Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Will Microsoft Still Be Microsoft Without Bill Gates?
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Will 'The Evil Empire' still inspire fear in the hearts of competitors
> | without its stalwart leader involved in day-to-day operations? My bet is
> | no.
There is even a bigger concern at this point. Until now, the entire
company was loyal to Bill and Steve. Even then it was Bill (duece and
trey) that provided the vision, the technical inspiration, and the
incredible combination of the sweet innocent squeaky nerd, who could
weasel in the most incredible contract terms - and the iron fisted
emperor who could drive a company into bankruptcy using a different
interpretation of these contract terms. Someone who could testify
under oath to criminal acts including fraud, extortion, blackmail,
sabotage, and obstruction of justice, then negotiate a settlement in
which Microsoft and Bill Gates are better off than they were before.
> | Now that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates officially has begun decoupling
> | himself from the company he founded 31 years ago, it seems like a great
> | time to ask what the Microsoft of the future ? sans BillG ? will look
> | like.
Think Julius Ceasar, the French Revolution, or Keiser Wilhelm.
Nature abhores a vacuum. When there is a massive concentration of
wealth and power, and there is suddenly a void in the top leadership
role (the assasination of Julius, the beheading of King Louis, the
deposition of the Keiser - there is chaos. What usually follows is a
struggle to fill the void and to provide his replacement with even more
power. Tiberius,Caligula, and Nero followed Agustus. Nepoleon fought
a war across europe and wiped out most of the French army in his
Russian campaign. When world war I ended, the Keiser was deposed, but
in the chaos that followed, a corporal who was hoarse from mustard gas,
became a dictator with the power to exterminate 16 million people at
will, simply because he wanted them dead.
Bill Gates is as close to an emperor as we we ever saw in the last half
of the 20th century. In less than 20 years, Microsoft's computers had
infiltrated the lives of over 1 billion people, and many who shared
computers or relied on others who used computer beyond that. That
would be the equivalent of having total control of the United States,
Canada, all of Europe, the entire USSR, India, and maybe even some of
China.
More importantly Windows provided information almost as significant as
that collected by MK-Ultra during WW-II. Neither side could fire a
shot, because neither side knew how much the other side knew. Even
when the world trade center was bombed, it was only because the Bush
administration had chosen to ignore the information it had collected.
The knew how, when, where, the targets, and the perpetrators -
beforehand, but didn't trust the information to be reliable. The other
possibility, that they chose not to intervene in the firm knowledge
that they could get the patirot act (which had been sitting on the
shelf for almost 15 years at the time) passed, and replace the "War on
Drugs" with the "War on Terror" (which happened to include drug
dealers, growers, and anyone else who supported terrorist organizations
directly or indirectly).
Microsoft could gather the most intimate secrets of any political
candidate or official, and air them on MSNBC. Bill Clinton was proof
of that. What candidate would want to run against Microsof'ts choice -
for fear that some dirty little secret might be exposed on
international cable television?
Microsoft under Bill Gates has been a "benign dictatorship", only a few
thousand businesses, mostly competitors to Microsoft or disloyal
partners, were killed off.
Imagine what would happen if a man with the character of Josef Stalin,
Adolf Hitler, Caligula, or Nero were to gain absolute control of
Microsoft?
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,1977460,00.asp?kc=MWRSS02129TX1K0000535
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