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Making the Bill Gates myth grow
10 comments- TAGS:Bill Gates, business, Microsoft, Steve Ballmer
- IT TOPICS:Government & Regulation, Management, Software, Windows & Microsoft
Are Microsoft's best days behind it? Is that a serious question? Of course, they're behind it.
In case you've been under a rock, Microsoft's been on the decline for years now. Do you think multi-billion train-wrecks like Vista happen overnight? It takes years of brain-dead middle-management, an over-grown used car salesman and soon to be CEO named Steve Ballmer and one dumb merger and product move after another to ... ah mess up a company like Microsoft. If you actually want Microsoft to get better you could start by firing Ballmer, but frankly when you're at the helm of an Exxon Valdez sized company like Microsoft and you're heading for the rocks, there's not a lot to be done.
Microsoft got where it is today, or I should say where it was in 1999, by ripping off other companies' work -- cough, Spyglass and Netscape, cough. The courts have been slowly prying Microsoft's fingers from the throats of its competition. Microsoft even perfected way to screw over anyone who would dare stand in its juggernaut way: FUD (Fear, uncertainty and doubt). "Oh, no, you can't buy that! We'll have something just like it, only better next year! You know they're violating our patents don't you? Sorry, their program will break our operating system. Etc. Etc." Microsoft is proof, not that we really needed any, that when a company is allowed to act like a great white shark, it will be the top predator.
With the alpha shark, Bill Gates, leaving and the old teeth not gnashing the way they used to, I look forward to watching Microsoft's slow decline and the mindless squealing of its fans. Speaking of which, do you know how Microsoft fans are like Yankee fans? Neither one really cares about the game, all they care about is winning. It's that kind of ignorant arrogance that makes Yankee fans insufferable and why so many people can't stand Microsoft.
Never-the-less, Gates is on course to go down in history as a great man. Oh, not for Microsoft, although their names will always be tied together. Just like today if you know Andrew Carnegie's name, you know it because of his charitable work and not because he paid for it with the millions made from the blood of his steelworkers. The people of 2108 will know Gates because of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's work, not because he made billions by crushing his rivals with every legal and illegal corporate means at his disposal.
My comrade-in-writing Preston Gralia, when he wrote that Gates is the one the future will remember instead of Steve Jobs, is right. Technically, Apple has been far more innovative than Microsoft. I've met both Jobs and Gates. Jobs is by far the more charismatic, actually has more business sense than Gates -- what Jobs doesn't have is the same killer instinct -- and, when it comes to technology much smarter. But, Gates is already busy creating the myth of Gates the Great Man.
The technology we'll be using in the 22nd century will owe more to the efforts of Apple and open-source developers, but Gates is likely to be the only name they'll know. Heck, much as I dislike Gates' actions as a CEO, he really is doing good with his Foundation -- thanks Melinda, I give you most of the credit for this sea-change -- and in the end maybe he'll end up doing more good than harm. It's a nice thought anyway.
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