Ballmer can exhale: Bill Gates rules out Microsoft return

Microsoft machines sold by ms...? how old are you?

A few years back, before apple embraced intel processors, there was a clear divide between mac and everything else running one of plenty Microsoft OS. MacOS would run only on power pc processors and windows only on x86.

Since no computer is properly functional without an OS, you can split the whole ecosystem into apple and microsoft machines. Especially considering that back then Linux was still "getting there" and unix was in the major decline.

Also consider that since the late 80s and even today it has been virtually impossible to buy any [non-apple] preassembled computer without an MS OS installed.

So yes, anything being sold with an MS OS can be named a microsoft machine, and they did did outsell apple ones by a landslide.

RE: Don't believe...

...every stupid comment some idiot makes on the internet eg

"BillG still has his head up his wossname. He says that Microsoft machines outsold Apple. Not really. MS sold no PCs. The only MS machine that has sold well is the XBox. Others sank like rocks."

Good God, how old are you, 14?

Hunh?

@Gil Grissum: Bill Gates is the Chairman of the Board at Microsoft. He's the Boss. The other members of the Board are hand-picked by him. Steve Ballmer is Bill's guy, his college roomie, a guy that can be trusted to do what you tell him enjoying far more success than he might have hoped for in his wildest dreams. Steve knows Bill's goals are his bread and butter. A wise guy like Bill keeps predictable fools in reserve. The board is not going to oust Steve Ballmer until Bill Gates tells them to, and that ain't gonna happen as long as Steve delivers what Bill wants, and Steve's perfectly on target.

Steve Ballmer's not doing what YOU want him to do - but you're not the boss of him. Bill Gates has found a way to own less than 1 percent of a publicly held corporation, nor show up every day, and yet control it utterly. He started these lessons in 1984, and being the brilliant guy he is has mastered them.

There are lots of voracious competitors in Microsoft, Sinofsky chief among them. How Sinofsky has failed to figure this out I don't know, since he's also brilliant. None of them are going to win the top spot because they're not the predictable committed fool. As soon as they figure this out, they're outta there, because they're voracious competitors and need to win to have internal validation.

Steve is doing the job Bill gave him, and he's doing well at it or he'd be long gone because Bill Gates considers personal loyalty a weakness. Now if you're an investor or a consumer and aren't happy about what Steve is doing, you know what to do about that. But Bill doesn't care because Steve's going to help him get the maximum money out. That means that the pathologically competitive Bill Gates is going to max the all-time "giver" score in the game he's now (and some would say since 1987) playing in.

Modern pundits and analysts are really lost about what Bill Gates' strategy is because it predates the rise of Google and the Internet. But he was alway crystal clear: he understands that incredible, unspendable wealth is a burden his children should not bear. He's a brilliant competitive ass, and having wonthe IT game and become bored with it he moves to another. Having won the computer game before his 26th birthday it's natural that he should search about for a new challenge to keep him occupied until he reach his dotage. That he counts coup on competitors after telling them what his strategy is is just gravy. There's no reason why he should not use his victory over IT to give advantage in the next game. To give up earned advantages is plain stupid.

I'd give that he's won the "giver" game now too, as his program to cajole the world's billionaires has leveraged his own personal wealth dozens of times, to the point where it pledged wealth exceeds the US national debt in the year Microsoft was founded. He's playing a bigger game now than Microsoft ever was, nor ever could hope to be. At least it doesn't have the prevention-of-progress taint of his previous game. This new game has no top end, no true victory because the goal isn't to be the biggest giver ever. It's to raise the best giver bar so high that nobody else in subsequent history can get over it. No matter how much wealth and effort is poured into it, there is always more to it. It's the global philanthropist version of a Zynga game, and good to occupy him until the end of his days.

Microsoft has to die for Bill Gates to rise from its shadow and be recognized for the great giver that he is without the taint of its dire methods which, if it were killed, will be lost to time. The process of killing Microsoft is under way, and Steve Ballmer is the chief assassin whether he knows it or not. Sometimes - rarely - you have a job that only a fool can do.

The only fly in this ointment is if Steve Ballmer should find out about Bill Gates' contempt for him, his intellectual deficiency, his religious faith in The Bill, and then be able and willing to figure out how to counter it before Bill kicked him out rather than accept it's good money for a guy like him - which seems unlikely in the extreme. Which, if you think about it, is the right way to choose your henchmen if you're an evil genius.

In my opinion they'll ride this horse all the way down to the end, and frankly it's taking longer than they would like.