Friday, December 15, 2006

5 questions for Bill Gates

Finally, Microsoft’s huge PR machine is paying off. Preparing for Vista’s launch, they brought the big old man Gates out of the building and made sure no one asked him hard, probing questions.

The PR juggernaut seemed to have forced bloggers to go for soft questions.

On the DRM issue, Mr. Gates advised consumers not to buy DRM music, and rip CDs instead. The man is turning soft.

Here are my 5 questions for one of the most generous people on Earth. No, Micorsoft PR did not pay me to say this :-)

1. The MS Office business in worth $10 bn. Plus. How do you see the Web Office movement?
2. The Windows OS is worth another $10 bn. or so. How is Microsoft prepared for a Web OS scenario?
3. The Server business brings in another $10 bn. and change. How long do you see Microsoft and Oracle dominating this lucrative business?
4. Why is Zune so underwhelming? The general perception is that the music gadget business is a commodity business now. Why did Microsoft have to go for Zune?
5. How is MS Live ramping up vis-à-vis The Google Cloud?

And, finally, after Steve Ballmer, who?

Todd has more questions for Bill Gates here.

1 Comments:

At 10:48 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

The question #3 is a bit tricky, the server business is not dominated by neither Microsoft nor Oracle especially if you take web servers into consideration. Web servers aren't a tiny portion of the market.

 

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