[skywhopper]

I hope that this is just doublespeak to reassure people who think Gates is important to Microsoft's future success. Personally, I think both Microsoft and the world would be better off if Gates stepped away completely and focussed all of his efforts on the Gates Foundation's work.

[michaelwww]

I think you're missing the point that Gates will be spending more time at Microsoft to lend gravitas to Nadella amongst the other Microsoft managers he beat out for the job. I imagine once they get the message and give the guy a chance to get his sea legs, Gates will back away.

[forgotAgain]

I agree with your assessment but I think its a negative. Nadella needs to be able to command respect on his own. If you're right in your thinking then it indicates that the board really doesn't have confidence in him.

[michaelwww]

It was mentioned several times he has a calm and thoughtful approach, which is 180 from Balmer. It will be interesting to see if they can all make the adjustment.

[sbt]

I agree, I find it difficult to see how Gates lurking around would be productive for Microsoft. A new CEO needs to establish their own direction and rapport among employees, but the mere presence of Gates could prove too much in the way of politics there.

I think Bill Gates is brilliant, but if I was a major shareholder in MSFT, I would have him focus all his efforts on his foundation.

[pmelendez]

The new CEO actually asked Gates for help, so I guess it would be cooperation more than anything.

[hga]

If the new CEO wants to change the culture for the better, Gates could be helpful, the Ballmer regime eliminated a lot of the failsafes Gates put into it.

Without a cultural change Microsoft should end its here to now futile attempts to expand outside of its core (has the Xbox, at net, ever made the a lot of money?), put Windows and Office in maintenance mode after restoring the utility of the former for normal desktops, and mostly become a stodgy enterprise software company.

[Encosia]

The Xbox as a foothold in the living room is huge.

[hga]

I'm not arguing against that. I'm asking have they been able to make serious money off of it, and while I'm at it, what's the potential for the future?

I assume the first generation wasn't wildly profitable due to the costs in establishing the ecosystem.

The second generation's hardware execution was infamously botched; we know they took a $900 million write-down on that debacle, and can be sure there were massive additional costs in e.g. brand equity.

How has it done since then?

[hershel]

Cloud gaming , chromecast and virtual reality(which better fits pc's due their power) will pose big challenges to the xbox .

[Encosia]

I have a Chromecast (plugged into the HDMI input on my Xbox One, actually). I don't see that being a credible threat to Xbox among consumers who can afford an Xbox. Possibly something used in tandem when there's not a native app (the Xbox apps for YouTube and Netflix are a much better experience than Chromecasting from a laptop or phone for me).

What do you mean by cloud gaming? Something like the Ouya or Steam's new device?

VR will be interesting. I'm not familiar enough with the hardware requirements to comment intelligently about that. I haven't done much with VR since the late 90s. Is the PS4/XB1's hardware not powerful enough to drive the kind of things that we're seeing the beginning of with Oculus Rift?

[moron4hire]

I understood the Foundation's primary problem to be figuring out how to efficiently spend all of their money they are required to spend every year without accidentally funding Al Qaeda. Does Gates have to be around for that?

[raverbashing]

I don't know, but unfortunately I am very skeptical of NGOs, and charities

It looks like 80% of the money goes for "management" and the rest goes to the actual people in need. Not to mention the contracted "fundraisers" that are paid poorly. (I have nothing against the fundraisers per se, they're usually college kids trying to make some money)

[ozziegooen]

Common misconceptions.

At most established nonprofits relatively little money actually goes to management. There have been a very few cases that have gotten a lot of publicity, but it's relatively a small (and dangerously over-stated) issue.

See Charity Navigator to see the 'management' costs, which are often quite small. http://www.charitynavigator.org/

That said, 'administrative expenses' are a notoriously poor way to measure nonprofits. The group GiveWell is known for attempting to rate charities based on impact. http://givewell.org/

Basically, A) The average charity doesn't spend that much on management. B) Even if the 'average' did, there are plenty that don't. C) Even so, try using 'impact' rather than 'administrative costs' D) There are many great causes to give to, and that's really all that matters here.

That said, I would typically expect large companies to have large biases to help local causes rather than the best things for the world.

[moron4hire]

Full disclosure: my mother and my sister both work in fundraising. I've also done some freelancing for university fundraising departments.

80% is pretty good in the fundraising industry. Usually it's closer to 90%. Don't ever do one of those "text 12345 to donate to hurricane victims in the tropics" sort of thing, the returns on those are abysmal. But really, what do you expect? People doing work have to get paid. Most of the fuel in a rocket is for getting the rest of the fuel in the rocket off the ground.

One of the ways that fundraising departments try to keep the costs down is to use volunteer work (i.e., a form of donation of time) and internships to do the grunt work of calling people on the phone. Nobody expects those college kids to stay in those internships for their entire careers. Usually, they're only there for the "busy season", the end of the year where people rush to get donations in to count towards their tax writeoffs. For many of the kids, it's either that or a completely unpaid internship in advertising.

And government is actually a lot worse. In the US, only about 55% of your tax dollar goes towards social services. Then you have to take the admin percentage off the top of that. To beat an 80% number like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they'd have to keep overhead down to less than 64%. That's so absurdly low that I can't imagine it is possible.

My comment in my original post refers to the fact that every charity in the US is required to spend a certain percentage of their endowment every year. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a HUGE endowment. They have to spend so much that they can't find enough outlets for it. They have to fund projects that aren't necessarily part of their core goals because they can't fund their core goals anymore.

And the snarky comment about Al Qaeda is a commentary on the nature of Al Qaeda, they are not a single organization that operates above the board, they are themselves more of a foundation and loose conglomeration of various groups for mutual benefit. But the way our government casts it, if you help any organization that has any ties to Al Qaeda, then you are helping The Al Qaeda Man Who Is A Single Person Who 9/11 9/11 9/11.

So, when you have more money then you literally know what to do with, just tossing it around makes it very easy to hit Al Qaeda.

[cabalamat]

> In the US, only about 55% of your tax dollar goes towards social services

How are you defining social services? And do you mean all govmt spending, or only federal govmt spending?

[batmansbelt]

It's true that governments are much more efficient at delivering funds than charities. It's an economy of scale. Also governments have a lot more oversight than charities do.

[moron4hire]

That is the complete, 100% opposite of reality. Charities have tons of reporting requirements that they have to meet to demonstrate--to the government--that they aren't at least a money laundering operation, say nothing about using the funds appropriately. There is no such equivalent oversight of government bureaus.

[batmansbelt]

You're right in a way, but wrong in a more important way.

Charities can spend their money on administration, marketing, etc., such that very little can end up going to their chosen task. A government is the opposite. There are millions of people clamouring to whinge about any amount of waste in government. So you end up with governments being up to 6 times more efficient at delivering aid. The classic example is the cancer cure charities that deliver almost no research funding, while government grants are an excellent source of funding.