How will they deal without Gates?

• June 15, 2006
• James Skemp
• Internet

Wired News reports that Bill Gates has that he will "transition out of a day-to-day role at the company he co-founded to spend more time on global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation". The question after reading this is, what will they do?

What will Microsoft do? Hardly the question I'm asking. Rather, what will those that hate Bill do? Will they continue to blindly attack Microsoft products; after all, Bill will still be on the board. Or, will they start realizing that MS can perhaps be a force?

Of course, MS needs to stop copying (said here and now, lest people assume I'm absolutely pro-MS; how long has IE development halted before they realized that they were losing marketshare, and how often do they grab someone's idea and brand it?) other's ideas, lest they turn into the reacher that Google may one-day become (and that day may be approaching rather quickly).

I suppose it all boils down to Web 2.0 ...