Gates wants replacement!

Is this Bill seeking to be replaced with a computer or is this Microsoft going ahead for down! The mystery remains bullshit for most of us until things do happen themselves. Moreover, Gates' going to be a partimer at the company which made him the richest and often we have been hearing that he wish he'd not been so rich. He feels of that. CNET has gone thru detail of the show case.

Okay, that's not entirely true. Many of Gates' duties are being handed off to Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie as part of the tech icon's effort to step away from day-to-day technical leadership at Microsoft.

In an interview, Gates said that the system, known as Quests, is still in the early stages of development. Still, it "gets us to be really specific about the future of the home, the future of the office, the future of the data center," Gates said.

The idea is to draw more of Microsoft's technical minds into the process of planning for the future. "It will be a SharePoint wiki thing internally so people can say where they disagree or we're missing something," Gates said.

It's part of Microsoft's effort to make the company less dependent on any particular individuals, including Gates.

"Two years from now...the commitment I made to Bill is that we're going to be in the position where hopefully we would anticipate anything he would suggest to us," Ballmer said. "That's part of getting the company to the place where it can have this broad, big agenda and it's got to be driven by not only guys like me, but the next generation of leaders."

Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer declined to offer too many specifics on the system, or say when it will be up and running." It's a good exercise that (CTO) David Vaskevitch and Bill and Ray (Ozzie) are championing to have a little bit more regular, informal way to actually call on people to express and help the company shape its long-term technical direction," Ballmer said.

Google has its own system in which workers can be inspired by what their colleagues are working on. On its internal Web site, Google workers can see each employee's key objectives and results, thereby getting a sense of what co-workers are up to.

However, Gates and Ballmer took pains to contrast what Microsoft is doing with Google's system.

"This is different," Gates said. "This is about what the future is."

Ballmer concurred. "This is where you kind of synthesize what you think we ought to do as opposed to just saying 'Hey what is everybody up to?'"

"I don't think Microsoft is suffering from a lack of ideas," he said. "(Windows) Vista isn't in trouble because of a lack of ideas. It's a shortage of planning, scheduling and estimating."

DeMichillie said, from his perspective, Microsoft's biggest problems is stitching together all of its ideas into coherent plans. "One of Microsoft's big problems is that they have all of these different (product) teams," he said. "How does that ever get tied together in a way that makes sense for customers?"

Gates stepping down from full-time Microsoft role

Bill Gates, the man who started Microsoft and has been its public face throughout its three decades of existence, plans to step away from daily work at the company.

He will gradually relinquish his current role, ceding the title of chief software architect immediately, while remaining a full-time employee for the next two years. In July 2008, he will become a part-time employee and chairman.

The announcement comes as his company battles pressures on all fronts: a sagging stock price, competition from Google and nagging delays in the Vista operating system.

Gates will work side-by-side with Ozzie throughout the transition period, but a year from now, Ozzie and Mundie will begin reporting directly to CEO Steve Ballmer.

Gates explained that he has been working part-time for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and full-time for a company that has made him the richest man in the world, and he wished to reverse those priorities.

"The road ahead for Microsoft is as bright as ever," Gates said in a press conference here, noting that he plans to work full time through June 2007 and plans to remain as chairman for the foreseeable future. "So many seeds we have planted have just started to grow."

Gates said that his role has already changed significantly from the company's early days, when he liked to review each line of code and interview each job applicant. Although he said he likes to think he still has a significant impact on the broad range of company activities, he said that the products are already in others' hands.

"The world has had a tendency to focus a disproportionate amount of attention on me," Gates said.

Although Gates will lower his profile at Microsoft, he will likely still have a huge effect on the company, predicted Nathan Myhrvold, CEO of Intellectual Ventures and former chief scientist at Microsoft.

"Part-time for Bill Gates is full-time for anyone else in this industry," he said. "I remember when he got married. People said, 'Oh, this will slow him down.' But it didn't."

Ballmer acknowledged that the company has "an opportunity to do better in some of the areas" in which it has products, but defended the company's overall record. "I think our company has performed very well," he said.

I wish I had not been mega rich or what else shall I be for Mr Gates. Is there any hurdle that's creeping on him or the industry enforcing this giant to be off the track or is this the only future, my idol.

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