“I dunno. You bring them into the world, put your heart, your soul, and your wallet into bringing them up properly; showing them right from wrong; moulding and shaping them as best you can. But they have to make their own mistakes, and in the end you have to let them go, knowing even as you wave goodbye that you won’t have been apart five minutes before they’re questioning all you ever taught them.

And then you go home and see the kids.

That’s the thing with founding the most successful software company in history. However much you trust your successors, it must be murder when you eventually have to let go of the reins. Perhaps that’s why it’s taken two whole years for Bill Gates, Microsoft head honcho, alpha nerd, and sometime richest man in the world, to finally ride off into the sunset and become a full time philanthropist. Sort of.

Sort of? Well something tells me that the bespectacled one disappearing from MS for good is about as likely as... well... as Bill Gates leaving Microsoft. His parting words at his leaving bash (“there won’t be a day in my life I’m not thinking about Microsoft and the great things it’s doing and wanting to help”) said it all.

Unthinkable just a few years ago, the irony is that Gates not making the break clean and permanent could actually be to Microsoft’s detriment. With Google (among others) threatening its grip on the global software crown as it hasn’t been threatened in a quarter of a century or more, Microsoft is under greater competitive pressure than at any time in its history. Way behind, it has no choice but to transition from packaged software giant (THE packaged software giant) into a creature truly equipped to compete in the new economy of web-based, service-oriented software.

But if Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie, and Co. are to succeed, they cannot afford for Gates to be anything but a benign presence; he cannot be seen as the eminence gris; as the real power behind the throne. He’s just too iconic a figure to have lurking around in the background seemingly waiting for the others to drop the ball so that he can step up Kevin Pietersen-like and disdainfully switch hit it for 6.

Is Microsoft finished? Not a chance. It’s still very big and very rich. Whether it will stay very powerful remains to be seen. It needs to come to harsh realisation though.

The king is dead. Long live the king.”