<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"We\u2019re nearing the final week of June. Which means Bill Gates is soon to make his transition from the day-to-day at Microsoft to a more casual routine. As has been said numerous times before, the move is to be a mostly symbolic one. Gates has of course spent a good deal of his time traveling for not only the sake of the company he co-founded, but the philanthropic endeavor he and his wife, Melinda, took up and formed in an official capacity in 2000. He\u2019ll sensibly move to a more permanent and more involved role at the Gates Foundation from July onward.\nWhat\u2019s to become of Microsoft? Most signs point to Mesh, don\u2019t they? That\u2019s the effort by the company to connect all facets of the consumer\u2019s digital life across a web of devices and software services, whether online or off.\nAs for Gates\u2019s fellow executives - namely, Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie, and Craig Mundie - they\u2019ll likely handle Gate\u2019s absence without much trouble. The machine is definitely large enough to dispel notions of an alarming void formed, and though they\u2019ll have to proceed with the migration of a number of utilities to a more Web-based reality without Gates watching the engineers work (not that that was his primary occupation for the last several years; still, I\u2019m sure he was more hands on with developments than some might think him to be), they\u2019ll do okay.\nOzzie alone has shown himself to be as adventurous with technological strategy as Gates proved himself to be throughout much of his tenure, discounting the idle time between the last two OS launches. If anything, Ozzie, with Gates as chairman and advisor only, will offer up a fresher perspective still, and he will perhaps grow less devoted to the cash cows and venture more deeply into the bleeding edge and ensure that Microsoft can at least adapt in part to the vastly more agile Internet startup market, from which the (arguably) best inventions in tech have emerged since silicon and the American West Coast discovered one another.\n\nIn short, less of that gimmicky ad revenue sharing stuff and more openness to adaptation. If it can\u2019t manage to innovate its own wares, investment in outsiders can go far toward furthering its interests. Its resources are plenty. And small operations are hugely important. Picking the right ones to offer support is even more so. Google was small once. There are undoubtedly similarly lucrative stories bound to occur. Microsoft would do well to recognize its grey beard and its bureaucratic makeup and invest in new blood. Not only to subsume young talent, but to promote third parties it deems especially valuable. It\u2019s done so with Facebook already, but Facebook may only grow become so large a star. Diversification is always helpful for any financier. Google and Yahoo have displayed at least some ability in that respect.\nAgain, I have to assume that the transition from Gates-on-many-days to Gates-for-some-days won\u2019t be hugely eventful. Some cake. Some bubbly. Some megayacht racing. Both other than that, the grind is still the grind. Nonetheless, I think the move - albeit a partial one - will be a good change for Microsoft.\nOf course, strategically speaking, it\u2019d be a shame if Microsoft went into the second half of the year intent to take on Google in Google\u2019s favored field, search-plus-adverts. I\u2019m thinking more and more these days that that would be hugely wasteful for the company, and an unnecessary burden to bear an already convoluted corporation. Microsoft would do well to spend the short term adding greatly to its Web utilities. Here\u2019s looking at you, Office developers."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/06/21/microsoft-bill-gates-departing/>