Maybe the age of HN is too low to remember, but Gates wasn't visionary. Microsoft's entire business was built on embrace-and-extend strategy. Gates was shrewd

Maybe the age of HN is too low to remember, but Gates wasn't visionary. Microsoft's entire business was built on embrace-and-extend strategy. Gates was shrewd and ran Microsoft like the mafia ran Chicago. All this talk of MS needing a forward-thinking visionary with ideas is just wrong. Just look at the environment these tech companies inhabit. You have Google, Samsung, and Apple all declaring patent war. That's how it has always been. Go back to Sun and Microsoft. Or Netscape. Or what MS did to IBM. It goes on and on. Oh, sure, on the consumer side all these companies appear to be innovating and everything is peachy. But that's marketing. In reality it's a cut-throat, winner-takes-all game they are playing. Want Microsoft to succeed? I don't think most people on HN have the stomach for it. You like open source. Open standards. Playing fair. When Microsoft was good, they were really bad.