…the last four years, and Russia for the last three years. So in many of these countries where we're changing our product line, organisational structure and business model, you could say that I've been the sponsor for a lot of that within the company.
Well, let's take that a little bit further. How do you think Microsoft needs to approach this issue of selling high-technology products to authoritarian countries or nations with anti-democratic traditions?
Well, Microsoft software is used today in well over 200 countries. We operate globally with subsidiaries in something like 170 countries. So we encounter almost all forms of governance in that environment. Our view is that our job is to take this technology and make it available as broadly as we possibly can. And whether you happen to be pro-democracy or not, we do think that all of these issues are better off by having those people able to be part of the global community and have access to these technologies.
Do you think the criticism Congress has levelled at you guys and Google and Yahoo vis-a-vis China is justified? Well, I think that it's a very difficult situation. All those companies have tended to have the same view that the US interests ultimately are better served by having our businesses present in those countries than not. Frankly, if you turned around many of the issues we are challenged on, foreign companies that do business in the US would have no choice but to answer the same way we do in those countries — which is that your business has to conform to the laws of the land in which you operate. It's really not optional.
So if you start with the premise that our presence there is a good thing — both in terms of values and access to technology and trade — then, just as any multinational does, you have to hew to the legal line that's placed in front of you in each country.
I do think that there have been problems at times where Congress finds it easy to look at these issues when they look across the ocean. But if you were a bit more introspective, you'd realise that we imposed some of the same constraints on any multinational that would operate in the US, so there's more symmetry there than you would observe in the way some of the questioning was presented.
Let me turn to an organisational question. I remember that after Bill Gates announced his plans to do the slow phase-out, someone told us that one of the things Microsoft may need to get away from is being too closely associated with just one person. Do you think that makes sense?
Well, Microsoft is an iconic company. It was founded and led by an iconic leader in Bill. Our view is that the company has been developing an incredibly strong group of business and technical leaders and, to some extent, those people are less visible in this situation than they might have been in other situations in other companies, simply because of the star power Bill commands.
I think that whether it's a good thing or a bad thing is sort of irrelevant. With Bill electing to go and put his own energies in the next two years full time into the foundation, the company really has to see the natural rise, if you will, of these other extremely capable people. I think that that will be a fine thing. It's a completely natural thing. And in fact, I don't think there is any alternative.
Is the challenge during that transition to make sure that things don't become too bureaucratic, for lack of a better term?
Virtually all the organisational and structural changes that will result from Bill's departure have already been made. Bill will be here, especially for the next year, with Ray and I in our jobs to make sure we really have a graceful handoff, that we don't have any cataclysmic changes.
There are a few things to tidy up in the course of this year that we'll do, but I don't feel that there is any encumbrance that in fact Bill has internalised, and we've internalised that. His goal is to make us effective in our new role, and we are largely in that capacity now.
Then what do you see as the most pressing area for Microsoft?
One of the things we've embarked on and that will require diligent focus is the addition of the service components to all the elements of our business.
We have to be successful in rolling out the other components for these online businesses. We think we're pulling even, in terms of the search relevancy. We've moved to our ad platform. These are all things that [mean] we have to keep our eye on the ball, but we've been very focused on it the last couple of years. They're critically important.
We're also making sure that our products really have a good value proposition across the board, when they're going to be measured, in some sense, in contrast to what people think they can get either free or even, in the future, maybe ad-supported versions of these.
We may move to have some of our own products offered in that [free] environment, but I consider that as a component of having a service component of all of our traditional businesses.
Our products are used by people in virtually every country in the world, but in the aggregate, we really only sold those products effectively to the billion richest people on the planet. It's pretty clear that there's another two billion people who have disposable income and for whom technology is becoming an important and expected part of their lives, where in the past it wasn't.
