Dana and Gene, so a person who could effectively replace Balmer would have to have more smarts than Emilio but would not necessarily have Gate’s smarts? Ahhh, that sounds like Carly Fiorina, except she is a Rightwinger. Bush’s two pre-presidential business failures have proven that a Rightwing businessperson may not have the smarts to advance a company and, of course a country. Where is a good Leftwinger who loves Window and is a good manger? *S*

When I suggested that MS could still be rescued by a management change, I didn’t mean a new CEO who is a creative visionary like Jobs. No chance in the world of that. I’d settle for reasonably competent corporate manager with a realistic concept of what MS can and cannot do. Nor was I thinking of a return of Gates. Gates and Balmer in fact think far too much alike and have the same managerial style. Except that Gates has a lot more presentable personality and comes across better on interview shows and so forth, there really isn’t much to choose between them, they both make the same mistakes. No, all that MS really needs is a CEO who would pull out of all the money-losing side enterprises, avoid the kind of blatant overaggressiveness that generates so much bad publicity (and keeps attracting the attention of the Feds and the EU) and let the cash cows go on doing their thing with a minimum of fuss and bother. Focus the company’s entire attention on the core activity that really matters to MS’s future, putting out an OS that works reasonably well. With that, they survive. Without it, they don’t. That would be enough to keep MS profitable for a long time to come, and keep the stockholders happy (and, like Gene, I’m surprised Balmer isn’t facing a stockholder rebellion).

Michael and Gene, yes, my analogy weakens a bit if strictly adhered and you support it by several of your points.

The consensus of the recent articles — including and especially the excellent ones by Gene — on the state of MS seems to be that MS has too much cash to waste for the likely long period of its decline in the area of influence, quality of badly designed products, but not vision, as Gene correctly asserts.

Ha ha ha Michael, at the smiley next to the word “beleaguered,” a word that used to be associated with Apple in the late ’90s. Thank God that that period is over and now all seems to be well at Apple in the area of vision, products, and support.

Yes, Gates would have to be gone until “his” products die out and new ones not of his own emerge from MS for him to have the emotional fortitude to kill them off, if indeed at some time in the future this would be needed to fortify MS, but this too is unlikely since Gates would kill off money losers, not necessarily any products not of his DNA, if there even are any products that are of his creation.

While Gates could indeed come back, he is too old for the Young Turks now coding at MS. He has aged himself on many levels by putting out bad products and sidewinding and swindling the owners of companies he forced into his fold and then ate them up. His image is like the Image of Dorian Gray, the worse he behaves, the older-looking he gets. He wore himself out. He is done. Now he just sits on his couch watching Jerry Springer while continuing to promote Windows via his Gates Foundation, the whole point behind it, and also a way to expiate his many MS sins, and an ultimately futile attempt to divert our attention away from his countless errors that he perpetrated during his many years.

Jobs was different; He left more energized and returned with the energy of an adolescent to mold a new more prosperous company, and, of course, he succeeded to astound and astonish Gates. Gates is deflated and dessicated and with a paucity of ideas. This is apparent from his track record. No way that he has the energy and the vision to remake MS.

Gates was never a visionary. He was always a sales person, pushing current products that sort of existed and future products that sometimes never arrived.

Peace,
Gene

Lino and Gene, there is still a possibility of Dana’s scenario coming to pass. Two things are important to remember: Steve Jobs didn’t come back a year after he left, and Microsoft is not dead yet.

Microsoft is still earning money (despite its consumer-oriented efforts to lose big bucks). Vista and Office are still cash cows. It will take some time for that flow of income to completely die away.

And Lino, the point you made about Jobs cutting the money-losing sectors that didn’t have his DNA shows that Gates would have to be gone long enough for NEW junk (that he was not involved in developing or approving) to entirely clog the engine of Microsoft before he could come back and save it.

I don’t believe that will happen either, mainly because I don’t think Gates is a visionary, but it’s possible he’ll be called on at some time in the future to bail out the beleaguered Microsoft.

Apple doesn’t mean shit in the industry. It’s just a fashion and hype phenomenon.
Gooqle on the other Hand is a much bigger opponent, at least online.
Even if Microsoft was selling shit people must still buy it bundled with their computers.
They make money with bloated software and that sells hardware, so it’s a win win situation.

The only challenge can come from Open Source, have you never heard from Firefox, OpenOffice, Gimp, Ubuntu, Fedora ?
That’s what is the future of computing.

No Dana, because the analogy between the deposition of Mr. Blowhard at MS and and his replacement by any new talent, on the one hand, and Jobs reappearing at Apple to depose Gil Amelio, on the other, does hold up to scrutiny. Why? Because Jobs’ return to Apple would be most closely analogous to Gates’ return to MS, but the latter’s return will likely not occur (He said as much) and, if he did, he could bring himself to kill off his very own disparate babies — Frankenstein-like as they are — to simplify the product line unlike Jobs who easily enough killed off the babies, probably because they did not hold his DNA.

Besides willingness, there is also the issue of ability; Neither Gates nor anyone else, for that matter, would likely be able to intellectually, psychologically, and bureaucratically reign-in on all the disparation currently metastesizing at MS.

Gates will likely not be able retake control of his former ship that is currently spinnakering out of control and then, like Jobs at Apple, pare down MS to its essentials because MS has no essentials; Its stock in trade, its sine qua nons, is to be all things to all IS engineers, reflected by its unfocused, splayed astrological chart.

Apple never had this and never seemed to be. Also, Apple’s mission is the opposite: to appeal to quality rather than to MS’s quantity.

So you can see Dana, there is no one available that has Job’s forte and vision to pop right into the guts of MS to ruthlessly save itself from itself.

God, Jobs did such a superb job at culling the chaff from Apple that he or his vision surely could be used to do the same at the Bush administration’s bloated, disparate, and tanking foreign and domestic policies. Continue to “Support the troops” by waving the flag and adhering bumper stickers, but impeach George “Dubya” Bush.

The only way that could happen would be for Microsoft’s stockholders and directors to want to make that sort of change at the time. I’m surprised we’re not seeing any revolts. Even then, it would take years to turn the huge battleship around, by which time their market share will have eroded perhaps dangerously.

Peace,
Gene

The only thing possibly wrong about your prognostications, Gene, is that you write “Microsoft” where maybe you might better be writing “Microsoft under its current management.” Steve Balmer looks more and more like the Gil Amelio of the MS world. Under his leadership MS is a blind, stumbling giant, its software products are getting progressively more mediocre and as soon as you get out of the software area, MS’s other enterprises are pathetic, colossal money-losers. Balmer’s clumsy failure to acquire Yahoo has done much to discredit him personally. Well, okay, my purpose isn’t to write a personal diatribe against the guy. It’s simply to point out that Balmer and the rest of Microsoft’s present leadership can always be replaced, and I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that new and smarter management could turn things around. Look what happened with Apple. So I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to write an obituary for MS.