The news that Microsoft’s CEO will be retiring only underscores the transformation of the company everyone loved to hate into a staid uncle of US technology.
Back in its heyday, Microsoft was the firm that was going to eat everyone in its path. People wore T-shirts suggesting Bill Gates was a combination of Darth Vader, Big Brother and the anti-Christ.
That also seemed to be the view of Thomas Penfield Jackson, the federal judge who in 2000 decreed Microsoft an illegal monopoly and ordered it split. Jackson infamously likened Gates to Napoleon — and Microsoft to a drug-dealing street gang. So much for creative destruction.
Now, we have no doubt Microsoft used every lever to maintain its dominance — heck, Adam Smith told us that. But the Microsoft story reminds us of two truths.
The first is that tech is really about the primacy of human over physical resources. As Gates himself noted, Microsoft’s chief asset — the knowhow behind its software — doesn’t appear on any balance sheet.
The second is that competition makes for a dynamic market. These days even an established giant can see its business model up-ended by some app from a student in Bangalore. When it comes to cutting a firm down to size, we’ll always choose the free market over the federal government.