Financially, cloud has become an extraordinary profit machine for Microsoft, far beyond anything traditional consumer Windows ever has been (for a long time obv

Financially, cloud has become an extraordinary profit machine for Microsoft, far beyond anything traditional consumer Windows ever has been (for a long time obviously it was far and away the cash cow). Their operating income margin, for a company so massive, is mind boggling. $70 billion in operating income from $168b in sales (41.6%). By comparison it was 28% in 2013. So their margin has rather dramatically re-expanded during the Nadella era, like they're a younger company again. I think Microsoft is benefiting from not gorging and becoming obese again (employee count vs sales) as it did during the late Gates years and the Ballmer years. Microsoft could trivially load up on people for no great reason other than to always be expanding to fill the margin (many companies do that), but they seem to have made a conscious decision to be more disciplined. I bet that's working in their favor, as high levels of bloat usually acts like quicksand for larger older companies. They're probably more nimble now than when they had half the sales back in 2013. Nadella seemed immediately able to relax on the Windows-everything philosophy in a way Gates and Ballmer were unable to (they were perhaps too wed to the first chapter of Microsoft, people get blinded by such biases, even very smart people). And to his credit, Gates didn't try to get in Nadella's way as he made changes, Gates had been chairman of Microsoft from 1981 to 2014, with his stature and financial capabilities he could have been a real slag in the way of change.