If I were him I would never-ever take that position as a CEO ever again. He is basically living the dream right now without debts to Microsoft - like unfinished duty or bad rep - and a clean name (founder of MS, steered himself and MS into billionairity yet giving away all his money now).
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.
Surely what Mr. Gates needs to do here is start a scrappy little tech startup, hide it away from the world for a few months/years, while developing all the stuff he wished MS could do if it wasn't in debt to its current customer base, and then infiltrate MS under guise of a courtesy acquisition.
One which catches companies when they approach or are of beomoth-size. They are unable to move, grow or clean themselves in that hole, yet manage to live for years on end due to fat reserves and build relations which will throw them supplies from above.
He is 58 right now. His "first tenure" was from (roughly) 1975 to 2000. That is 25 years from nothing to Microsoft as it were in 2000. When exactly will his second tenure end then, so he can focus again on "saving" the world? Reorganizing and making MS lean takes its time and I highly doubt Gates is actively analyzing the competition and keeping track of the market so there will not come any ground breaking line-up immediately (otherwise he would have told Ballmer his disruptive ideas, I am sure).
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.
The King of Thailand, Queen of England, Sultan of Brunei, and various other royals get left out of most lists, which focus on the richest private individuals.
And, from Forbes most recent listing of richest royals, the richest of them would only tie the 9th on their list of (private) billionaires).
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.
Oh, I really think you're underestimating Bill Gates. The days of disruption stopped for Microsoft when he left.
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.
> 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
Just like he foresaw the Internet as a big threat, right?
> Sun Microsystems, the creator of Java, sued Microsoft in October 1997 for incompletely implementing the Java 1.1 standard.[2] It was also named in the United States v. Microsoft antitrust civil actions, as an implementation of Microsoft's Embrace, extend and extinguish strategy
You can bet all the money in the world that Gates would have been acutely aware of the App Store. The App Store is, after all, Apple doing to the handheld market what Microsoft did to IBM and the PC. Which is, establishing themselves as a gate-keeper for all things mobile.
Web applications from the last decade don't have anything to do with Java. Nothing. The web as it exists now is something Microsoft never understood; not even now.
It's true that Microsoft Research is working on operating systems, including something to someday maybe replace NT. But the the biggest problem they've been working on has been input, specifically voice and touch input.
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.
And yet, most of that research had trouble getting into the main OS. Linux isn't bleeding edge, when measured against research, but it's basic components (process scheduler, I/O scheduler, huge table manager) are leaps and bounds better than what's in Windows today. Network-wise, BSD is better than anything Microsoft ever published.
Where's the disconnect at Microsoft that allows this to happen? They have the knowledge in-house, that's a given.
Bill Gates mission was to put a computer on every desk and in every home. He crushed this goal and is now doing truly amazing things through his philanthropic efforts. Compared to what he is doing now, running Microsoft is just not that important.
Pretty much the only thing you could offer him would be the chance to save his baby. He started the company, he built it up, and now he could (in theory) save it. It's a legacy thing.
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.
I read it more like they'd go to Bill Gates saying "We think you're the best man for this job, all these people agree, will you take the reins for a year" and if he accepted it'd be because he cares about MS, etc.
I'm sure Benioff would love to see Gates return as the Microsoft CEO. Nothing could be better. Better for Salesforce that is.
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.
what has Bill Gates DONE in the TECH industry that deserves sitting in the big chair of the most influential tech company?
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.
Microsoft should seriously consider hiring Elon Musk or a famous, Googler, Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, or Larry Page, though the googlers might not pass anti-trust investigations. The need a PR makeover, and Google and Tesla are the best brands in tech.
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.
You appear to delight in tearing down my suggestion with your multiple comments, and in knocking PG - whilst on PG's site.
The biggest successes are in tech are from highly regarded, but less socially polished, techies (classic nerds), not manager types people which you appear to be pushing for (witness Balmer or Whitman).
You appear to delight in tearing down my suggestion with your multiple comments
Microsoft has 8329956402 shares outstanding. Do you honestly believe that MSFT stock price can rise to value in the trillions, making the MSFT market cap ten sextillion dollars?
knocking PG - whilst on PG's site.
First, I wasn't knocking pg, I was asking a question. Second, when did use of his site constitute a requirement to idolize him?
The biggest successes are in tech from...
Ah, the ol' "techies can do everyone elses job better than them" trope. Yes, we are so awesome! Why should you have a dentist give you a root canal, when you could have a classic nerd do it instead!
>Microsoft has 8329956402 shares outstanding. Do you honestly believe that MSFT stock price can rise to value in the trillions, making the MSFT market cap ten sextillion dollars?
He said the market cap would be trillions, not the share price.
Totally serious. Much of Apple's meteoric rise in the 2000s was because of the Steve Jobs brand, and Apple 2000s is the success you want to copy.
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.
Managing large, sprawling corporations is nothing like starting a company with a few products. I'm not saying it's harder, but it requires a different skill set. Neither Musk nor Graham have a proven history managing large and diversified companies. MS doesn't want them, and I seriously doubt they'd even be interested in the job. It'd be like recruiting Lebron James to play baseball.
PG hasn't been running a startup, but managing hundreds of them.
A large company is just a large number of small groups.
A startup is a small group.
PG is someone who has proven effective at managing to give a big ROI from managing quite a few small groups. Hence he is eminently suited to running a large corporation.
Much of Apple's metoric rise in the 2000s was from destroying everyone in mp3 players and then 2008, a thing called the iPhone. And selling lots of those.
Buzz, created by Steve Jobs, much of it from his pioneer status from the 80s. They had a built-in market to whom they can sell high-priced items (Apple fanboys) where they recoup costs. Then, after that, they make profits from non-fanboys. (They don't like to talk about this, but that's how they internally plan it).
I don't think it would even be financially feasible.
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.
That's a good comment, however, I have to disagree. Those management problems are software problems. And I'm sure PG, as well as the other software talents at MS would relish the opportunity to systematize it in software.
Is pg actually a tech talent? No offense to pg, but my understanding of the man is he is a good investor, not necessarily a technical genius or a kickass CEO.
the top review was by the man himself, Peter Norvig. That's very high praise indeed. I'd read it if it weren't about Lisp, a language that is bad for all the same reasons it is good.
Alright, all great things for a startup guy but I don't think they're the qualities required for the CEO of a multibillion sprawling company. They have no need to popularise or use lisp, no need to sell companies and I'm not convinced this is bigger than eg /r/technology? Not that that's a bad thing, but it's a bold claim to say this is the biggest tech news forum.
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.
Microsoft's problem has been growth, and that's because they appear to always miss capitalizing on the new thing (web,search,mobile,social,tablets) - all things a startup guy is most talented at.
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.
I'm sure I've missed one but I can't think of a dominant force in any of them fields that YC have invested in. I don't know about every investment, and like I said I've surely missed one, and I'm sure their portfolio has come closer than Microsoft to them markets, but if I were looking to find someone capitalising on them I can't think of any YC company immediately. Any ideas?
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.
How is any of that relevant to managing a company the size of a small city and financials the scale of a small country that makes a suite of software he doesn't appear to use much?
Not that I'm defending PG's suitability to the role, but, given Microsoft's size, if you require prior experience at running organizations this big, your candidate pool is awfully small. It's best to hire someone who knows the tech and the market, and assume that the organization stands for itself (i.e. does not require a major overhaul)
Furthermore, GP assumes that having a famous famous or well-loved organization is the only measure of a good leader. I don't think I agree. There are some great leaders/tech minds that run great businesses that people don't know about. Focusing on popularity is a cardinal sin to me at least.
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.