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Today, the 27th June 08 will mark the end of a revolutionary career for the man who had a dream of putting a PC in every home. Perhaps he didn’t expect it would be 4 PCs for each person in some occasions. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft back in 1975, will be retiring as an executive officer today. The 52 years old genius has announced his departure plan two years back, was shocking news for many, but I guess is something good for Microsoft on the long run. First of all, Bill Gates is not what he was 3 decades back. Fresh blood and new ideas need to take place, and Microsoft have fallen behind in the online era. Second, that way Mr. Gates can absorb how Microsoft performs without him from a bit far, and he can still interfere if it needs, as he will be the non-executive chairman of the company even after his departure.

Bill Gates founded Microsoft with Paul Allen at the time, when Allen showed him an issue of Popular Mechanics, featuring the first microcomputer, The Altair 8800. Gates did his contact with the manufacturer to offer him a BASIC interpreter for the new machine, which he didn’t really have ready! Against all odds, and despite technical expert advise that it’s not possible, the two young geeks made it a reality, with the contribution of a third person, Monte Davidoff!

Altair 8800

 Bill Gates has also been attributed for coming up with the concept of buying software as a product, with his harsh open letter to hobbyist who were stealing his code for FREE. It seems people enjoyed stealing Bill’s code from the start :). The letter created a big mix of supporting and attacking reactions. The fact that Bill was using Harford University labs, inviting Allen along, when he was not even a student in the University, made some people think he has already used public property for commercial use, and thus, they have indirectly paid their debt through taxes. One thing to note is,Gates claimed “Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?” The answer is, Open Source folks like Linux :). And it’s not really nothing, it many times pay back. Open Source developers are known to be paid highers salaries for their solid online reputation, and the great experience they have.

So is Bill Gates gonna have so much FREE time on his own, plays all Xbox 360 games start to end? I doubt this guy can hold it this quite. Gates is retiring to pursue full time job with his wife in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Some people may be wondering why I’m writing this article, when I have attacked Bill Gates so much in the past. It’s true, I very much hate Bill Gates’ anti-trust and monopoly practices, I hate Microsoft way of doing things, however I cannot deny also what a genius this guy is, and what changes he made to the industry.

I am looking forward to some photos of the small farewell party they might do to him :).

My only question now is, are we gonna get finally an updated version of this?

The book is what now, 15 years old? He is retiring, and this book definitely needs a successor or updated version.

I also recommend watching this amazing video, that I’m sure mos geeks already did.

UPDATE: I also naively forgo to mention. It’s WALL-E release day. My kid is going crazy about it already. However the movie is not hitting large screens before next week in Kuwait!

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Microsoft have finally made the official release of Windows XP SP3, which in their words  “includes a small number of new functionalities, which do not significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system”. Yet, the public is giving it more attention and interest than Microsoft hopes for, in it’s continuing effort to kill the OS, and replace it with Vista. Despite their official announcement to kill XP from retail store this coming June, PC manufacturers like Dell and HP have found a loophole in the possible downgrade option from Vista to XP, and will sell their computers preinstalled with downgraded XP version. This would ofcourse incur little extra cost, that they seem to be welling to take.

To read the SP3 update details, download the PDF file from here.

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The 67% increase in Xbox 360 sales did not save the company from reporting the 10.9% drop in net profits this last quarter, to only $4.3bn. The net revenue it self didn’t grow much either, less than 1% to $14.45bn. So the drop can’t only be blamed on the $1.42bn EU anti-trust fine.

That said, add to it the very slow growth Microsoft is getting in the online business, and to add insult to the injury, Gartner analyst have recently reported on the danger of Microsoft Windows collapsing due to it’s lack of competitiveness with the fast growing market. Come to think of it, really, for the leader in OS business, Microsoft haven’t been shaking things up at all. So maybe few years from know, Microsoft will receive door knocks by Yahoo for a buyout!

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What exactly is the meaning of this?

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Many people have said it before, but to come from someone who has spent $240 million dollars on it, and that someone be Bill Gates him self! Wall Street Journal writes that Bill Gates have quit using facebook following the enormous amount of friendship requests he receives every day, 8000 to be exact. Imagine how the number would look if Facebook had enemy requests :). I’ve personally seen social sites as bubbles that come and go. Facebook had something special, in how he wanted to make it clean friendly environment, where you only list your true friends. Apparently, that’s not working so great either, and even my friends are not supposed to know all my moves, which is where the whole Facebook philosophy falls apart as far as I’m concerned.

So was Facebook really worth investing  $240 million in it? Making it worth $15 billion dollars! The same link writes “the average person spends on a social-networking site has dropped 14% over the last four months, according to Internet research company comScore” 14% in four months! That’s a big drop, but I expect that number to jump again once another social bubble comes up. But clearly, this shows social networks is dangerous shaky business to get into. One stupid foolish mistake infringing on people’s privacy and thousands of protesters would leave, which is what happened when Facebook started broadcasting to the world what you bought online without prior notice. I can only imagine how embarrassing that was to some!

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This tale of this day could really be told for decades to come. It could be a day that will change the web dramatically, with Yahoo Board of Directors setting today on one table to discuss and decide on the Microsoft $44.6 billion bid to acquire Yahoo. Such an acquisition I believe has never happened before in the web. One of top 3 sites acquiring the other. Shall Yahoo decline the offer, Google would be happy to offer all the help their competitors need to get back on their foot, starting with powering their Search (again), and their Search Marketing expectedly.

Google hasn’t been looking at this only however, rumors are spreading about acquisitions of two social-networking sites, namely Bebo and Plaxo. Meanwhile, Ask.com keeps their steady silent enhancement with their Big News release, which is really appealing, and is aided with some video, picture, and Digged news.

UPDATE: Yahoo! says we are worth at least $56.4 billion ($40/share) if Microsoft is interested. While Yahoo! doubts Microsoft would bow to such claim, the door is still open for Microsoft, and this time with a certain target. I don’t think this is the end of it, but I believe meanwhile Google are gonna boast things with their rival in a joint venture, just to show Yahoo! how good it will taste.

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This is literally what Microsoft did after more than a decade of failure to catch up with the quickly evolving web world. They are making the biggest bid in the technical world ever to acquire Google’s rival, Yahoo!. Shall such a deal go on, Microsoft would finally be #1 in the WWW customer base, and Ballmer would finally see his dream come true. Beat Google that is! I think they must have thought of this after their protest on Google acquiring DoubleClick failed. This must have been a strong hit and they wanted to strike back in any way they could. Major acquisitions also have been the latest fashion. BEA and MySQL both acquired last month, so why not Yahoo! this month? After all, they have been lacking for the past few years.

But is it a wise thing to acquire a deteriorating company instead of emerging one? In the technology world, it’s about what smart people you hire, and looking at this story, companies like Google and Facebook seem to be getting all the attention of fresh talents, while Microsoft is not anymore the dream of programmers, and Yahoo is not even close to Google. Merges of falling down companies could go real bad. Look at AMD & ATI merge and how terrible it turned out to be, and they are still suffering from it. Such major acquisitions could be really harmful not only to the end user, but to the acquiring company as well.

Either ways, Google obviously is not happy about the attempted acquisition, and is fighting it from both ends. Publicly, they went with the predicted monopoly protest statements, describing how the take over would seriously hurt the global market fair competition, and without any doubt, they are absolutely right there. Especially when the acquisition is coming from Microsoft. From the shadows however, instead of making their own bids as it would contradict their monopoly protest, news have surfaced about Google’s Eric Schmidt calling Yahoo’s Chief to co-operate in backing off Microsoft offer, probably by reaching partnership agreement, something which could be appealing to Yahoo!. Google have also been making contacts with other companies, like Time Warner, looking for possible Microsoft rival bidders. Alas, none seems interested in a lost battle against a company as large as Microsoft.

I personally have been feeling real bad about competitor acquisitions, such as Oracle and BEA. It really cuts down the choices and give the company control over pricing and portability. Yahoo!’s fall to Microsoft would be even more devastating and harmful to much larger segment. And the thing that worries me the most is Yahoo! logically saying that they will “pursue the best course of action to maximize long-term value for shareholders.”. That said, you can only imagine how $44.6 billion looks compared to annual $4.13 billion in profits.

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