Bill,

Please run Microsoft again.  It needs you.

I think you may need it too.   Your recent comments are not very helpful.

I was kind of hoping for something more profound and insightful than  “We can expect that the variety and quality of software will accelerate in the years ahead.”

You used to say cool stuff like “Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.”   Now you sound like an article from the in-flight magazine, from 1996.

Your brainchild’s most threatening competitor, Google, has a CEO too.  Eric Schmidt is definitely in tune with the future of the web. His recent interview in Wired was revealing and revealed the visionary aspect of being a CEO of a major force in web technology,

Steve Ballmer is awesome. His videos are great.  He eats hippie CEO’s like Jerry Yang for breakfast.  However, Microsoft needs someone at the helm for all the software stuff that you were good at for all those years.  No, it wasn’t perfect.  But it sure was popular and effective.  The question really is, what does Microsoft look like in 10 years?  Because the Internets aren’t waiting for it to catch up.

Best,

Ed