Bill Gates' New World

The business media was abuzz on Monday and Tuesday of this week with news of Bill Gates' best buddy, Warren Buffett's, gift of $37B to the former's foundation.

I caught part of the public relations event in which Bill, his wife, Melinda, and Warren Buffett announced the gift. Has anyone seen Bill Gates this happy and relaxed since his early days as a middling guest of Steve Jobs, when the latter was still doing battle with IBM in the mid-1980s?

Last month, I saw Gates interviewed on Donny Deutsch's "The Big Idea." When Deutsch asked Gates what Bill would say to the leaders of Google, if they were in the audience, Bill nervously mumbled something like, ".....ah...we're going to keep you guys honest." I wrote about it in this prior post. I'm sure that struck fear into the hearts of Google's leaders......NOT.

Then there was the WSJ story recently about Gates commissioning his former aide to develop a Microsoft VOIP telephony business. Let's see....Vonage is already out front, and SBC/ATT and Verizon are having their own troubles just treading water in the voice business. What is it Microsoft is going to bring to this market, besides some of that now-famous $35B cash hoard?

Oh, wait, Google's positioned in that space, too, with instant messaging and email......oops!

Corporate failures are replete with examples of companies whose only contribution to a new product/market was the cash they burned through, to their shareholders' dismay. Ask Carl Icahn about Blockbuster.

What seems unfailingly clear to me, now, is that Bill Gates is doing his shareholders a tremendous disservice by hanging around Microsoft headquarters. I have been saying for months, in various posts, that his last five years at the helm of the company he founded have been disastrous. It's past time for him to go. When he looks so elated at the chance to give someone else's money away, and be rid of the job of creating shareholder value, it's time for him to do the right thing- right now. Not in two more years.

I have to believe that Bill is eager to have a full-time job at which he cannot fail. Oh, sure, maybe the Google guys will somehow convince Warren Buffett to give them part of the $37B promised to Bill and Melinda's foundation, but that's a stretch.

I think the sooner Bill totally and completely separates himself from Microsoft, and concentrates on giving away the billions in his foundation, the better it will be for Microsoft shareholders. A new Chairman might even sweep out some of that board deadwood and get a few competent business people in there to help oversee an overdue transformation, unlikely as it would be to succeed.

Better late, than never.