And another opens, as Bill Gates steps back from his day-to-day role at Microsoft. What’s next for the man—with that fateful licensing gimme from IBM—who transformed computing into multi-billion dollar omniscience?

Unlikely that he will bunker down at home and gaze at his holographic art; remaining as Microsoft’s non-executive chairman, he will keep a light hand in company matters while retraining his time and attention on philanthropy via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

While Gates reportedly is not optimistic about a Microsoft union with Yahoo!, never-shy Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg loves his company’s chances against Apple. The iPhone’s no big deal he insinuates, pointing to Apple’s small market share of global handset sales. And what about Steve Jobs (Corporate Leader’s number one CEO)? “Steve Jobs eventually will get old,” says Seidenberg. “I like our chances."

And Google could be in another tangle, sued by small start-up LimitNone for $1 billion over allegations of misappropriated trade secrets.

At issue is LimitNone’s gMove tool, which allows Microsoft Outlook users to easily migrate their emails, calendar entries and contact lists to Google's platform. After partnering with LimitNone to promote gMove, Google allegedly released a free tool with identical functionality.

Declares aggravated LimitNone CEO Ray Glassmann: “Google claims its core philosophy is 'Don't be evil,' but simply put, they invited us to work with them, to trust them--and then stole our technology...We had to take a stand."

Jeff Heilman

6/30/08