Gates: Thanks for the memories

Co-founder shares surprises, letdowns, morsels from early Microsoft days

If you ask Bill Gates what life will be like when he stops working full time at Microsoft, he'll have to get back to you. That's because, a week away from the transition, he still hasn't slowed down his pace. If anything, things have picked up as he tries to have one last meeting with all the leaders and projects that are important to him.

Gates, who dropped out of school more than 30 years ago to run Microsoft, steps down from full-time work on Friday. He'll remain chairman and a part-time Microsoft employee.

The Microsoft co-founder did take some time out of his schedule recently to sit down with CNET News.com's Ina Fried and offer some reflections on the early days of the PC market as well as thoughts on where Microsoft is now and what technologies he will need in his new role, working full time for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In the interview, Gates shared some little-known stories from the company's early days, including the fact that Microsoft seriously entertained combining with Lotus, but talks ended when that company's chief executive pulled out. Gates also noted that Microsoft was invited and then uninvited to the launch event for the first IBM PC.

"We'd been invited, and then they decided not to invite us," Gates said. "Well, we had been working night and day. I had told people, yeah, we had this invitation that said, yeah, we're going to go, there's going to be a big deal. And then they decided, nah, we don't want you to come to the thing. That was a little bit of a downer."

Q: As you've been thinking about the transition, what are the kinds of things that have been on your mind the most?

Gates: Well, for 33 years I've worked at Microsoft and come in every day, and thought about what are the new things we need to do, and what's my personal role in that, a lot of e-mail, lot of meetings, lot of product reviews. So, in a sense it's hard for me to project what it's going to be like for me or Microsoft when I'm not here.

As long as I'm here, I'm still sending a lot of e-mail and in a lot of meetings, and so the real change in terms of people having an opportunity to step up and do things, to some degree it's after July 1 when my involvement is only a very specific involvement on particular projects as opposed to the overall strategy thing.

Everybody likes to pick the current competitive battles that we're in, and kind of think, OK, those are the big things. For me, I'd pick like tablet or interactive TV that are, according to me--but I've been over-optimistic before--on the verge of big, big impact. So, I've been sending a lot of mail to the tablet and interactive TV team, sort of sending the mail I would have sent three months from now, now, just giving them encouragement. Because, you know, all the big successes, whether it's Office integration or Windows, it takes a long time for those things to get established.

We thought it would be a good idea for me to go to the Windows 7 group and go see the work, and I was thrilled. Steven Sinofsky took me around, showed me what they're doing.

So, you're going to product group by product group?

Gates: Well, in terms of big meetings, that's pretty much done. Like the Windows group had a meeting, and the Surface group had a meeting, but this is more just sitting down with the top executives, so Stephen Elop, Craig Mundie, Kevin Turner.

The timing is actually pretty good. We just did our business reviews. We do the business planning, which is for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. So, we have the plans in place, and I sat through that last set of reviews, but it's a perfect example of something that as just a board member working on projects I won't sit in those business plan reviews in the future. I mean, Steve (Ballmer) may ask me to sit in on one that touches directly on something I'm doing, but the default is that I'm not there at all.

I hear search is one you're still pretty enthused about.

Gates: Yeah, that doesn't mean I'd necessarily go to their business plan review, but I've developed a relationship with them where brainstorming and thinking about what things we'd pick and how we do it.

You know, it's another good example of something that breakthrough work is not--doesn't happen in a day; it happens in many years. Now, many of those years fortunately are the years we've already put into it, but to really help that keep on track, and just to give them the positive feedback as they're going through it, that group, that's actually the only one that's truly concrete at this point where literally we've scheduled out a bit this summer and even some into the fall when and how I'm going to look at various aspects of their work.

http://news.cnet.com/Gates-big-send-off/2009-1014_3-6242276.html