Microsoft Investors Want Bill Gates Out as Chairman

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p05esto

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Gates should take over, not go away. Delete Win8 from existance and go back to REAL computing, power users and professionals only. If you want to jerk off checking facebook and instashit then go do it on a chromebook. Keep Windows for professional usres who sit in front of a giant screen, keyboard and mouse all day doing actual work. Sending emails and checking stock news is not the real work I'm talking about. Editing video, programming applications, design work, CAD, etc etc
 
Pushing out the founder completely for dumb reasons didn't work too well for Apple and almost lead to them fading away forever. Unless gates is actively being detrimental to the long term health of the company (and I stress long term) it sounds to me like they are just whiny millionaires who want to steer a software company in a direction they know nothing about.
 
I say kick those f'tards out of the board instead.

For all the differences I have on how MS does things, I'd say the real business man in the house is Bill Gates. Besides, it's his friggin' company!

Those F'tards should be asking for him to get back as CEO for a year or so while he shakes the house a bit and find a suitable person for the position. I'm pretty sure Mr Bill can take a year to shake things up a bit.

Cheers!
 

hoofhearted

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Maybe these three are realling trying to light a fire and piss him off into coming back and taking over Balmer's spot. It would make sense since they saw their greatest growth during Gates tenure.
 

burmese_dude

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When was the last time investors cared about sustainability and long term health of a company or its employee well beings. Or if the company is breaking rules and laws and poisoning the earth for max profit...

Investors always care about short term profit and nothing else. If I owned a large company, I would never go public, where investors have a say in anything I do. Money isn't everything.
 

jhansonxi

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Gates is the reason Ballmer wasn't fired years ago. He was promoting the Win8 interface and probably had significant influence over it.

Shareholders can't be fired since they reason they exist is their ownership of stock. They could be bought out but that's about it. The position of chairman is elected by the shareholders and can be replaced. That doesn't mean that Gates will be "fired" since he is not an employee and he will still have his stock. If you don't like what the three investors are complaining about then contact them and offer to buy up their stock. Then you can vote to keep Gates.

Gates may be the founder, but his amount of ownership is determined by the percentage of stock he holds versus the total amount of stock available. He has been selling stock for years so it's no surprise that some other investors want a chairman with a greater financial investment in the company.
 

hero1

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Rats! I think Bill should revise his plan and increase his stakes in the company. MS need him there and I hope no one listens to the rats that wouldn't have had anything if Bill never took MS public let alone start the company.
 

milktea

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Well said. I'd give you an extra thumb up if I could.
 

milktea

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From this article ... "They're also worried about Gates' role on the special committee for seeking out a new CEO."
I smell something fishy with these 'three investors'. They are up to something, especially in the next CEO position for MS.
 

ta152h

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Let's be real, Bill Gates was not an innovator. He rode a monopoly, and was a criminal. He put businesses with better products out of business by illegal practices. That's not opinion, Microsoft was fined for it.

He showed no vision, and just followed other companies, used monopoly power, and the crushed the companies that were innovating.

Let's not forget who this guy was. He wasn't good for the industry. He slowed it down. That's why they got fined for it. Again, it's not my opinion, it's fact since they were found guilty.

Now, Microsoft hasn't been able to do that, because they are weaker. So, when you depend on monopoly power, instead of good products and innovation, when you lose it, things go awry. They keep trying to leverage monopoly power, but can't. Look at Windows 8. Why does it suck? Because Microsoft, instead of deciding to make a good product that worked great on the device it was on, decided once again to try to leverage their monopoly. Let's make it look the same on both tablet and PC, so when they're forced to buy Windows on their PC, they'll already be comfortable with it on their tablet when they go looking for a new one.

Except, it didn't work. The monopoly was weakened. The success from leveraging it wasn't forthcoming. So, with 8.1, do they give up? Nope, still a tablet OS for the desktop. Why? Because they don't know any better. They don't. It's what they've always done. It's what's worked in the past. Don't try to create a better product, just use the monopoly to leverage it.

That mindset has to change, and the plague of inferior Microsoft products will change with it.

It's too late now to save their monopoly, Ballmer and Windows 8 saw to that. But, it's not too late for them to make products that are competitive and sell based on that. But, it better happen fast, ChromeOS and Android just keep getting more traction every month. Windows 8.1 is surely not the answer.
 

gm0n3y

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While I think that it would probably be good for M$ if Bill came back as CEO, that is just not going to happen. I can see with the amount of power he wields at M$ that if he isn't going to take the reins then he is going to be more of a problem than a solution.
 

coolitic

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I find this very funny. They must be stupid to think they have any chance of him stepping down. Instead of stepping down, I suggest that he gets more power to fix Microsoft's broken state (they fail at everything right now. Xbox One, tablets, and Windows 8)
 

marcolorenzo

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Yeah, that kind of elitist thinking sounds like a great basis for a business plan!



I can't be bothered to list all the things he directly or indirectly innovated, but I can see your point even though I think you're being a bit militant. I just want to say though that I think this whole idea that Microsoft is a big bad monopoly came from the fact that when Microsoft was at its peak, there were no companies like it or ever before. These days we have Apple and Google doing similar things, buying up smaller companies and no one bats an eyelid. A great example of this is when the courts tried to force Microsoft to not package Internet Explorer with every OS. They didn't succeed but instead managed to make them provide information on alternative browser options with every OS sold. I don't believe Apple is doing that, yet no one seems to care that Safari is the only option you have with a freshly installed OS X.

As far as Windows 8 goes, I still don't see the problem. I use it on my 2 year old laptop with no touchscreen and wouldn't go back to anything else. The start screen performs all the functions that the start button does and much more (please correct me if I'm wrong. In fact, I would honestly like to know what you could do with the old Start button that you can't now do on the Start screen, apart from easy access to the shut down button). Sure the "Modern" apps suffer from being full screen all the time as well as many other problems that make them less functional than traditional apps but since I primarily use traditional apps, I don't see the problem. And they're just additions to the traditional Windows experience. You don't lose any functionality by their existence. Apart from these points, Windows 8 is an improvement on just about every level over Windows 7 including more functions, better boot times, better performance etc.

Of course, if I'm wrong, I'll be happy to hear what you think. But after using Windows 8 since November last year, I still haven't found anything about it that makes it worse than any past Windows.
 

dalethepcman

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Cool story bro, too bad you mix up your fact's with opinions, let me help clarify for you.

Fact : Microsoft lost an anti-trust suit against the US Government for anti-competitive practices of bundling IE with Windows.

v Opinions v
" He wasn't good for the industry. He slowed it down. That's why they got fined for it. Again, it's not my opinion, it's fact "
" Bill Gates was not an innovator. He rode a monopoly, and was a criminal....That's not opinion"
^ Opinions ^

Bill gates has done more good things for this world, than everyone you will ever know combined, you should show a little respect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation
 

ismaeljrp

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That would severely diminish the value of the company. The goal is to make more money, not lose it.
 

koss64

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Those three stockholders really don't care about the company,what it stands for, its history or its future beyond the next dividend cheque. They plan on having the man that founded the company and made it the success it has been forced out because they probably have one of their friends lined up for the job, or they want google to buy out Microsoft so they can get a fat payoff and this is the first step.
 

teh_chem

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You guys who are talking about how MS should go back to "real computing" and target "power users and professionals" demonstrate that you have little understanding of how businesses need to evolve to survive, and how the PC industry has drastically changed from where it was even 5 years ago. With mobile taking hold and the traditional idea of the "PC industry" is receding, there is less and less money in those "real computing/power/professional" markets. There's so much potential revenue in mobile (and devices), it just has to be figured out how to enter/address. Bill Gates, while quite intelligent and experienced, doesn't have a track record with devices or device markets. I couldn't say one way or another that he is capable or incapable of leading this new charge, but if there are other people in mind that can lead it better, I say might as well at least consider it.

More importantly than working on hardware devices, I think MS really needs to re-evaluate their marketing ideas. The Surface idea was actually quite good, and if they tempered the expectations of Surface RT with consumers (and not imply that it's just like any other Windows device), it may have actually done quite well (of course, assuming pricing issues were addressed as well--I think $350 is reasonable for a 32GB tablet). Surface RT is not a bad product, just horribly mishandled on the marketing end. I think most of their woes are probably marketing-oriented rather than being able to make better devices.

They also really need to figure out how to cut into the established ecosystems. I'm not monetarily heavily invested in Android, but service-wise, I use and android phone, and android tablet, and google services for email/calendar/etc. Bring a better, integrated platform like that and actually convince people to change, and you've got a hit--I think they already have that, they just suck at convincing people to change.
 
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