After 33 years in Microsoft, William Gates III, officially stepped down this week to retire from the software industry. Well not really since he’s going over to work at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation but this was officially his last day as a full time employee of the software behemoth that he co founded with Paul Allen.

Bill Gates was one of the main forces that defined the computer industry in the early eighties. He and Paul Allen rode the early wave of visionaries who saw the potential of the personal computer. From a small operation in Albuquerque New Mexico they eventually ballooned to the 80,000 workforce that Microsoft is today.

The corner stone of their success was the Disk Operating System (DOS), which they licensed to IBM for their use in the new personal computer on a cheaply priced per piece basis. Ironically, Microsoft didn’t even create the software for DOS, they just bought it from another company.

In the nineties it was all Bill Gates and Microsoft. Primarily because of the launch of Windows 3.1 that made the Graphical User Interface and the Mouse a household name. Though not entirely unique to them since the Apple Macintosh was already using GUI’s, what Microsoft was able to do was let it run on the more cheaply priced PC therefore allowing the average joe to have the opportunity to own a GUI based PC. The GUI and the Mouse overnight helped remove the phobia that people had with using a PC due to the archaic and voluminous commands that one had to memorize in text based operating that DOS had been. And with that, Microsoft’s vision of A PC on every desk on every home was accomplished.

Funny that they were once considered underdogs going up against the mighty IBM. But just like the game Blizzard game Diablo, once you slay the demon, you become the demon. With their monopoly of the PC industry, Bill Gates was vilified as being ruthless and overbearing in his crusade to seal Microsoft’s dominance in the tech industry. To the point that an anti trust suit was brought up against them and to which they had lost. Had not it been for the GW Bush administration, the lowered decision would have meant for the splitting up of his beloved company into separate pieces.

In this present day and age the dominance of Microsoft in the Operating System market is on shaky ground with the entry of Linux during the late 90’s. A free and open source operating system. Although initially an operating system that only geeks and engineers could love. Because in order to use it, one would almost often have to check under the hood of the operating system to get it to work, unlike the more user friendly windows. But times have matured the operating system as newer variants of the unix based operating system have shown to be more user friendly. This is but one of the foes biting into Microsofts market share.

The other threat that caught them by surprise was the emergence of Google as an internet power. In the span of just 10 years since it was first started, Google’s dominance in the search and online advertising has allowed them to grow and develop web based applications that threaten Microsoft’s PC based Office and Productivity suite of products. Google’s Gmail competes directly with Microsoft Outlook, Google Docs competes with MS Office.

Bill G isn’t really leaving Microsoft on a steady foundation with his retirement. But how Microsoft eventually fares in these opposing fronts is still an open ended story. But definitely it is something that Microsoft has always been used to, having competition in front of them, which they are out to topple, or competition nipping at their heels.

One thing I’m looking forward to is if Bill Gates can translate that same hard-nosed drive that he has when he was making Microsoft the giant that it is to his Philanthropic works, the World will definitely be a better place.

Check out Bill Gates last day at Microsoft.