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If you haven’t been hiding under a rock for the past couple days, you may have heard of something called CES. The Consumer Electronic Show is the biggest, annual technology show of the year, and it is happening this week in Las Vegas. For the past 11 years, Bill Gates has traditionally presented at the CES opening keynote. As always, Bill got up on stage this year, to introduce this years Consumer Electronic Show. This was his last year doing the keynote, as he is retiring from his daily duties at Microsoft this later this year.

As I sat, watching Microsoft’s live stream of the keynote last night, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu. This CES keynote felt exactly like last years, and the years before that. Bill Gates got on stage, praised the innovation of Microsoft, and touted the stats and figures. Then they demoed Vista, Xbox, Microsoft Surface, and Sync, talked about some future products, and then wrapped it up with a Guitar Hero match. As the keynote finished, I couldn’t help but sit there and think, “Is that it?”. I know I shouldn’t have expected new products, or flashy eye candy, but this keynote was nothing new. Is this all Microsoft, a multi-billion dollar company, had to offer in 2008?

At CES 2007 we saw the Vista demos. We heard from the Xbox creator. And we heard Bill Gates give his “Connected Experiences” talk. A year later, we are still hearing the same things out of Redmond. Vista rocks. Xbox is great. Computers are going to be in tables and walls in the future. Blah blah blah blah blah. The only improvement I’ve seen in Microsoft over the past year is in their staff’s Guitar Hero 3 skills. Where is this new and exciting technology that we keep hearing about? Where is Microsoft innovating and moving forward?

I think that this is the first year we have seen Microsoft run out of ideas. No new Operating Systems. No new game consoles. No new Zunes. Just the same old stuff we’ve been seeing over the years. And even with the future technology they are demoing, like Microsoft Surface, they are yet to find a very appealing use for it. The Microsoft Surface demo, for example, showed how you could create your own snowboard design. Huh? What is this? $10 000 for a device that helps create snowboard designs? Come on Microsoft.

It seems to me, that the world has moved beyond Microsoft. All of the great minds and innovators are now in growing companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook. These companies appear to be rolling out hit after hit after hit. They just aren’t slowing down. On the other hand, Microsoft is slowing down. They are stuck in the same old technologies of yesteryear. And while Microsoft will assuredly continue to rake in the dough for years and years to come, I think it is safe to say that they are no longer on the forefront of the technology. They are no longer producing innovative, exciting, bleeding-edge products. Instead, they spend most of their time fixing bugs, providing customer support, and checking compatibility with older Operating Systems. Maybe Bill Gates had it all planned out. Maybe now is the perfect time to leave Microsoft.