The End of Bill Gates

Since 1994, Bill Gates has been the God of CES -- the giant tech show's version of Zeus. Nearly every year since, he opened the show with a keynote that would get mobbed. His powerful presence as the leader of industry superpower Microsoft loomed over much of what happened at the show and in technology. If he appeared on the show floor or in a restaurant, grown geeks would be known to squeal like little girls.

All that ended last night. Gates is leaving Microsoft in July, and he just gave his last CES keynote.

Let's start with the absolute best part: the farewell video. It was hilarious, with Gates allowing celebrities from Jon Stewart to Jay-Z to George Clooney poke fun at him. Microsoft tells me it can't release the video because it doesn't have agreements with all the participants, but someone in the audience grabbed part of the video here.

Other than that, Gates had little to say that seemed new or break-out interesting. Microsoft really is at its best as a plumbing company, making the software that makes things like PCs and cell phones and set-top boxes work. It's turning into a plumbing company that makes software that makes those things work together. That's sort of the bottom line.

In these keynotes, Gates is fond of showing off futuristic products that it seems like hardly anybody will ever want. He spent a bunch of time showing Microsoft Surface -- a touch-screen computer embedded in a tabletop. It came across as a really expensive, way too big iPhone.

At the end, Gates showed off a Microsoft Research invention that, he said, will someday let you hold up your cell phone, turn on the camera, and the technology will tell you what you're looking at. Nokia has been working on something similar and seems further along. Either way, it's not coming to your cell phone anytime soon.

(PS: A little irony here. While trying to file this post, Windows Vista crashed my laptop...)

Photograph by Robyn Beck/Getty Images

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