Cringely's predictions are occasionally fun to read, but I regard him as a fiction author whose genre is West Coast technology firms.

Eric Schmidt's executive experience includes Sun Microsystems, Novell, and Google, and he spent time on Apple's board of directors. How could Microsoft staff and stockholders NOT treat Eric-as-CEO as a middle finger to the last decade's efforts? I imagine the stock price would be savaged by such a choice.

Ballmer already stated he's not leaving until 2017. Unless some kind of corporate catastrophe suddenly occurs, I have no reason not to believe him.

This would be the best thing Microsoft would never do. I'd sure like to see it happen though.

IF Eric Schmidt will do no evil,

AND doing no evil would wreck Microsoft's business,

AND wrecking Microsoft's business would do evil to Microsoft shareholders,

THEN Eric Schmidt cannot be CEO of Microsoft.

obviously there will be a new ceo at some point. time passes.

it will not be schmidt.