I keep wondering the exact same thing and yeah people alway say 'now way' but you have to wonder, as a founder, it's got to be hard to watch your former company struggling so hard at this point.

I keep thinking back to the mid-90's when Gates sent out his famous internet tidal-wave email; that was how he reacted to a threat to MS's longterm survival - a huge pivot away from multimedia, cds/dvds (remember Encarta?) to focusing everything on the Internet.

Ballmer in 2005 facing a similar tidal-wave does what? Laughs and mocks the iPhone then the iPad. Had he reacted as Gates had and pivoted the entire company then instead of 6+ years later with Window 8/Surface, who knows where they'd be right now.

Or maybe he has a different perspective on what would constitute "struggling". The company did post its highest revenues ever this year, right?

I think the idea is that for a company with as much resources as Microsoft, "doing really well" is not actually all that great. They should/could be an absolute juggernaut.

After reading comments from Gates lately, I'd say he's as clueless as Ballmer is about how to break into the tablet/phone market.

Gates never left. He's the largest shareholder and chairman of the board.