I found it interesting that neither myself nor Mike wrote about Bill Gates' "retirement" yesterday.

In case you missed it, yesterday was his last day of employment at Microsoft. He's still on the board of directors, but he's left the company to persue his charities and foundations on a full-time basis.

I didn't write about it because I really didn't care, and it appears most of the rest of the internet felt the same way. I saw a total of two stories about it in my feed reader yesterday. Just two. Maybe I'm just not subscribed to the right news feeds? Maybe. I don't know. But I think I'm subscribed to several sites that generally have a finger on the pulse of what's going on around the tech world.

Yet it seems nobody else really cares about it either. Of the two stories I saw about it yesterday, the one I read was rather short and reported just the facts, ma'am. I skimmed through it to pick up the major details, then didn't even bother to read the second one.

I think the reason Bill Gates' retirement hasn't made a huge splash is because ultimately it doesn't really matter. Being on the board of directors at Microsoft means he's still going to have a hand in the direction of the company, and maybe everybody believes that's not going to change.

I mean, if Gates' retirement triggered a major policy change under Ballmer's leadership, then that would be news. Right? If Ballmer came out and said "Ok, now that the old fart is out of the way, we're going to do this, this, this, this, and this. Oh yeah, and let's not forget THIS. That one will really take Microsoft in a whole new direction."

But that's not going to happen. Microsoft will continue going on as it always had just as if our buddy Bill was still at the helm. What do yo think? Leave your thoughts in the comments.