Tags:
Journalism of Courage
LESSON 1.0 from Bill Gates for Indians in high profile public positions: know when to quit. Arguably the world8217;s best-known entrepreneur could easily have carried on. But Gates has left the job of directly running Microsoft just when, as the analysis we carry on the op-ed page points out, the revolution he started is being overtaken by one he had always played catch-up to: the internet. More than 90 per cent of the world8217;s personal computers run on Windows. For many lay computer users, PCs mean Windows. This is an extraordinary achievement but one that may not last.
The notion of a PC pre-bundled with software will probably be successfully challenged as soon as broadband internet connections become as globally ubiquitous as PCs. Consumers will buy just a shell, and software as well as personal files will be stored in secure servers, accessible easily. Gates8217;s Microsoft is in this game. But there are others, too, and plenty of software choices will be available. Firefox, an internet browser, is already a serious challenger to Microsoft8217;s Internet Explorer, which, instructively, was made successful only after ruthless Microsoft business tactics ensured the elimination of Netscape, once the world8217;s favourite browser.
