Five years ago this week, Bill Gates passed the CEO baton to Steve Ballmer.
Microsoft's co-founder left the job he had held since 1975 to take on a new role as chief software architect. The idea was to free him up to concentrate full-time on new technology. The business was changing, and Microsoft, no longer a scrappy start-up, needed to chart new directions in the face of nascent challenges in the post-dot-com era.
It was a move that also offered Gates a golden opportunity to prove his critics wrong and show that he was every bit the technologist his resume claimed he was. To be sure, Microsoft has always been touchy about suggestions that it is less of a technology innovator than a technology follower.
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