Bill Gates ‘happy with Nadella’
04 Oct 2014
Bill Gates, technology advisor to Microsoft CEO, said in a recent interview that he was very happy with CEO Satya Nadella.
In an interview to Bloomberg TV, Gates, one of the most influential technologists in the world, said that Nadella had brought a new energy to the company and was trying to fix things.
Gates had taken up the role of technology advisor to the CEO at the time Nadella took over from Steve Ballmer in February. He had been spending one-third of his time at Redmond, something which he had not done for years.
He told Bloomberg in the interview that that was working to make MS Office "dramatically better".
"That's the kind of thing that I'm trying to make sure they move fast on," he said.
In a recent move, Microsoft showcased the Windows 10 Technical Preview, which followed the launch of a touch-first version of Office for the iPad, earlier this year.
The company had failed to do this under the leadership of Steve Ballmer.
Microsoft was yet to release a touch-first version of Office for its flagship OS – Windows, but was on track to launch it next year.
Meanwhile, Business Standard reports that both Jeff Bezos and Nadella have a lot between them, apart from their huge interest in India.
Their companies are leaders in the technology space with annual revenues apart from each other by $10 billion. They are also almost the same age.
However, the two visiting business bosses - Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of the $75-billion e-commerce company Amazon and Satya Nadella, CEO of the $87-billion software firm Microsoft - with engineering degrees and a shared passion to invent and build things, came across as very different in their interactions during the last few days in India.
Bezos regaled his audiences at every forum with his explosive laughter, witty one-liners and showmanship, though he is known to be quite a taskmaster as also a boss with cutting remarks. Nadella appeared modest and humble, and completely lacked the aura carried by a celebrity CEO, as an observer pointed out.