Davey Winder
Saturday, 28 June 2008 04:44
IT Industry -
Strategy
Page 2 of 3
The farewell speech was not all back slapping and ego
massaging stuff though. It seems
that Gates was in a mood to
admit his mistakes. The biggest screw ups,
he said, occurred when Microsoft did not predict technology trends well
enough.
"In software, you've got to anticipate the turns
in the road. We missed the search and advertising thing" Gates admitted.
While Microsoft might have made many mistakes, there can be no denying
that it also got a great many things absolutely right on the money.
Very big money as it happens.
The first of the getting it right events would have to have been back
in 1980 when Gates and Allen persuade IBM to provide a version of BASIC
for the soon to be released IBM PC. At the same time also getting a
licensing deal for what would become the MS-DOS operating system. The
real bit of genius, whether accidental or otherwise, was in keeping the
rights to license MS-DOS to other PC manufacturers as well as IBM.
1980 was also an important year as this is when Ballmer was famously
persuaded into joining the company, after arguing over whether his
salary should be USD $50,000 or $60,000. Gates agreed to split it down
the middle in the end. Ballmer is now the second largest individual
shareholder in Microsoft with a stake valued in excess of USD $11
billion.
In 1986 Microsoft eventually went public on the NASDAQ, and by 1990 announces revenues in excess of USD $1 billion.
How will Bill be best remembered? Read on...
CONTINUED
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