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| Talk,
Graham Bower,
12 January 1999 | |
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This week, Bill Gates, founder of one of the last centuries most famous companies, stepped down as chief executive of Microsoft, passing the mantle over to his buddie Steve Ballmer. Gates explained that he wants to get closer to the products, and that he is taking on the newly conceived role of Chief Software Architect. He seems unlikely to contribute much of value in this role. Afterall, the sum total of his contribution to Windows 95 was the CD autostart feature that drove everyone mad.
So, what is the real reason for Gate's departure from the big chair?
Last year, in his findings of fact, Judge Jackson established that Microsoft was a monopolist. Perhaps the only suprising thing here is that it had taken the Judge so long to come to this conclusion. The facts were surely self evident. What was less clear, was what the US government would do about it. For some time now, there have been mutterings that Microsoft will be broken up into smaller companies - presumably this will teach them a lesson for being too successful.
Breaking up Microsoft would be a radical thing to do, but not without precident. Under the Regan administration in the 1980's, America's telephone utility AT&T was broken up into a number of smaller regional companies dubbed Baby Bells (after the company's founder, Alexander Graham Bell). This action did not, however, create a genuinely competative market in telecommunications. Instead, each Baby Bell controlled it's own little patch, and what was left of AT&T continued to make handsom profits out of long distance and international calls.
It is hard to see how breaking up Microsoft would be in the public interest. In his first speach as chief executive, Ballmer said "it would be absolutely reckless and irresponsible" to split the company. Indeed, it's hard to see how it could be broken up into competative companies. Certainly, you could split it into an operating system company, an applications company, a business to business solutions company and a media company, but these would never compete directly against one another. Indeed, there would need to be further legislation to prevent the Baby Bills from collaberating closely (and bundling each others products). But coopertition is the name of the game with IT companies - collaberating and competing, depending on where the greatest profits lies. It will be hard to legislate fairly in this area.
So, back to my original question - why now? Why has Bill quit? The timing would seem to indicate that it has something to do with the anti-trust case. But what? What are Microsoft planning this time? What added functionality are they going to bundle into Ballmer's new role that will get them out of hot water? Well for one thing, Ballmer is said to have less of a temper than Gates - he may be better at muttering the plattitudes that the folks in Washington want to hear. Or perhaps the knowledge that the techies in Redmond have an idle and troublesome Gates fiddling around with their work now will be enough to satisfy the US government that Microsoft is no long a big threat to the nation.
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