On July 1st, Bill Gates will retire. He’ll still spend about 20% of his time on Microsoft projects. If Microsoft is to retain 20% of its economic clout in five years time, the company’s board should start working on firing CEO Steve Ballmer now.

Why? Because Ballmer has been in charge of Microsoft for the last several years and he’s been running it into the ground. Even before Gates announced that he was going to retire, Ballmer was already in charge and his record of failure speaks for itself.

1) The Vista Technology Flop. Technically, Vista was crap. You don’t have to believe people like me who think Vista, a year and a service patch since its release, is still an over-priced joke pretending to be an operating system. But, maybe you will believe Microsoft’s top-level executives when they say its trash.

Who was at the wheel of the good ship Microsoft during the tens of thousands of man-years and billions of dollars to create Vista? That would be CEO/captain Steve Ballmer.

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