Bill Gates Doesn't Work At Microsoft Anymore 497
itwbennett writes "The recent Fortune article on Bill Gates' post-Microsoft life made one thing very clear to blogger Steven Vaughan-Nichols: 'Bill Gates was, and still is, the face of Microsoft. What Microsoft doesn't want you to know though is that Gates has almost nothing to do with the company anymore.' The fact is that Microsoft doesn't want to draw attention to Gates' absence because the company 'has been tanking in recent years,' says Vaughan-Nichols. 'While Microsoft's last quarter was far better than it was a year ago, thanks largely to Windows 7 finally picking up steam, neither Microsoft's growth nor its profits are what they were like when Gates was at the helm.'"
Joke of the day (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Question of the Day (Score:5, Funny)
Or Ballmer in a monkey suit?
Or Ballmer in a monkey suit and as a borg assimilating a chair?
Re:Question of the Day (Score:4, Funny)
Balmer [...] assimilating a chair
Now now, we don't need any of that.
I'm not sure I want to know what you kids do with chairs these days, but where I come from chairs were for resting on, not for assimilating, or whatever it is you kids call it these days.
Assimilate? (Score:3, Funny)
Balmer does not assimilate chairs. I don't know what the suffix "imilate" means, but what he does with chairs is not related to the ass in any way.
Re:Question of the Day (Score:4, Informative)
While he may own a large amount of stock, possibly more than anyone else (too lazy to look it up right now), he isn't a majority shareholder. Far from it. Yes, he has a large voice if he wants to, but it just a voice, not a authority.
Re:Joke of the day (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Joke of the day (Score:5, Informative)
Not only are they massively profitable, they are continuing to grow. Apparently growth means tanking.
Re:Joke of the day (Score:5, Insightful)
your not thinking like an investor.
Are they growing by more than 8% per quarter! then they are FAILING!
Screw this long term planning stuff, strip R&D, lay off most of your developers and outsource your coding to a cheaper country. We need you to show much improvement next quarter, so my stock will go up a point or two!
Re:Joke of the day (Score:5, Insightful)
As an outsider to investment, it seems to me like this happens a lot with large public companies. It appears that investors get really upset when profits this year are less than profits last year (even if profits are huge) and they encourage the company to start sacrificing long-term stability for short-term income.
Re:Joke of the day (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Joke of the day (Score:5, Informative)
That's because if a company isn't growing, it's stagnant or shrinking. Markets are always changing, and we're seeing that in computing with the growth of the web and mobile devices--places where Microsoft is failing hard. Just having huge profits doesn't mean anything by itself, because that can go away quickly, and if a company doesn't change to match the market, it quickly becomes irrelevant.
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That's because if a company isn't growing, it's stagnant or shrinking.
first, growing at a smaller rate != stagnant / shrinking. MSFT is still growing.
second, no company can maintain increasing growth rates forever. that's for more immature companies that are exploiting a new market, as MSFT was doing in the dawn of the PC era, and apple is doing now in the dawn of the smart phone era.
MSFT owns say 90% of PCs. moving from say 90% to 95% is *much* harder than say moving from 5% to 10%. you expect slower growth when the company in question already dominates the market.
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mostly because of Microsofts outside investments that are not doing so well, the value of assets they posses have been decreasing more often than not over the past 5 years.
for example the last 3 years, they actually took on debt recently, and any growth in capital is more than offset by those debts:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=MSFT+Balance+Sheet&annual [yahoo.com] (look at the bottom line)
you expect slower growth when the company in question already dominates the market.
Investors are counting on more than PC's with microsoft, it is expected that management will invest wisely, and use the brand
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Never mind. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, kudos to him: he is actually doing that. I dislike Microsoft on many levels (but mostly technical, since I am well and truly old enough to have only a remnant of my ideological principles), but Gates is doing more good with his own money than most of our governments are doing with ours.
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I seem to remember him saying right at the beginning that if he made it big, he would end up giving his money away.
And I seem to remember that his father had to shame him into giving to charity.
Gates is doing more good with his own money than most of our governments are doing with ours.
He has more money than quite a few of our governments. And there are people far less rich than him that give far more to charity. Now his startup partner Alan, otoh, has my respect, because of his post-MS ventures that aren't
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Re:Never mind. (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what would be a good thing for governments to do with their citizens' money? Let them keep it.
I actually like living in civilization -- it's imperfect, but it's what my taxes buy, so on balance I like paying them.
I've never found or even heard of a place with lower taxes in which I'd rather live. If you have, why didn't you move? (Serious question.)
Re:Never mind. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a mass migration in America from states with high taxes to states with low taxes. If it continues, it will be a significant demographic shift over just a generation. I've lived in Cali (highest state taxes) and Texas and Florida (no state income tax for either). All three states had roads, teachers, policemen, etc, and I've never seen any evidence that Cali taxpayers get anything extra for their taxes.
Sure, some small amount of taxation is needed for civilation, but ~60% of my taxes are simply handed directly to other citizens as a gift, and a lot of the 40% which actually pay for government services goes to paying government union workers more than market rate. Why should public service unions be legal, again?
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I see we have a useful idiot. The correct solution to your whine about being underpaid is to demand more pay, not to enviously demand that others doing a similar job are paid less.
Or maybe you think you're so much brighter than people who are paid more than you - in which case go apply for their job.
paying government union workers more than market rate
The market rate is the lowest rate that
(i) a suitable worker is prepared to accept;
(ii) an employer is prepared to pay.
Why should public service unions be legal, again?
Are you actually asking, "Why should collective bargaining be legal"? What part of the barga
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There's not a lot of evidence that it does any good in the modern world
There's tremendous evidence that union workers are better off [epi.org] in today's Western world. There's also a lot of evidence that unionization does not undermine competitiveness [epi.org] (see how high unionization rates are outside the US?).
Collective bargaining should only be legal if there's some good that comes from it that outweighs its downsides.
So, let me repeat the question: What part of the bargaining do you think should be outlawed - the bit where employees are allowed to express their views? The bit where people are allowed to not work if they so choose?
The workers should not have the power to undermine the will of the voters as a whole.
The will of the voter is to not impose slavery and to not restrict s
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"There's a mass migration in America from states with high taxes to states with low taxes."
no, there isn't.
" Cali taxpayers get anything extra for their taxes."
you will when you move. Ca. has tons of advantages over most places without sales tax. But you keep living in your little box that Rush and Glen built for you.
You do NOT pay 60% in taxes. sorry, you're a liar, or your tax accountant is ripping you off.
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Reading comprehension FTW. He didn't say he paid 60% in taxes. He said 60% OF his taxes go to entitlements, the other 40% go to other stuff, like infrastructure, public safety, etc. Question him on that if you like but don't say he's wrong (or worse, lying) about something he didn't say.
Please list the advantages of California that are due to taxes or government. I'm truly interested to know them.
Re:Never mind. (Score:5, Interesting)
R = -.17. For countries with high development indexes, higher tax rates have little effect on HDI, and the effect seems to be negative at that. So, governments are not using higher tax rates to improve the lives of their citizenry. Therefore, I'd like to use my own money to improve my own life, since giving it to the government seems to be a poor investment.
Of note, Japan, the US, Switzerland, Australia, and Canada have the highest HDI to Tax ratio (i.e. best bang for your tax buck), respectively. HDI^3/Taxes only swaps the position of Switzerland and Australia.
Re:Never mind. (Score:5, Informative)
oh yes, Bill is doing a great job at spreading Microsoft software while he still gets a pat on the back for "doing more good" with his money but who is he really helping? I've got an OLPC and it is an amazing device and while it does run Linux, the software is not like anything on Windows or Linux. But the millions of kids who would have had a chance to get books and learn something about modern technology won't get that chance. Windows could not run on that hardware without added costs and from what I read, they did not want the Windows user interface hidden under the SUGAR UI. Anyways, Gates is not helping anyone and is only feeding his greedy desires to push his own companies products and that is not helping anyone but Bill and his ego. IMO
LoB
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Growing yes, but growing much slower than they used to... It's hard for them not to grow when they control a large percentage of a growing market. Most of their growth is their existing market share carrying on as the market itself expands, and the market cannot keep growing indefinitely.
Their overall market share in their core markets is decreasing (ie they are growing slower than the market as a whole) and they are being pushed towards open standards and lower prices, their attempts to break into new mark
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They still make tons of money. How are they in bad shape?
The 'buying power per ton of money' ratio has shrunk significantly in recent times.
Re:Joke of the day (Score:5, Insightful)
Making tons of money doesn't mean they have a future. IBM was in the same position.
Yeah, it's a real shame about IBM, especially how they evaporated into obscurity and powerlessness. I miss them.
No, wait, what?
Re:Joke of the day (Score:5, Interesting)
Hate him or Loath him, Gates was a Geek. While he was at Microsoft he actually did some coding. Not the most elegant code mind you but it compiled most of the time and ran only a little less often.
Because of this the other geeks at MS (shock and horror, they actually employ thousands) folowed his orders without question, the way soldiers folow a battle scarred General.
Without him, that voice of command is gone and none too soon as the core software and business model itself are under threat from OSS.
What is that Business model? Manipulate everything from OEM deals to hardware prices so that the cheapest way to do most of the normal computer work in a normal office or home is to use your products. This was fine when they were competing with the likes of Lotus, IBM, Apple, and Sun.
Some of those companies are still around, but now you can buy cheep PC Hardware with Free Software and be ahead of the price curve. Investors see growth slowing and about to reverse and are jumping ship in droves.
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Re:Joke of the day (Score:5, Insightful)
"Without him, that voice of command is gone and none too soon as the core software and business model itself are under threat from OSS."
Under threat how? While OSS will continue to grow in the business space, the biggest gains have already been made. Most of the companies that would ditch Unix for Linux have already done so. Companies that run Windows Server are generally satisfied with it... the server platform was never the problem at MS, the desktop was, particularly Vista. And open source doesn't have a chance in hell of threatening Microsoft on the desktop. The biggest potential threat there is a resurgent Apple, especially on the consumer side, but increasingly on the business desktop for smaller organizations.
The fact is, for large enterprises, there really isn't an alternative to Windows on the desktop, and Microsoft knows it. And Linux certainly isn't a threat there, that's for sure. This whole "OSS is about to rule" thing is just another silly variant of "this is the year of Linux on the desktop!"... it's the Duke Nukem Forever of software fantasies.
Re:Joke of the day (Score:5, Insightful)
I think OP seriously overestimates the threat of OSS of the desktop, but has a point of sorts. I see three major threat vectors affecting MS right now, and it's losing ground on all of them. Two it's losing ground slowly and may recover, the third it's already come closing to losing entirely.
1) Enterprise Data center: MS is losing ground to OSS here. Apple has made some small inroads, but basically this is Microsoft vs various Linuxes. They are not being pummeled by any means, but definite inroads are being made, and MS is slowly losing ground. This is bad because MS thrives on its ecosystem. You buy MS servers because they integrate so well with other MS servers and the MS desktops. If you have fewer MS servers then the need for more MS server seems less pressing. Then there's the:
2) Desktop: Obviously at the moment OSS is a minimal threat here, but Apple is more serious. They are making serious threats on the consumer side, and once people become used to it at home they ask about it at work. As things stand now, it's mostly smaller businesses that go for Apple on the desktop, or switch partially, but I've seen Macs creeping in larger businesses too (I used to do work with a Fortune 50 Aerospace company that had buckled and allowed some Macs for video editing in our facility). As bits of the data center go OSS, Macs become less of a liability too. Changes made to accommodate Unix based servers work just as well for Apple's Unix desktops. Installed an AD to OpenLDAP translator for the new web server? Oh look, Macs can auth against OpenLDAP. Again, Apple isn't anywhere close to "winning" on the desktop, but they're making inroads.
3) Mobile platforms: This is where MS is losing big time to Apple and Google (and RIM, and possibly a couple kids with tin cans and a string). This is a pretty serious problem IMO, because this is the next platform. I see mobile platforms, tablets and phones, doing what laptops did 10 years ago and desktops did 10 years before that. Taking over. Not to say that there won't still be laptops, and in the medium term it might even help desktops, but I've already found that my laptop is a bit redundant because of my iPhone. Last trip I went on, I didn't even take it out of the bag. Next time I'm debating leaving it at home. If Microsoft can't own this space, they're going to be in trouble. Not, "OMG they're going out of business" trouble, but growth will become mostly a thing of the past in the next decade.
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If Microsoft can't own this space, they're going to be in trouble. Not, "OMG they're going out of business" trouble, but growth will become mostly a thing of the past in the next decade.
Not necessarily... companies are strange beasts, they need good cashflow to stay relevant, and if the mobile platform see MS losing money and marketshare, and therefore shareprice... they'll start to decline. And that means they'll sell less stuff. And once people have got rid of the 'it must be MS' mindset, then things are
Re:Joke of the day (Score:4, Interesting)
The biggest potential threat there is a resurgent Apple, especially on the consumer side, but increasingly on the business desktop for smaller organizations.
IBM is experimenting with a transition to Apple as the business desktop. Most of IBM Research switched a while ago, many of the executives have switched or are switching, IBM actively supports employees who choose to use their own Mac hardware and is running some test deployments of company-provided equipment in various parts of the company. Linux is also quite well-supported.
I won't go so far as to make any predictions, but I wouldn't be surprised if IBM moved to Apple as the primary desktop platform in the next 4-5 years.
So, not just "smaller organizations".
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:saturated market (Score:5, Insightful)
And what do they think Gates could do differently if he was still calling the shots? For better or worse most of Microsoft's key markets are saturated.
Find new markets to penetrate?
Re:saturated market (Score:5, Funny)
Find new markets to penetrate?
Come up with a innovative product? Nah, couldn't happen...
Re:saturated market (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps not, but he could do a better job of acquiring products (or whole companies) that are well chosen to position Microsoft in new markets.
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Re:saturated market (Score:5, Funny)
combine new and old markets and double-penetrate them both?
Re:saturated market (Score:5, Funny)
combine new and old markets and double-penetrate them both?
Giggity!
Re:saturated market (Score:5, Funny)
Isn't he still a shareholder with +50% of the shares, so he essentially still has a say anyways? I thought I heard that somewhere, but I might be mistaken. Board of directors or something. Point is, Microsoft is not without Bill's Guidance, he simply isn't dealing with the hassles that come with being CEO.
Microsoft's tanking* is completely independent of Bill's situation. They laid this path before them long long ago. You might even say it's Bill's fault they're in this mess.
*As a humorous anecdote, Tanks are a very important component to group play. I like to think of Microsoft as that big guy in the heavy armor who takes all the hits and soaks up all the damage, because it doesn't mean much to him anyways. I also think of Apple as the DPS, and if they keep critting too much with all their successful products, they'll eventually pull Aggro and end up getting all the criticism Microsoft recieves. And I think of *nix as a good healer, silently standing far away from everyone, keeping everything running nominally with their superior networking capabilities and low resource requirements. See? You can relate anything to World of Warcraft. I dare you to come up with something I can't.
Re:saturated market (Score:5, Insightful)
*As a humorous anecdote, Tanks are a very important component to group play. I like to think of Microsoft as that big guy in the heavy armor who takes all the hits and soaks up all the damage, because it doesn't mean much to him anyways. I also think of Apple as the DPS, and if they keep critting too much with all their successful products, they'll eventually pull Aggro and end up getting all the criticism Microsoft recieves. And I think of *nix as a good healer, silently standing far away from everyone, keeping everything running nominally with their superior networking capabilities and low resource requirements. See? You can relate anything to World of Warcraft. I dare you to come up with something I can't.
Fuck me, if these are the new metaphors we will see in 10 years, I think I will quit the Internet.
7.3% as May-10-10 (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think his financial advisors are telling him something like, 'while you have plenty of wealth in MSFT stock, it is not growing and looks like it'll stay or drop in the future. It's time to diversify to something with
Re:7.3% as May-10-10 (Score:4, Informative)
"peddle", not "pedal".
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You can relate anything to World of Warcraft.
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
Re:saturated market (Score:5, Insightful)
True but Microsoft really has made some massive stumbles of late.
1. Vista. Love it or hate it Vista is the new Windows ME.
2. Mobile phone strategy/music player strategy. What a mess that is.
3. The failure to see the rise of the netbook/tablet.
The mobile/music player strategy is the really the heart of the problem and yes they are related.
Apple decided to make the music player market theirs. They created the iPod which eventually became the standard in mobile music players. They became cool and people actually really liked to use them.
They then used that to create a smartphone. People already used their phones to play music and a lot of them hand crappy browsers and email. Apple combined a phone with music player with a good browser and then added apps. They now are a major force in mobile phones.
Microsoft actually got into mobile phones before Apple. They put a version of Windows on a phone! It was clunky and not all that easy to use. They couldn't even execute a better email solution than RIM! While some what popular it never really was super exciting. Microsoft got into the mobile music market late and the Zune was a little clunky but had some potently great features but they where crippled! Heck it had wifi but couldn't surf the WEB! The Zune HD may be the best mobile music and video player on the market but that market is shrinking as people move to smartphones and tablets. Also it lacks the iPhone/Touch large app store.
Now we have Windows Phone 7. It doesn't exist yet, it doesn't multi-task which Android, WebOS, and IOS 4 do.
It lacks cut and paste.
And frankly I have to wonder if anybody will care in a year when it is out.
Microsoft seems to have NOTHING that can compete with the iPad.
Microsoft is begining to look like IBM in the 90s.
Microsoft totally saw the tablet market (Score:5, Insightful)
3. The failure to see the rise of the netbook/tablet.
This is I think somewhat unfair, in two ways (since those are two different markets).
For Netbooks, Microsoft didin't really see that coming but reacted very quickly and with skill, to where Windows dominates Netbooks when it looked at first like that would be the realm of Linux. They may not have seen that coming but they managed to win that one anyway to the point where it does not matter that they didn't see it coming.
Now tablets, that's a different story. They saw that coming, something like ten years ago? Off and on they tried VERY hard to make that market work. There they had vision, but no execution - and that I think is mostly the problem, Microsoft still can have vision but they have (for whatever reason) a ton of problems executing. It really seems from the outside like this is the old ossified company syndrome where endless layers of management just boil away any real innovation from a product because real innovation is too risky and focus groups all say they hate the new thing you are trying to do because it is different than what they are used to. I think even if Microsoft made their own tablet hardware (like Apple) they would have had the same issues.
The part where it didn't imapact sales (Score:3)
Did you miss where they discontinued XP despite the fact that Netbooks couldn't run their new OS? Leaving them no way to sell into the whole market until they reversed this incredibly stupid decision?
Oh I saw that. But the "skill" part was that they in fact DID reverse that decision, instead of sticking to it. Skill doesn't mean you never make mistakes - to the contrary, skill is in part being able to come back from stupid mistakes rapidly and to your benefit.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe you noticed (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Maybe you noticed (Score:5, Informative)
the company 'has been tanking in recent years,' says Vaughan-Nichols. 'While Microsoft's last quarter was far better than it was a year ago
Pretty sure that the last quarter was during the recession...
Re:Maybe you noticed (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe, maybe not. Economists are still divided on that, many are predicting a double-dip too. I believe the Regan said
A recession is when your neighbor loses his job.
A depression is when you lose yours
A recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.
Assuming this to be true, there are a few possibilities
1) Recovery is not possible since JC has no job to lose
2) BO is the functional equivalent and recovery is when BO loses his job
3) Recovery is futile (after all this is an article re: Bill Gates)
Of course, the assumption may be flawed.
Re:Maybe you noticed (Score:4, Interesting)
And XP3, Vista, and 7 all fix the horrid architectural mistakes abetted by Allchin and Gates. Demoting users from root in Windows fixed a healthy chunk of their design problems.... all instigated by Gates and his 'wizards'.
Microsoft has lost mirth, magic, mind-share, and the 'oil well in the basement' of Office and Exchange will be toppled soon, too.
But none of this is news, nor is Gates exit. We simply don't care anymore. He's a statistical fluke billionaire, nothing more.
Re:Maybe you noticed (Score:4, Insightful)
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You damn him with faint praise.
Bill Gates, from the time he started porting BASIC to Altairs 8080s, has been building a monopoly enterprise that's had to settle in and out of court in most major jurisdictions in the world for bad behavior.
The defects within Windows are long and well-noted elsewhere, but the big fatality was user confidence, and the edge-of-your-seat anticipation of a new release.
That Gates aspired to kick IBM and their 'church of the mainframe' mentality wasn't a bad thing. Yet when he coul
Re:Maybe you noticed (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget about Apple. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget that Apple has become the new Microsoft, in a sense. They've adopted Microsoft's approach of vendor lock-in, and taken it to a degree that Microsoft never could.
Not only does Apple lock you in at the software level, like Microsoft did, but they go so far as to limit what programming languages you can use when targetting some of their platforms. Microsoft never stooped that low.
But Apple takes it further, by holding a monopoly on the hardware stack their software runs on. Microsoft never managed this. They may have had deals and influence with some PC hardware vendors, but they were never really in control like Apple is.
Then Apple takes it yet a step further, and basically dictates how you can use your device when it's networked, and who can provide that access. Microsoft never did anything like this.
So as the Microsoft generation retires from the workplace, we're beginning to see a new generation of Apple supporters move in. Except they're far more gullible and brainwashed than the Microsoft supporters ever were, and these Apple users are willing to accept a far greater degree of dictatorship and vendor control. It makes me weep.
Re:Don't forget about Apple. (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple only appear to be doing that in on the iphone and ipad... They are not doing it on their computer systems, which are arguably far more open than microsoft in many ways.
Apple don't hold a dominant position in any market, and there are still viable competitors to their lock-in. Apple can be ignored, you can totally ignore their products, use alternatives and be in no way impaired. MS cannot be ignored, as sooner or later you will be faced with something thats tied to windows be it a broken website that requires ie, a proprietary file format or a niche application that only runs on windows... There are countries in which Apple simply don't exist.
Personally i don't care how badly a company screws their customers so long as it doesn't affect me.
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Don't forget that Apple has become the new Microsoft, in a sense. They've adopted Microsoft's approach of vendor lock-in, and taken it to a degree that Microsoft never could.
"New" ? "Adopted" ? Apple's methods haven't changed one iota in decades - it's just a lot more people seem to be paying attention all of a sudden.
Here's a graph. (Score:3, Informative)
There's a pretty heavy recession going on, there wasn't one when Bill was at MS. I wonder if these two points are related.
This goes back to before there was a recession [seattleweekly.com]. Illustrated in pastel loveliness.
I for one am shocked (Score:5, Insightful)
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This breaking news just in... (Score:3, Funny)
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is still retired from Microsoft.
This just in... (Score:4, Funny)
Ford is not being run by Henry Ford. Shocking news to everybody who thought that the latest version of the Model T would come out any day now.
In other news, Richard Petty Motorsports has only one race victory in the past decade. Questions of why the King hasn't been driving are unanswered.
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- Dan.
Natural Consequence. (Score:3, Insightful)
This has very little to do with Bill Gates, per se.
Microsoft managed to get itself into a monopoly position while the PC market exploded. The PC market has since stabalized, and people are realizing there are options.
There was no where for Microsoft to grow to. So they can't grow anymore.
Re:Natural Consequence. (Score:4, Insightful)
While what you said has a lot of merit, there are obviously other contributing factors as well.
Windows failed to advance for a long time while other alternatives DID progress.
Windows was plagued by a slew of very public security "whoopses."
The MS alternatives came up with some great marketting and sales lines that pulled a lot of people away.
I'm sure other people could add plenty to this list.
Re:Natural Consequence. (Score:5, Informative)
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What? When was that?
IE 3: 1996
IE 4: 1997
IE 5: 1999
IE 6: 2001
IE 7: 2006
IE 8: 2009
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Actually Lynx was originally designed for Unix and VMS, not Linux.
Besides, Linux will never have a flagship browser, and that's a feature, not a bug. It's because it's free software, so any really good browser will eventually be ported to other OSes.
Re:Natural Consequence. (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft managed to get itself into a monopoly position while the PC market exploded.
Not exactly; there's more to it. Before IBM PC came on the market, there were a lot of competing PCs from different companies. All of them had proprietary busses, proprietary OSes, proprietary BIOSes. Although many if not most had variations of CP/M, you couldn't buy a CP/M program and expect it to run on any but one make of computer.
Then IBM came into the scene with what IBM considered a toy, and after being rebuffed by the top CP/M guy went to one of its lawyer's children, Bill Gates, who bought an OS and tweaked it to work on IBM's machine. Microsoft had already been shipping BASIC to many computer manufacturers.
Back then the battle cry was "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" and all the other companies* went out of business. Gates wisely held on to copyright on his OS, then named PC-DOS, rather than letting IBM get it. Then a few years later, Compaq reverse engineered and legally cloned the IBM BIOS, which allowed it to run Gate's OS, now named MS-DOS. This was before very many people had computers in the home, but PCs were saturating offices everywhere. Compaq came out with a PC that used the much faster 386 chip when IBM was still using 286s, and ate IBM's lunch.
IBM unwisely decided to ditch DOS and use its own in-house offering OS2, which bombed badly.
So it didn't exactly get itself into a monopoly position, it actually inherited its monopoly from IBM.
people are realizing there are options.
No, just us nerds. Non-nerds I know are amazed when I tell them there are not only options, but virus-free, more secure options that cost nothing.
* Except Apple, because it had gotten a foothold in the schools and graphics houses before the IBM PCs were capable of graphics.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, yes, they make more products. However, most of the profits come from Windows and Office. Their other products would have to show massive growth and profitability to be more than a blip on the bottom line, and I don't think Microsoft is well suited to come up with new stuff. Their research programs show great stuff, which generally doesn't become a product, and they appear to me to be very Windows-focused, so I don't have great hopes of growth from them.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
LoB
Stop linking to useless pages (Score:2)
Don't Worry!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Version N+1 is going to be the best version ever!
Chairman (Score:5, Insightful)
That aside - I don't think Mircrosoft is doing poorly because "Gates doesn't work there anymore" - quite conversely - I always said that I believe that his departure deliberately coincided with Microsoft's decline. Wether you like them or not - he started Microsoft - created new products - built the company from the ground up - and grew it through the years. At some point - it really flatlined. They weren't doing anything new - creating anything new - growing - etc. As an entrepreneur myself - that would be the time an entrepreneur would get bored - with just running the day-to-day of a big company, and move on to new adventures.
Re:Chairman (Score:4, Funny)
Who the hell is this blogger? (Score:5, Informative)
If you look at MS's financials [google.com] and check the annual reports, it doesn't much look like a company that has been "tanking in recent years". Most companies would kill for the revenue growth and operating margin Microsoft has had since 2005. Tanking in recent years, my ass.
Re:Who the hell is this blogger? (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, but isn't their market share almost down to 90%? Let's face it. They're outta here..
They're almost irrelevent now aren't they? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure thats a bad thing. IBM seems to be doing OK these days.
Windows NT Microkernel, by David Cutler et al (Score:3, Insightful)
I have never heard anyone say a bad word about the actual NT Microkernel, or, for that matter, about Cutler et al's work on VMS [which, to this day, has a reputation as being one of the most rock-solid, 24x7x365, 5/6/7/8/9-sigma operating systems known to man].
Even the old embedded versions of NT, although they never gained all that much market share [vis-a-vis VXWorks], had a reput
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at the hype for the iPad, for Android. Notice the FTC looking at Google, Notice no one cares about MS anymore; They're becoming irrelevant.
Hype is a fad.
Hype is noise.
Hype is 0.11% of the web for Android. 0.09% for the iPad.
Relevancy is 91.3% of the web for Windows. Operating System Market Share [hitslink.com] Relevancy is a trend line that is moving visibly upwards. Top Operating System Share Trend [hitslink.com]
Apple has staked its future on the high end of the mobile device market, the mobile hardware market. That can be a ver
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And yet the market capitalization of MS is $222B, Google's is $153B, and Apple's is $247B. The financial world seems to think that Apple is worth $25B more than Microsoft, but I'm the one that doesn't understand how financial markets work?
I don't want to be a dick and repeat myself, but if you seriously consider that apple's own drivel about "market capitalization" matters for more then short term profit, you simply do not even begin to understand how financial world works, which makes arguing the point, well, pointless. You simply lack the knowledge base needed to argue the financial points at all.
But it does look really good on paper, next to "we're biggest mobile device maker in the world". When you use a properly "fixed" metric, you can
Maybe he's copying Steve Jobs again... (Score:5, Funny)
The same old story (Score:4, Funny)
They cut off his salary, and moved him to a basement office - but that darn Gates keeps coming in! Can't a guy take a hint?
Borg photo? (Score:4, Funny)
If Bill is no longer "the face of Microsoft", perhaps we can change the Bill of Borg icon that's associated with Slashdot stories about Microsoft with one of Ballmer throwing a chair?
Microsoft's brand still carries clout. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Windows and Office are proprietary software, the onus is on Microsoft to shoulder the entire effort of development. It was a model that worked extremely well in the old days when hardware was less varied and complexity was significantly less. However, each iteration of Windows seems to be more painful to release. However, the fact still remains that Microsoft is an extremely good business because each copy of their software costs only a handful of dollars to produce and package while pulling in several hundred dollars on store shelves. The result was a net profit margin of 24.94% in FY 2009. Contrast that to Apple (19.19% net profit in FY 2009), which charges top dollar for sleek hardware but shoulders higher expenses as a result.
Much as we like to whine about Microsoft, the truth is that there is no other well marketed consumer operating system brand apart from Mac OS. Until well marketed competition arrives, Microsoft still drives the market.
Reality check: Microsoft is quite profitable. (Score:5, Insightful)
Reality check: Microsoft is quite profitable. So is IBM. They make the wheels go around, and that's a solid business. That's what matters, not how much commentary the company gets on Gizmodo and Techcrunch.
There are other big companies like that. Consider Consolidated Edison [coned.com], the power company for New York City. They've been selling electricity since 1882, and they made $14 billion last year. General Electric is still around, and with about the same product line they had a century ago - power station equipment, appliances, lamps, and turbines. (Along the way, GE entered and left semiconductors and computers.)
Google, on the other hand, is quite vulnerable. They've never had a second profitable product. Google has whole lines of money-losers, from YouTube to GMail. 97% of Google's revenue is still from search ads.
Ballmer's biggest mistake was mobile (Score:5, Insightful)
What Microsoft completely failed to appreciate is the need to make good mobile OSes. If Windows CE hadn't been such a pathetic afterthought, and if it had been given away for free to suffocate the rest of the market, MS would have been in a pretty good place right now. They should have been leveraging their monopoly into other markets, and they would have gotten away with it if they had even had an actively-developed product for the mobile market.
Microsoft just got complacent and lazy, because they were too accustomed to people buying their core products no matter how shitty they were. BillG knew that when they move into a new field, they actually have to win on quality. Office did this, IE4 did this, DirectX did this, but that's about the end of the list.
Apple doesn't magically create compelling products because they're a charmed company. They have to drop lots of money on designers, UI research, testing and all that stuff. None of those things are our of reach for MS. They just don't research, focus and blitz the way Apple does. Maybe the government lawsuits had something to do with it. Steve Jobs asks his board every week: Where do I want to jab my sharp elbows today? They research it and come back with a plan for new conquests. Microsoft seems to be focused on answering the complaints from their present customers. There's no vision there. Sometimes, when their lunch gets eaten, they respond with Zunes, Xboxes and Bings - also-ran products that, at best, slightly improve on the established players that they ape. Witness the recent effort to make Hotmail relevant again! It reminds me of Communist countries who thought the best response to Western temptations is to make homegrown "equivalents" for Levi's and Coca Cola. Not long after this pathetic attempt, Communism collapsed.
Apple and Google are sniffing around for unfilled needs, and designing products to fill them. Microsoft is looking at filled needs, and asking "how can we get in on this and also fill these needs?" Maybe that's in their DNA, because they got rich from an OS that basically innovated nothing. But the difference is that MS-DOS jumped into an unsaturated market and took ownership of it. MS product lines of the 21st century haven't even tried to do this. They've released fixes for established apps, and Zunes (and other Borg knockoffs of what's hot yesterday). If I were an investor who intended to hold stock for a while, it wouldn't be Microsoft.
Windows Mobile (Score:4, Informative)
You may not remember, but back in the day, before Windows Mobile was called Windows Mobile, they competed on quality on it as well. Their main rival, Palm, stagnated for years rehashing the same products and Microsoft swooped in and ate their lunch.
With Palm dealt with, Microsoft then went on to do what they do, and stagnated Windows Mobile until someone else came along and ate their lunch.
Is Microsoft tanking because Bill Gates is gone... (Score:3, Interesting)
... or is Bill Gates gone because Microsoft was tanking? Gettin' out when the gettin's good....
Re:Donchya' know (Score:5, Interesting)
No. He got 10,000 hrs of computer programing time before he finished college, he was well connected, well educated, was in the right place at the right time and he was a bully. The total package is nothing like luck. Luck is only one limiting factor for growth, to become the richest man on earth you need a shit load more than luck.
p.s. On a side note MS needs to fire Balmer. He was OK when being a bully was effective, but that time is gone.
p.p.s PAY A FUCKING DIVIDEND YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER.