Alexander H. Williams

Bill Gates and the Microsoft Identity

This afternoon I used Google Reader to share a Gaping Void post that highlighted Microsoft’s painful tagline: “Your Potential, Our Passion.”  As Hugh states, the tagline is contrived and phony at its worst, boring and uninspired at its best.

That was quickly followed in my Google Reader by GigaOM’s coverage of the CEO Summit at Microsoft. An event highlighted by the presence of Bill Gates and the obvious excitement he drew in his discussion about the world beyond the keyboard. Cool, cool stuff. 

The contrast between the two posts is significant. The GigaOM post demonstrates that Bill Gates is still about the only one who embodies the Microsoft mystique while the post in Gaping Void well represents the problems Microsoft is having with how it represents itself in the post-Bill Gates era.

The folks in Redmond are only *talking* about passion. As Hugh writes, they are not showing who they are, what motivates them and why they love what they do.

In the day, Bill Gates would burp and the tech media would cheer. What a romp it was for the pundits. Gates could be a hero on a Tuesday and dressed as a villain on a Thursday. He was exciting to follow. Bill never had to say he was passionate. People just knew it.

So what happens when Bill Gates takes the stage at an event like the CEO Summit? For that short instant, Bill is again the visionary. It is his company. For a few days, it seems like the old times. Bill is in charge and all is well in Redmond. ;-)