CNN is reporting that Gates to leave day-to-day Microsoft operations:
Chairman Bill Gates announced Thursday that he will transition from day-to-day responsibilities at the company he co-founded to concentrate on the charitable work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Gates will continue on as the company’s chairman after transferring his duties over a two-year period.
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Microsoft’s Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie will immediately assume Gate’s title as chief software architect and begin working alongside Gates on overseeing all software technical design.
There will be two year transition so I don’t think we’ll be seeing major shifts until after that point. I suspect many people will reference this as the beginning of the post-Bill Gates era of Microsoft.