Comment by jordan0day | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jordan0day | Hacker News Reader

To echo what some others have already said, I don't see how coming back to Microsoft could be more personally satisfying for Gates than what he's doing now. Sure, it would probably feel pretty nice if he could right the ship and get lauded in the same way Jobs has been as of late.

Let's be honest though: the stuff Gates is doing today is way more important than any of the things Jobs did over the last decade. We can argue about the relative merits of disrupting the cell phone handset industry and tablet computing, long-tail effects thereof and the like, but at the end of the day the best you can argue is that it will have trickle-down effects for the poor and disadvantaged.

Gates, on the other hand, is working on goals to directly improve the lives of people. And the people his foundation is trying to help tends to be the folks who need help the most, not people who can afford expensive mobile phones and even more expensive mobile phone rate plans. Gates is no saint by any means, but I can't see how after working on such big-picture issues, he'd want to come back and run a business.

Not to mention, it would probably be a big loss for his foundation. He didn't just pour in the money for it, he engages fiercely with governments and organizations for specific measurable goals with just as much passion as business. Philanthropy may not sound exciting to techies, but at the scale he's doing it (his ambition is to reduce the global death toll from diseases by 80%) it must be pretty challenging.

And another thing: Gates led microsoft in its two most exciting eras (the PC and the Internet). Both of these sectors have now been commoditized, leaving little space for revolution (tablets? meh).

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2011/11/02/the-sec...

What do you mean little space for revolution? I bet no one thought the PC, Internet or tablet markets would take off long before the fact. It is called a revolution exactly because it is unexpected.

Exactly. I didn't fully grasp this until I read some of Bill's letters on what he's working on now.

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/annual-letter/2011/Pages/home...

Without considering it, one might think that with billions of dollars, accomplishing any task should be a rather straightforward issue. Reading his letters provides a view on how much work and how big their challenges are.

Some counterpoints to consider:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123758895999200083.html

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3781

I had considered that -- there's plenty of evidence to support the idea that "charity" doesn't often help achieve big picture goals like substantially decreasing poverty.

That said, a lot of the things his foundation is working on are more immediate-need types of issues, like access to doctors and medication for malaria and other diseases. In these venues, charities can have a much bigger, more immediate impact than trying to grow a market to deal with the issue.

Less poverty and diseases beats a better version of Microsoft <Product> any day.

let's not forget about energy http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/12/07/technolog... and since it's also still in the tech dept., I fail to see how comming back to run desktop/mobile OS business could be an attractive option to him.

  > Let's be honest though: the stuff Gates is doing today is
  > way more important than any of the things Jobs did over
  > the last decade.

That's bullshit. Not in the sense that what Jobs did is more important, but in the sense that these things are not comparable at all.

Exactly! Jobs is great but Gates' work is so much more important then Jobs' iPhone that it's incomparable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com