Good-Bye Mr. Gates

It was appropriate that Bill Gates' last major public speech was not to the masses, but to developers at Microsoft's TechEd conference. We often forget that the billionaire great white shark of the technology business started as a geek.

Indeed, for those of us who have known him for many years, at heart Bill Gates is still a geek. He dresses better than the traditional stereotype and Lord knows he knows more about running a business and stomping on the competition than any three other technology CEOs put together -- Steve Jobs of Apple and Larry Ellison of Oracle excepted. But, in his heart of hearts I believe he's still be more comfortable talking code with other developers than boasting about how much better Windows (fill-in-the-blank) is over its competitors to Microsoft fans.

So, it was only appropriate that instead of talking about Windows Seven, he spent his last minutes as a Microsoft keynote speaker talking about Project Oslo, a new SOA (service-oriented architecture) application development platform and touch-screen technologies. Of course, if all Gates had had was his developer skills, we never would have heard of him. Gates was an OK, but by no means, great programmer.

For all that he was a developer at heart; it was his "take no prisoners" business mind that made Microsoft number one. Some people still have this illusion that Microsoft came not just to dominate, but almost to own, the PC world of the 1990s and 2000s because of quality. Please. It was because Microsoft forced computer makers to use Microsoft programs like Internet Explorer over Netscape and inserted Windows Media Player into Windows to kill off Real and other media competitors that his company clawed its way to the top.

Of course, the courts eventually caught up with Microsoft. But, by the time that happened, its competition had been ground into the dirt. Today, Microsoft still has to deal with the occasional billion dollar plus fines, but when you're making multiple billions in profit every quarter, breaking anti-trust law just becomes another cost of doing business.

Can Microsoft keep doing this without Bill Gates at the head? I really don't think so. Without Gates to drive it, Microsoft started falling prey to the same troubles as any big company: it got slower and fatter. Its competition, Linux and open source, primarily on the server, and Apple, primarily on the desktop, are faster and nimbler.

Ballmer can't do the job. If I were in charge of Microsoft, I'd fire Ballmer.

That said, I don't think Microsoft can replace Gates. I don't think anyone could. Microsoft got away with corporate murder with Gates in charge, but in 2008 Microsoft can't make a move without everyone watching.

It's no wonder to me that Gates is leaving. He's at the top, he can't rebuild a sagging company with the ways and means he knows the best. It was time to go.

So, with one last good-bye to his first love, the developers, he can walk out and spend the rest of his life with his family and rehabilitating his historical legacy with his charity work at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. With any luck, in a hundred years, he'll be remembered as fondly as Andrew Carnegie, the 19th century's ruthless America's richest man, is today.

Good-bye Mr. Gates. While I've had no fondness for how you made your billions, I wish you the best of luck and happiness in making the world a better place by giving some of your billions away.

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