Word: microsoft
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...complicated operating systems such as Microsoft's latest, Vista, aren't necessary in the Web Age, where applications are delivered for free and on demand - often without users' even being aware of it. The Net is where the money is, and it's the one place that Gates - like so many others - hasn't left his mark...
...Greatest Business Moves of All Time. Gates figured that many PC makers would copy IBM's open architecture, and make their own PCs; they'd need to license an operating system, too. PC-DOS soon became MS-DOS, an operating system for all IBM clones, and Microsoft was on its way to becoming the one thing that billions of PCs around the world would have in common...
...also illegal. With Netscape crying foul, the Feds successfully pressed an antitrust suit against Microsoft. The PR damage - Gates acting insolent on the witness stand, showing a convenient lack of memory about key business decisions - turned out to be short-lived and is all but forgotten as Gates remakes himself as a philanthropist. But the court's decree forced the great general to march cautiously into the future. He may have won the Battle of the Browser, but he would start to see major casualties in the Internet...
...While Microsoft is exponentially larger than Google - number 44 on the Fortune 500 list versus Google at 150 - Google's Web business (advertising mostly) is growing so fast, it's poised to rival Redmond's operating system revenues by 2010. And that's the problem. As more and more of what Windows does moves up into the cloud - into Google's always-on, give-'em-whatever-they-want-for-free servers - what becomes of the company that Gates built...
...smartest move Gates could make right now is to get out of the way. (Steve Ballmer should, too; pursuing Yahoo is a pretty good hint that his master plan for the Web is, like Gates's was, to try to buy Microsoft's way into the game.) There are many smart and talented people inside Microsoft who know what to do. (Blow up Vista and abandon its next iteration, Windows 7, and start from scratch, is but one excellent idea...