Why Bill stepped down

He wants to run for president -- and a cornucopia of other "top 10" reasons from our e-mailbag.

By Salon Technology Staff

Jan 18, 2000 | Thanks to the hundreds of you who responded to our call for further entries to our Top 10 reasons Bill Gates stepped down, we're delighted to be able to provide you with this follow-up, carefully culled from your suggestions and submissions.

Responses clustered in a few predictable areas, some already mapped out in our original list: Gates wants out before the Justice Department breaks up Microsoft; Gates hears the hooves of Linux thundering at his gate; Gates is overwhelmed with Mac envy or Steve Jobs envy or Steve Case envy.

Many of you apparently feel that Gates is, in one form or another, the Antichrist or the Evil One -- or maybe a Faustian figure in cahoots with same. There are a lot of unkind thoughts out there about Bill's personal hygiene, which we have omitted (not because of excessively high standards of taste but because they're not that funny). We received many suggestions that the cream-pie-in-the-face incident lies at the heart of Gates' decision. Finally, a surprising number of you seem to think Gates is prepping a presidential run.

Joke? With this year's roster of candidates, who can really say?

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He finally realized that he had absolutely no idea what he is doing running Microsoft.
-- Jon LaBass

Bill Gates wants to decide what piece of today's Microsoft he will get instead of being told what piece he gets. With his percent of shares in MSFT on the day the courts call it splits, Bill will be able to chose where he wants to go today.
-- Douglas LaRue

Because of the DOJ, he can't stay head of the "dream team" for much longer. So he's biding his time until his hostile takeover of AOL Time Warner comes to fruition.
-- Philip Brown

He discovered AOL chatrooms. =)
-- unsigned

He decided he wants to be president so he can fire the Justice Department.
-- Sylvia Hawley

1) Needs time to reinstall Windows 98 on his laptop.

2) Outlook crashed and instead of admitting he lost the next quarter's numbers, he quit instead.
-- Chris J. DiBona

1) After 44 years in beta, Gates' Real Life (tm) is ready to launch.

2) Hard to find an answer to daughter when she asked, "Daddy, what do you do at work?"
-- David E. Romm

Finally wanted to figure out how to convert Hotmail from FreeBSD to Microsoft products. ;)
-- Mark Price

To help code the KDE project and implement the "start" button.
-- Kevin M.

He can only be CEO of one company; he can be the chairman of the board of many.
-- unsigned

Realized that software is a young man's game.
-- Dale Kirby

He wants to spend some time catching up on Bill Gates jokes.
-- Michael South

Because watching "South Park: The Movie" freaked him out: What if some cartoon character really does execute him because of the bugs in Windows 98?
-- Ted Cashin

Next Page: "He didn't step down -- he performed an illegal operation and crashed"

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