There's speculation on Wall Street that Microsoft is going to dump CEO Steve Ballmer and hold him responsible for the company's ills like not being able to get its stock price to move off the dime. There's no speculation about who would succeed him yet, just a shiver of apprehension when Bill Gates' name comes up.
This speculation comes at a time when Microsoft is in on of its periodic "student body left" changes of direction, where it moves its metaphorical crosshairs to whomever is perceived as the latest Big Threat to its business. Microsoft, under the leadership of Ballmer and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, first pulled this trick against Apple, GEM, and the graphical user interface in the 80s, moved onto a suite of application software developers, vanquished Netscape (something Ballmer recently bragged about at a Churchill Club meeting in San Jose), and now has decided that Google represents the latest threat to its business.
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