Time has come to pass, for Bill Gates to hold his last Consumer Electronics Show (CES) keynote this year, before his last days at Microsoft will be over in July 2008.
Over the years, Bill Gates has become the face of Microsoft and the many things/faces that Microsoft. The mediocrity of the softwares (windows crash? no problem, just reboot); the aggressiveness in squashing opponents; the good execution and persistence in prevailing in the marketplace over multiple attempts; the lack of vision of the company except to get everything to run on windows.
While I've never been fans of Bill Gates and Microsoft, I have come to respect him as a person. As he comes to let go of commerce and technologies, and immerses himself in philanthropy, he's remarkably effective in garnering attention and support in the problematic areas that hopefully philanthropy could help fix. The jury is still out, as to how much changes that can bring about, at least he has strongly demonstrated to the richest elites that there is an alternative way in utilizing the wealth (rather than simply passing down from generations to generations mindlessly). That, in itself, is perhaps one of his greatest legacies.
And he's able to let go of the center stage while there's still applause, much like what Seinfeld has done with his show. So many an empire-builders have been unable to do that. I hope Gates show them a third way.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment