2000–2008 · Microsoft

Bill Gates steps back: how Microsoft handed over from its founder

Last reviewed 5 October 2026

Bill Gates gave up the chief executive job in 2000 and stopped working full-time at Microsoft in 2008. The eight years between were a long, staged handover through antitrust cases and a changing industry.

From chief executive to chief software architect

In January 2000 Gates handed the chief executive role to Steve Ballmer, his friend from Harvard and Microsoft’s first business manager. Gates stayed on as chairman and took a new title, chief software architect, which let him concentrate on product strategy.

The change came in the middle of the US government’s antitrust case. A judge ruled in 2000 that Microsoft should be split in two. An appeals court overturned the break-up in 2001, and the company settled with the Justice Department later that year. In Europe the case went on longer: in 2004 the European Commission fined Microsoft and ordered it to share interoperability information and offer a version of Windows without Media Player.

Gates the public figure

Through the early 2000s Gates was both the face of Microsoft and the subject of endless speculation about what the company would be without him. Profiles examined his house, his wealth, his influence over the product line and the growing work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which he and Melinda French Gates had set up in 2000.

He gave keynote speeches at trade shows each year, setting out ideas such as the “digital decade” and tablet computing, and he remained closely involved in the long and troubled development of Windows Vista.

The 2006 announcement

In June 2006 Microsoft announced that Gates would move to part-time work over two years so he could spend more time on the foundation. Ray Ozzie, the creator of Lotus Notes who had joined Microsoft in 2005, took over as chief software architect, and Craig Mundie became chief research and strategy officer.

Gates’s last day as a full-time employee was 27 June 2008. He stayed as chairman until February 2014, when Satya Nadella became chief executive and Gates became a technology adviser, and he left the board in 2020.

What the handover meant

Microsoft under Ballmer grew revenue and profits strongly but was widely seen as slow to respond to search, smartphones and the web. The handover period is now remembered as the end of the founder-led era, and the moment when the company’s centre of gravity moved from Windows on the desktop towards servers and, later, the cloud.