What were Bill Gates's worst decisions as CEO? Were there any visionary failure on his side?

The answer to this question needs to be read in conjunction with the answer to the “best decisions” one. Brad Silverberg's answer to What were Bill Gates's best decisions as CEO?One of the things I learned at Microsoft is that being smart is not the same as being right.  As smart as Bill and many of the people were, some bad decisions were made. 

Top of the list for me is that Bill did not engage, either himself or the company – in the political process early enough.  When Microsoft’s competitors were effectively lobbying the government, Bill’s attitude was the government should just go away and leave Microsoft alone.  In his view the company was competing hard but fairly; it was creating value for customers and that should be enough.  Well, this approach of not constructively engaging the government and concerned politicians, of not alleviating  concerns that were not going to go away, was a disaster.  The US federal government, many states, and the EU all essentially declared war on Microsoft, and Microsoft paid a devastating price. 

Intel did a better job figuring out how to negotiate with the government and avoided the catastrophic fate Microsoft suffered.  Google has done a better job with the US government but it seems the EU is on Google’s case now.

Bill also had a difficult time figuring out how to respond to the opportunity / threat of the Internet. It’s understandable.  When you own Windows in the late’s, life is good and why would you want things to change?  Bill’s view was to protect Windows, and didn’t come up with an approach that kept Windows and Microsoft’s systems strategy at the forefront.  The result is that Microsoft’s strategic position declined in the’s.  It’s now coming to grips with the new reality and making necessary, if belated, changes.

Bill’s pursuit of Longhorn led to the debacle that was Vista, though Bill was Chief Software Architect, not CEO, at the time.

Thanks

Appreciate your great answer Mr. Ashraf

Thank you for inviting me to answer

Bill Gates is one of the most important technological personalities in the world, he retained the post of chief executive of Microsoft Corp. for nearly 25 years and stepped down in 2000, and in that time managed to transform an emerging company initiated two men to the tremendous technological strength estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars, and became the richest man in the world for many years, but each senior executive director even though it was a genius makes mistakes, and the following are the most important monitor the wrong decisions taken by Bill Gates, which is also one of the most important of Microsoft's believed to have worked. According to Brad Sylvrberg, who spent nine years at Microsoft, most important errors have been falling in the part of Bill Gates, is the lack of access to the Internet in the early dramatically, which was convey the company dramatically, if Microsoft had realized the underlying strength of this service was possible to change the course of the company and launch appropriate services for young people. The second thing is that it was not involved - either himself or the company - in the political process as early as when he was a competitor to Microsoft's trying to win government support effectively, which was a disaster because it made the United States and the European Union government declare war on Microsoft. According to the website "Tech Insider" US protection of Windows, which is Microsoft's empire was taking much room from Bill Gates's concerns, and prevented him from considering the threats that occur around him, but Sylvrberg still has a lot of respect for Gates and is believed to be one of the greatest CEOs than ever .

Transported

And thank you for your reading

Basm allah alrahman alrahim

lets change 10 mistakes to 10 success rules

bill gates

Walt desiny

agree with the answer to Mr.  Mohammed Ashraf 

The worst decision is symbolized by 1 character: \\.

By picking a backslash for file paths Microsoft distanced itself from the rest of the computer world resulting in interoperability problems that are existing still today.

But maybe that was on purpose...

agree with ur answer sir                      .

Agree with your answer again, thanks for the invitation.

I commend Mr. Ashraf's answer. 

Gates presumed that Microsoft would never face competition and it therefore didn't need to soul search on whether its operating system had major floors in it. Apple has overshadowed them as they have no issues with accepting failure or saying we need a new direction. Mac OS had reached its end and they made the bold move of tearing up their own OS and wrote OSX which is built on top of what they accepted was a more stable operating system UNIX.

The arrogance displayed in their Internet Explorer strategy was hard to believe. I spent years having to code for IE and then for all the other browsers which just worked, because Microsoft demanded it tell the industry how web pages should be rendered in their eyes. Again like its Windows OS parent Internet Explorer was not the best on the block and people simply moved away from it to FireFox and later to Chrome.

So Gates seemed to not demand innovation from his teams but more rely on the fact most consumers would have to use their products regardless of if it was the best or not. Essentially a coercive approach rather than wanting to be world class and keep customers loyal.

I do commend Microsoft in two areas however. Their progress in gaming with the XBox and also their ongoing IP investment in their Office product suite. These two areas the company has been highly progressive. The other areas they simply thought throwing money at stuff would buy them success and it sadly is not the case.

Do I see Gates as a great leader? Well I think he is certainly one of the great American business men. An IT visionary less so as when you look closer most products were just rehashed ideas from other people.

Thanks for the invitation..interesting answers provided by many people...