Vicky Lalwani

Sheraton New York has been mesmerized by Microsoft and have adopted the Surface application in their lobby.

Take a look at the clip below.

After dropping out from Harvard, and spending most of his day in a garage back in 1970s, multi-billionaire Bill Gates will be leaving Microsoft this week.

It has taken 3 people to fill the shoes of the man who started it all. Chief Software Architect will be Ray Ozzie, Chief Research and Strategy Office will be Craig Mundie and infamous Steve Ballmer will be the CEO.

While Bill will stay on Microsoft board as Chairman, his focus will be on his personal charity - The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Analysts say that Bill leaving could impact the direction or image of the company. Bill Gates is the heart of Microsoft, and he pushed it to where it is today. With his departure, the executive directors are all responsible to preserve that image.

It has taken 1 year for Bill Gates to officially step out of this position to hand over to the above 3 mentioned successors. However, in that past year while Bill has stepped away from the operation management of Microsoft, several hiccups have been made. For example, launching the new Office and Windows platforms - it’s been a year since those products have been released, but the strategy of them replacing its predecessors haven’t been successful. In fact, customers prefer to stay on XP rather than upgrading.

It’s almost like Microsoft has no answer in what to do next - and all this while Apple’s OS is gaining traction.

Aside from the Desktop Market, Microsoft has to deal with it’s ever-growing competitor Google - who now offer free online document collaboration tools called Google Docs.

Then there was the whole failure of Microsoft - Yahoo takeover of nearly US$50 billion.

On the flip side, the server and tools division are the bread and butter of Microsoft’s profits. While it’s entertainment unit, which makes Xbox and it’s games are yet to record a profit.

A founder and CEO of a company has so much more value added that they are sometimes invisible to where the company is heading - though they are the ones making those little tweaks which are often never realised.

Did Gates leave at the right time? Will he ever come back? Where will Microsoft be positioned in 5 to 10 years time?

For those who do not know the infamous story of Kerry Packer and Alan Bond, here goes:

Back in 1987, Kerry Packer sold Australia’s Nine Network to Alan Bond for AU$1.05 Billion.

3 years later, Alan Bond’s company went down and the network was in trouble. Kerry bought it back for a mere $250 million.

Today Nine Network is still part owned and operated by the Packer family.

Now, James Packer (son of Kerry) has been on the Alan Bond side of a recent business transaction.

In 2007 James’s company, PBL, along with their partnership with Microsoft, bought Myhome.com.au from Shane Dale for AU$8 million.

A year later, and the site was recently closed down a couple of weeks ago. PBL is estimated to have spent $20 million on Myhome.com.au with no gains.

Media claims that Shane Dale, recently bought back Myhome.com.au for AU$1.8 million. However, Mr Dale said the numbers are not right, but did not confirm its accuracy.

It is apparent that PBL and Microsoft / Ninemsn had no real understanding of the online real estate market.

What are you going to do with MyHome.com.au, Shane?