Microsoft’s Gates to Jump Ship

Microsoft is beset with competition from all sides, unlike any it has seen in decades, and Bill Gates, who co-founded the company 32 years ago, still intends to step away next year as planned.

But so far, Mr. Gates, Microsoft’s 51-year-old chairman, shows no sign of fading away.

One year into a planned two-year transition, there are few visible cues that Mr. Gates is ready to leave the world’s technology stage to devote his energies principally to the $33 billion foundation he established seven years ago with his wife.

Indeed at the company’s annual financial meeting last week Mr. Gates spoke first, outlining a decade-long agenda, not a mere 12-month outlook.

He described a world in which the widespread availability of broadband networks would reshape computing, giving rise to what he said would be “natural user interfaces” like pen, voice and touch, replacing many functions of keyboards and mice.

Mr. Gates has stayed deeply engaged in the company’s technology strategy. He still frequently participates in high-level strategy planning sessions with Microsoft’s closest partners, like Intel, according to executives who have attended the meetings.

During a wide-ranging interview last week exploring his diminished role at Microsoft, the company’s challenge and its competitors, Mr. Gates insisted that he really has begun stepping back.

“I am in a lucky situation of having way more things that seem interesting to do and very exciting and important, and working with smart people, and highly impactful, way more than a 24-hour day will fit,” Mr. Gates said. To be sure, there is widespread skepticism in the industry about the possibility of Mr. Gates genuinely disengaging. Microsoft’s dominance is being challenged as never before by Google in particular, and Wall Street refuses to believe the company will regain its edge. The company’s stock has largely remained flat since the end of the dot-com era.

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