A World Without Microsoft

Software

Exactly how would the computing world feel without Microsoft?

What if Microsoft just closed their doors? Gates and Ballmer just got up and left with nothing more than a �This is boring,� how would the computing world be effected.

I mean, they just shutdown Microsoft: they didn�t release any of their products open source, because, they really don�t care, rather, they just got up and left.

Gates is quoted saying, quite often, that he�ll run Microsoft until he gets sick of it, so, what if that day came? Does that mean he enjoys being picked on by the entire geek crowd, and hated by half the country?

The possibility actually exists for Microsoft to just pay out all the stock holders their share of the company and just cease to exist, and, to be honest, there�s little reason for Gates and Ballmer to continue running the company at the current state. They�re the most prominent target for geeks to attack, they�re both unbelievably rich and could live the rest of their lives spending as much money as they want and still have plenty left over, and the company is growing to a stand-still.

Seriously, what has Microsoft done in the last, say 3 years. Nothing substantial. There�s been some marketing jazz here and there, and the odd silly product like OneNote updated/released, but, has there been any substantial improvements to the products everyone uses? Not really. There�s been some Internet Explorer/Windows XP patches, some bug fixes, some new releases of MS Office that add little but the lack of backwards compatibility, but, I see no innovation.

Isn�t that what makes a technology company �fun�? Innovation? Does Gates see technology�s fun different than the rest of us?

What about the users? Would they just continue to use Windows XP for a few years until Mac OS/Linux threw it self in to a position where it had marketing money behind it? Would someone quickly pick up a Linux distribution and commercialize it ala Linspire? Would Apple Computers see a huge stock value increase?