Microsoft founder Bill Gates has criticised one of the company's biggest cash cows – Microsoft Office – admitting the package needs "more than a tune-up".
Gates, who recently resigned as Microsoft chairman to become a technology adviser to new CEO Satya Nadella, signalled that the company was set to take even greater risks with its long-standing product lines, suggesting big changes were afoot for Office, and possibly Windows, too.
"Office and the other Microsoft assets that we built in the nineties and kept tuning up have lasted a long time," Gates said in an interview with Rolling Stone, conceivably referring to both Office and Windows.
"Now, they need more than a tune-up. But that's pretty exciting for the people inside who say, 'We need to take a little risk and do some new stuff'."
Gates didn't stipulate what that "new stuff" might be, although Microsoft is known to be working on a touch-oriented version of Office for iOS, which it's expected to release ahead of finger-friendly apps for its own operating systems.
Google rivalry
Gates also admitted that Google was a "very strong company across a huge number of things right now", and said the search firm was now in a similar position to where Microsoft was in its 1990s heyday.
"The fact is search generates a lot of money," Gates said. "And when you have a lot of money, it allows you to go down a lot of dead ends.
"We had that luxury at Microsoft in the nineties. You can pursue things that are way out there. We did massive interactive TV stuff, we did digital wallet stuff. A lot of it was ahead of its time, but we could afford it."
Now it seems rivals have greater spending power. In the same interview, Gates admits Microsoft would have bought WhatsApp, but not at the $19 billion price that Facebook paid last month.
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