Gates finally close behind 'geeky' Bill

Jul 3 2008 by Herb Kim, The Journal

TWO years after his retirement was first announced, Bill Gates stepped down from his full-time job at Microsoft last Friday to concentrate on his charitable work.

He’ll now spend just one day a week even considering Microsoft business in a non-executive role.

So did you wake up, matted with sweat, during the early hours of Monday morning, wondering how the world will cope without him?

I didn’t think so. To most of us, Gates’s departure doesn’t seem like all that big a deal. After all, we’re talking about a company with 90,000 employees throughout the world, with some of the bestselling software products on the planet, and which still makes around $1bn a week. What difference does one man make?

Actually, quite a lot. And I’d be surprised if Microsoft weren’t just a tad nervous at how they’ll cope now the gates have closed behind the guy who built the company from a tiny two-man operation to the behemoth it is today.

For, as much as Microsoft’s PR teams would love to have us believe it’s all going to be business as usual, the company faces some pretty difficult challenges in order to hold on to the level of success to which they’ve become accustomed.

For one thing, they’ll be worried that two of their products which command near monopolies, Word and Excel, are threatened by a rising number of free-of-charge word processing and spreadsheet applications.

They’ll also be concerned that Vista, the latest version of their hugely successful Windows operating system, has been widely unpopular, and that Zune, their answer to Apple’s iPod, has struggled.

On top of that, they’re clearly very aware that the company was too slow to embrace the power and potential of the web, and lags way behind Google in that market.

Bill built Microsoft by producing a great range of software, and by making it tough for his rivals to compete. Today, with so many threats emerging and a growing culture of openness in the computing industry, the company must find new ways to make money.

I’m sure they will. Microsoft is an innovative company, and has always faced strong competition.

William Henry Gates III leaves the company at an interesting time, and while I’m certain it will continue to succeed, I can’t help but think we’ll see a very different Microsoft without the geek with the glasses and the funny haircut.

Herb Kim is CEO of Codeworks, a North East centre for digital innovation.