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Comment by dennisgorelik | Hacker News Reader

Gates actually donated more to his foundation -- he donated his time. I believe that if Gates stayed Microsoft's CEO -- Microsoft would be more successful company and delivered more to the society.

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I believe that if Gates stayed Microsoft's CEO -- Microsoft would be more successful company and delivered more to the society.

interesting opinion about microsoft possibly delivering more to society. would you care to speculate on what possible ways they could better benefit society if billg were still in charge? i can't think of how a new version of SQL Server or MS Excel could do more direct benefits than malaria vaccines, etc. but perhaps msft could put more money into basic research, using computational methods to solve the world's problems, etc.?

Well, if Microsoft delivered more value to shareholders (and to its employees), then those folks could choose to contribute that money to a variety of sources, philanthropic and otherwise. I'd personally think that the Foundation has done more good than a better MSFT would have, but suppose (1) billg delayed retiring by 10 years (2) we assume that billg's presence would have drastically improved MSFT's fortunates, then I think it's plausible that it would be a net benefit for society.

That's really a pretty outrageous claim. Microsoft has been pretty stuck since it was found to have violated anti-trust law. Just because he rode one company up to become the world's richest man, doesn't mean that he could have done something to make Microsoft a better company today.

I don't think that was the outrageous or controversial part of the OP's comment at all. Making Microsoft a better company than they are today would just require beating Ballmer, which is not exactly difficult.

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