After those two are gone, it will become a totally clueless and evil company, that ignores all of its customers’ cries for mercy because listening to any of them might cost a penny or two more which would upset the short-sighted bean-counters who can’t see past the next quarterly results. It will start perpetually reacting to crises that never would have arisen under Gates and Ballmer, and switch the focus from improving its core products (however slightly) to aggressively pushing them on everyone. The quality of their programs (which was never that high to begin with) will plummet, they’ll resort to buying competitors just to shut down competition, and they’ll be forced into ever-more-desperate ploys to keep their shareholders off their backs.

I won’t go so far as to say that they’ll be bankrupt any time in the foreseeable future, but their time as a major industry powerhouse is coming to an end (it’s already headed that way). They’re going the way of IBM — they’ll still be wealthy, and powerful in some circles because of that wealth, but they’ll lack the vision (and the courage to follow it) that makes them a leader right now.

Okay, gotta let the crystal ball cool off now.