moves were limited. A fiercely competitive man, he reached for the obvious lever, and attempted to tie the late-starter Internet Explorer browser to the monopoly he created, the Windows operating system. The move was mercilessly effective and beat back rival Netscape, which immediately saw its commanding share of the browser market disappear.
It was also illegal. With Netscape crying foul, the Feds successfully pressed an anti-trust suit against Microsoft. The PR damage-Gates acting insolent on the witness stand, showing a convenient a lack of memory about key business decisions-turned out to be short lived and is all but forgotten as Gates remakes himself as a philanthropist. But the court's decree forced the great general to march cautiously into the future. He may have won the Battle of the Browser but he would start to see major casualties in the Internet War.
Gates built or bought all manner of things to conquer the Net, but few managed to be anything more than also-rans in the innovation game. In 1995, he launched a gated online service, MSN; a Web-based email client, Hotmail was purchased in 1997; a search engine, MSN Search, launched in 1998 using a third-party product as its core; a chat client, Messenger was released in 1999; and last year it bought an online advertising platform, aQuantive and became a significant, though minority investor, in social network Facebook.
While Microsoft is exponentially larger than Google — number 44 on the Fortune 500 list versus Google at 150 — Google's web business (advertising mostly) is growing so fast, it's poised to rival Redmond's operating system revenues by 2010. And that's the problem. As more and more of what Windows does moves up into the cloud-into Google's always-on, give-'em-whatever-they-want-for-free servers-what becomes of the company that Gates built?
The smartest move Gates could make right now is to get out of the way. (Steve Ballmer should, too; pursuing Yahoo is a pretty good hint that his master plan for the Web is, like Gates's was, to try to buy Microsoft's way into the game.) There are many smart and talented people inside Microsoft who know what to do. (Blow up Vista and abandon its next iteration, Windows 7, and start from scratch, is but one excellent idea.
That will probably work. And if not? Maybe we'll see Gates return, a Nobel in his pocket, ready to wrestle with the Web once again."
- time:http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1818989,00.html
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CBC British Columbia - Jun 29 1:32 PM
"For Bill Gates in Canada, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
"The chairman of Microsoft Corp. steps down from his day-to-day activities on Monday, leaving behind — in Canada at least — a checkered legacy.
On the plus side, the software company Gates started in his basement in 1975 with his friend Paul Allen got an easier ride in Canada than in many other countries. After Microsoft's growth into a multinational behemoth, it became the target of — and continues to be the target of — multiple antitrust investigations and lawsuits. The United States, the European Union, Japan and now China have all at one time or another launched antitrust actions against Microsoft. Canada, where Microsoft expanded in 1985, has never really gone after the company.
Of course, many of Canada's antitrust concerns with Microsoft were addressed through proxy, with the WordPerfect battle being the best example.
The word-processing software, a competitor to Microsoft's Word, was created in 1982, then shuttled from owner to owner, eventually ending up in the hands of Ottawa-based Corel Corp. in 1996. Corel's ambitious chief executive officer at the time, Michael Cowpland, thought he could do a better job than WordPerfect's previous owner, Waltham, Mass.-based Novell Inc., in going head-to-head with Microsoft.
Corel, however, didn't have any more luck than Novell. Cowpland, who left Corel in 2000 after weathering an Ontario Securities Commission investigation and who now runs mobile content provider Zim Corp., says WordPerfect's failure to crack the market was the result of predatory practices by Microsoft.
"Corel would have done a lot better if they hadn't been using antitrust techniques," he says. "They'd literally call up manufacturers and say, 'If you're shipping Corel Office then you won't have any Windows to go with it.' That made it pretty difficult to get significant penetration."
'Corel would have done a lot better if they hadn't been using antitrust techniques.' —Michael Cowpland, former CEO of Corel
Novell held a long-term grudge and launched an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft in 2004, eight years after selling WordPerfect to Corel for $115 million US. Novell said that Microsoft, led by Gates, conspired to kill off WordPerfect in 1994 by delaying providing the data that would have allowed the software to run smoothly on Windows 95. Microsoft's obstructive tactics, detailed in e-mails from Bill Gates, led to WordPerfect's market share declining to 10 per cent at the time of its sale to Corel, from 50 per cent in 1990, Novell said in its lawsuit.
Microsoft, which declined to make executives available for this story, has denied the charges and says Novell's own mismanagement led to WordPerfect's downfall. The lawsuit continues, with the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year denying an appeal by Microsoft to quash the case.
Corel, meanwhile, was kept aloft by a $135-million US investment from Microsoft in 2000, a move analysts saw as an attempt to stave off yet another antitrust suit from the Ottawa company. Microsoft was seen as benefiting from the appearance of having a competitor in the word-processing market.
Cowpland believes Microsoft and Gates have learned from their numerous antitrust battles, and have corrected their behaviour somewhat in recent years. The company is also facing new, stronger competition in the form of Google Inc. and open-source software — both factors it cannot combat with its dominance in operating systems.
Gates, meanwhile, is "a very nice guy" in person, Cowpland says, but otherwise he's a shark.
"When it comes to business, he's renowned for winner-take-all," he says.
Also on the plus side, Gates's lasting legacy in Canada is likely to be tied to his help in establishing the country as a major recruitment centre for multinational technology firms. Thomas Coleman, dean of the school of mathematics at the University of Waterloo, says Gates has been instrumental in attracting students and teachers to the institution, both through his personal visits and Microsoft's hiring practices.
The Redmond, Wash.-based company hired about 60 University of Waterloo graduates last year and often averages at least 30 a year. Gates's visits to Waterloo over the past few years, the latest coming last February, have also attracted a good deal of media attention, which helped the Ontario city and university establish their credibility as a high-tech hub.
"We're one of their biggest, if not the biggest, recruitment centres in the world," Coleman says. "His visits put a real spotlight on what we're doing here in Waterloo."
Gates also seems to enjoy himself in Waterloo, Coleman says, where he is "treated like a rock star." On his last visit, he obliged a group a students looking for his autograph, something he doesn't normally do.
"The Microsoft people told me afterward that he rarely has time to do that, so it was nice to see," Coleman says. "He obviously had a good time here in Waterloo. The last time he was here, he told the students he would come back to visit even after he steps down from Microsoft."
Anti-Microsoft sentiment at universities
Still, even within universities, the company is dogged by questions surrounding its business practices. It has often tried to combine research grants with requirements to use its software, a fact that has stirred up anti-Microsoft sentiment among some students and faculty.
"That hasn't gone over well," Coleman says.
Many of the Waterloo recruits go down to work in Redmond, but an increasing number may end up staying in Canada as Microsoft has recently run into problems with U.S. immigration. Gates's calls on the U.S. government in recent years to increase the number of skilled foreign worker visas it issues have fallen on deaf ears, forcing Microsoft to expand its presence in Canada. The company last year opened a development centre in Richmond, B.C., a two-hour drive from Redmond, that now employs 230 people, bringing its total Canadian employment to 950.
With the United States continuing to clamp down on immigration, the trend of limiting foreign worker visas and Microsoft's growth in Canada is expected to continue, at least until a change in U.S. government.
"It's much easier for Microsoft to draw upon Canadian talent than try to fight U.S. immigration," says IDC Canada software analyst Kevin Restivo.
When it comes down to the actual products Microsoft makes — software — it's difficult to gauge Canada's importance to the company, however. The Richmond centre does not have responsibility for the development of any specific product and Canadian employees instead work on developing products in global teams.
One notable exception, however, is the Child Exploitation Tracking System, which was developed in 2004 at the request of the Toronto police. The free software is now used by law-enforcement agencies around the world to combat online child exploitation.
Still, the lack of obvious made-in-country products means some consider Gates's ultimate Canadian legacy will be like that of many other technology firms: the simple establishment of a sales and distribution centre here.
"Canada is a branch-plant economy," Restivo says. "The tech companies operating here are inevitably based elsewhere."
"Bill Gates bids a teary farewell to Microsoft"
By Daisuke Wakabayashi
30 June 2008 07:19AM
Tags: bill | gates | bids | teary | farewell | microsoft
"Bill Gates said a teary goodbye on Friday to Microsoft Corp, the software maker he built into the world's most valuable technology company based on the ambitious goal of placing a computer on every desk and in every home.
He leaves his full-time executive role at Microsoft, which he co-founded with childhood friend Paul Allen in 1975, to focus on his philanthropic organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest charity, funded in part by his vast fortune.
At an event at Microsoft's headquarters campus here, Gates, who will become a non-executive chairman and work part-time, joined Chief Executive Steve Ballmer on stage to deliver a short speech and field questions from employees.
"There won't be a day in my life that I'm not thinking about Microsoft and the great things that it's doing and wanting to help," said Gates, who wiped away tears as the group of employees rose to give him a standing ovation.
Ballmer, a Harvard University classmate who joined Microsoft at Gates' behest, got choked up as he tried to describe Gates' impact on the company and society at large.
"There's no way to say thanks to Bill. Bill's the founder. Bill's the leader," said Ballmer. "We've been given an enormous, enormous opportunity and it was Bill that gave us this opportunity."
Gates will leave behind a life's work developing software to devote energy to finding new vaccines or to microfinance projects in the developing world. He will still work on special technology projects at the company.
Once the world's richest man, Gates' personal fortune has been estimated at about US$58 billion, according to Forbes Magazine. He has slipped to third place, behind investor and good friend Warren Buffett and Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim.
ONE BILLION AND COUNTING
Ballmer spoke about how he contemplated quitting Microsoft a month after joining the company and returning to Stanford University business school. Bill passionately implored him to stay and laid out the vision of the company.
"This is what Bill said to keep me. 'You don't get it! You don't get it! You don't get it! We're going to put a computer on every desk and in every home,'" said Ballmer.
There are currently more than one billion PCs worldwide, according to research firm IDC.
Gates and Ballmer recalled the many steps Microsoft took to evolve from a fledgling start-up to a company of more than 90,000 employees making everything from video game consoles to computer software.
The pair remembered the battles with computer industry titan International Business Machines Corp's , an early partner turned rival when it rolled out a competing operating system to Microsoft's flagship software, Windows.
"We went toe to toe with the biggest, most powerful computer company in the world and we beat them," said Ballmer.
The 52-year-old Gates said the company had made "a mistake" not recognizing earlier how Web search and online advertising -- businesses dominated by another start-up turned powerhouse, Google Inc -- could transform the software industry.
However, he cautioned skeptics not to count out Microsoft.
"I love that kind of thing where people are underestimating Microsoft," said Gates. "Yes, we make mistakes and we know it, but we come back and learn from those things. A lot of our best work is the result of that."
After 33 years, Gates said he sometimes finds himself lost in thought, driving to Microsoft without realizing it. He also said he will move out of his corner office -- making way for Ballmer -- into a smaller area one floor below.
"I am sure there will some day next month where I start thinking about software and I will start driving here to Microsoft, go up to the fifth floor and walk down to my office and they will be remodeling it," said Gates with a chuckle.
"In fact, they were wondering if I was leaving at four or five today, so they could get started on that."
Go to Reuters MediaFile http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/ for more excerpts from Gates' last day."
Photos
Go to Reuters MediaFile http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/ for more excerpts from Gates' last day.
Copyright 2008 Reuters.
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Lun, 30 Iun 2008, 08:52
Actualizat: acum 10 minute
Pensionarul Bill Gates
29 Iun 2008
Iulian Enache"Bill Gates nu pleacă nicăieri. Îl veţi găsi în continuare în spatele deciziilor strategice ale Microsoft. Îl veţi găsi de câte ori veţi deschide calculatorul.
Atunci când Bill Gates s-a lăsat de Harvard pentru a înfiinţa Microsoft, nu avea decât două opţiuni: putea să ajungă o lichea numită William Henry Gates III, întreţinută de părinţi, cărora să le toace banii sau putea să ajungă Bill Gates. Fondatorul şi preşedintele celei mai mari companii de software din lume, responsabil pentru cel mai răspândit sistem de operare din lume, unul dintre cei mai mari filantropi ai lumii. Într-o perioadă în care averile companiilor de tehnologie din lume creşteau cu miliardele peste noapte, pentru a ajunge la 20 de dolari a doua zi, Gates a urmărit, cu stăruinţa unui pitbull, ceea ce foarte multă lume considera a fi un miraj: câte un calculator personal în fiecare casă.
A spus întotdeauna că a avut acest vis pentru binele omenirii; desigur, nu a negat niciodată că, dacă oamenilor le va fi bine folosind calculatorul, lui îi va fi şi mai bine, pentru că în calculatorul acela se vor afla programe cumpărate de la Microsoft.
Astăzi, Bill Gates se retrage. Acesta este mesajul dat de presa internaţională în ultima săptămână. O mare parte a acesteia a ignorat însă faptul că Bill Gates nu pleacă nicăieri. Rămâne cel mai mare acţionar al Microsoft, rămâne preşedintele Consiliului de Administraţie şi va supraveghea în continuare proiectele speciale. Va petrece, pur şi simplu, mai puţin din timpul său pe holurile companiei şi mai mult în birourile Fundaţiei Bill&Melinda Gates, creată din vasta sa avere de peste 50 de miliarde de dolari.
Spre deosebire de alţi miliardari şi politicieni, geniul din Seattle şi-a pus banii acolo unde i-a fost gura. Un vechi propovăduitor al carităţii - o trăsătură luată, probabil, de la mama sa - Bill Gates a decis să treacă la fapte. Astăzi, fundaţia lui este cea mai mare organizaţie caritabilă din lume, cu o „zestre“ de 37,3 miliarde de dolari. Alături de Warren Buffett, un alt miliardar american, în prezent cel mai bogat om din lume (după ce i-a depăşit pe Bill Gates şi Carlos Slim), soţii Gates dedică miliarde de dolari unor proiecte precum un leac pentru SIDA, apă potabilă în Africa, digitalizarea bibliotecilor din ţările în curs de dezvoltare şi multe altele.
Bill Gates nu pleacă nicăieri. Îl veţi găsi în continuare în spatele deciziilor strategice ale Microsoft. Îl veţi găsi de câte ori veţi deschide calculatorul. Şi îl veţi găsi în multe dintre privirile viitorilor foşti oropsiţi ai planetei. "
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