Bill Gates has been a tech icon for as long as many of us have been alive and while he built an empire from scratch, he has reiterated, again, that he has no plans to return to Microsoft. In fact, Bill stated that he only gives about 15% of his time to Microsoft as the company"s chairman.
Bill recently gave a talk at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit and was asked if he would return to Microsoft much like Steve Jobs did at Apple. This is how Bill responded to that question:
Steve Jobs did a phenomenal piece of work. Apple, most people would have expected, were on their way going out of business. He had run Apple since it was a tiny company and then he came back in and made incredibly valuable. It’s a phenomenal business story and I thought Walter Isaacson did a good job catching that in the book. Steve and I were friends, competitors – we were a lot of different things. It was amazing what he did.
I’m now committed full time to my foundation work and I give about 15% of my time as Chairman of Microsoft. Microsoft is moving ahead with Windows 8 that combines the best of tablet with PC. This month the very first hardware based on that idea including Microsoft’s own Surface will ship. So there’s a lot of exciting stuff ahead in software and I didn’t retire from Microsoft because I thought things were getting boring. In fact a lot of best ideas- the vision of artificial intelligence and robots are still ahead but i did decide the philanthropic world was where my contribution would be more unique and so thats what I’ll work on full time for the rest of my life.
In his response he showed his approval of Windows 8 and Bill has a long history with tablets as he tried to move the industry in that direction back in the XP days. He also stated that he believes the best ideas are still to and that he did not retire from Microsoft because the industry was getting boring.
Source and image credit: Tbreak.com