Gates departure well-timed

Everyone's talking about Bill Gates. Business Week leads its story on the retirement by noting that yesterday's announcement is part of a long-term and carefullly-orchestrated succession plan meant to keep both employees and investors calm.  That emphasis is an interesting counterpoint to those who would have preferred that the press conference featured Steve Ballmer's head on a platter as a way to juice the stock, and it reflects the somewhat bipolar way MSFT is viewed by stock-watchers. 

In the minds of many, its performance is still being compared to newcomers like Google, when in fact MSFT (like Intel) has become something closer to a classic widow-and-orphan stock. That was the phrase used in years past for utility company stocks, or AT&T pre-deregulation: dull, uneventful stocks that paid good dividends and were very, very safe. 

Microsoft and Intel certainly provide the dull performance part, although both currently fall a bit short on the dividend side.  But they're also relatively safe for their sector: how many other technology stocks could you have held from 1999 until today without taking a hair-raising ride?  

Microsoft can't take Google's coy attitude about its future directions; hence yesterday's almost courtly ceremony of succession.  And all in all, it probably happened at a good time.  The stock is depressed and nothing is going to change the market's opinion of Microsoft until we see some action on both the Vista and Web services front somewhere out in 2007.  So why not get out the potentially scary news now, instead of spoiling the party in a year when something might actually be going right? 

PS: I've known and written about Gates since he was selling software on cassette tapes, so here's a slightly more personal look at the announcement.